early 19th centuries. Nepal and Bali The earliest stone inscription in the Indian subcontinent relating to sati has been found in Nepal, dating from the 5th century, wherein the king successfully persuades his mother not to commit sati after his father dies. This inscription suggests that sati was practised but not compulsory. Nepal formally banned sati in 1920. On the Indonesian island of Bali, sati (known as masatya) was practised by the aristocracy as late as 1903, until the Dutch colonial masters pushed for its termination, forcing the local Balinese princes to sign treaties containing the prohibition of sati as one of the clauses. Early Dutch observers of the Balinese custom in the 17th century said that only widows of royal blood were allowed to be burned alive. Concubines or others of inferior blood lines who consented or wanted to die with their princely husband had to be stabbed to death before being burned. Terminology Lindsey Harlan, having conducted extensive field work among Rajput women, has constructed a model of how and why women who committed sati are still venerated today, and how the worshippers think about the process involved. Essentially, a woman becomes a sati in three stages: having been a pativrata, or dutiful wife, during her husband's life, making, at her husband's death, a solemn vow to burn by his side, thus gaining status as a sativrata, and having endured being burnt alive, achieving the status of satimata. Pativrata The pativrata is devoted and subservient to her husband, and also protective of him. If he dies before her, some culpability is attached to her for his death, as not having been sufficiently protective of him. Making the vow to burn alive beside him removes her culpability, as well as enabling her to protect him from new dangers in the afterlife. Sativrata In Harlan's model, having made the holy vow to burn herself, the woman becomes a sativrata, a transitional stage between the living and the dead, before ascending the funeral pyre. Once a woman had committed herself to becoming a sati, popular belief thought her endowed with many supernatural powers. Lourens P. Van Den Bosch enumerates some of them: prophecy and clairvoyance, and the ability to bless with sons women who had not borne sons before. The gifts from a sati were venerated as valuable relics, and in her journey to the pyre, people would seek to touch