The Brahmana's Wife Pleads to be Sacrificed to Save Him
A brahmana faces a terrible choice: he must be sacrificed. His wife stops his grief with a startling argument. She lays out a detailed case, citing dharma, practical necessity, and the future of their children, for why he must sacrifice her instead.
The brahmana was grieving. The situation was clear: a sacrifice was demanded, and he was the one who must die.
His wife, the brahmani, spoke to stop him. "You must not grieve like a common person," she said. "For someone as learned as you, this is not the time to grieve. All men must certainly come to an end. If something is certain, one should not grieve over it." She reminded him that a man desires a wife, a son, and a daughter for his own sake. Having obtained them, he should abandon his grief. Then she made her offer: "I shall go there myself."
What followed was not a plea born of hysteria, but a systematic argument built on dharma (righteousness), artha (practical welfare), and the stark realities of their world.
First, she framed it as her supreme duty. "It is the supreme and eternal duty of women in this world that they should give up their lives for the welfare of their husbands. Done by me, such an act will bring you happiness. It will also bring me eternal fame in this world and the hereafter." She stated she had already fulfilled her purpose as a wife by bearing him a son and a daughter, and was thus freed from her debt to him.
Then she shifted to practical necessity. "You are capable of supporting and protecting your children. I cannot protect and support the children as you can." She painted a vivid picture of the vulnerability that would follow his death. How could she, an unprotected widow, support two young children while treading a path of virtue? She feared for their daughter, "young and innocent," who would be sought by arrogant, unworthy suitors "like birds grabbing a lump of meat thrown on the ground." Without a father to guard her, such men might carry her away forcibly, "like crows after sacrificial offerings."
She feared for their son, who would grow up fatherless and unprotected, unable to learn the virtues his father embodied. "When they see a son who is unlike you and your daughter under the control of those who are unworthy, I will be despised in the worlds." The conclusion was inevitable: "There is no doubt that these young children, deprived of you and of me, will perish like fish when the water dries up. Therefore, you should sacrifice me."
She returned to dharma, citing the learned: "the supreme salvation of women is to go on the last journey before their husbands and not remain under the protection of their sons." For a woman, she argued, to be always engaged in what pleases her husband is a greater duty than sacrifices, austerities, or vows. Then she invoked a colder, more strategic principle: "The virtuous say that objects of desire, children, possessions and friends, even the wife, are cherished to rescue oneself in a time of distress." On the scales of survival, all one's relations placed on one side did not equal oneself on the other.
Finally, she offered a tactical hope. "In deciding the path of virtue for men, those who are learned in dharma have said that women should never be killed and that rakshasas also know dharma. Therefore, he may not kill me. It is certain that he will kill a man. But it is doubtful that he will kill a woman." Her sacrifice, therefore, might not even be a sacrifice at all—it might be their loophole to survival.
She concluded by counting her blessings—she had enjoyed her life, great happiness, borne beloved children, and grown old. "I will not grieve if I have to die." She even suggested he could take another wife afterward and continue to tread the path of dharma. "Having considered all this and realizing that your self-sacrifice must be condemned, today, without any delay, save yourself, your lineage and these two children through me."