Volume 6, Issue 2, 2018
Suicide, Martyrdom, and Violence
Mary Storm
Pages 225-244
https://doi.org/10.5840/jrv201812658
Speculation on Hindu Self-Sacrifice Imagery at Nalgonda
This is a study of ca. 13th¨C14th century self-sacrificial memorial stones (v¨©rakkal) from Nalgonda, India. Suicide is usually condemned, but sometimes accepted as self-sacrifice, during periods of social upheaval or religious crisis. The article asks why and when voluntary death was accepted in the medieval Indian culture of the Deccan Plateau. The hero stones discussed here probably represent Hindu V¨©ra?aiva worshippers. Hindu monotheistic ?aiva V¨©ra?aivism originated in The South-West of the Indian Deccan Plateau in the 10¨C11th centuries, then travelled to the Southeast of the Deccan by the 13th¨C14th centuries. V¨©ra?aivism (¡°The Heroic Worship of ?iva¡±) reflects distinctive elements of medieval South India. It upended Brahmanical authority, gender and caste exclusions, and it reflected the merger of the transgressive religious devotionalism of Tantra and Bhakti. V¨©ra?aivism also reflected the social, and biological stressors of the day, such as Hindu inter-sectarian tensions, Muslim invasions, civil warfare, famine, and epidemic disease.