a "symbolic self-immolation" which it is believed a widow of status needed to perform at the death of her husband, the widow subsequently marrying her husband's brother. In later centuries, the text was cited as the origin of Sati, with a variant reading allowing the authorities to insist that the widow sacrifice herself in reality by joining her deceased husband on the funeral pyre. Anand A. Yang notes that the Rig Veda refers to a "mimetic ceremony" where a "widow lay on her husband's funeral pyre before it was lit but was raised from it by a male relative of her dead husband." According to Yang, the word agre, "to go forth", was (probably in the 16th century) mistranslated into agneh, "into the fire", to give Vedic sanction for sati. Early medieval origins Sati as the burning of a widow with her deceased husband seems to have been introduced in the post-Gupta times, after 500 CE. Vidya Dehejia states that sati was introduced late into Indian society, and became regular only after 500 CE. According to Ashis Nandy, the practice became prevalent from the 7th century onward and declined to its elimination in the 17th century to gain resurgence in Bengal in the 18th century. Historian Roshen Dalal postulates that its mention in some of the Puranas indicates that it slowly grew in prevalence from 5th–7th century and later became an accepted custom around 1000 CE among those of higher classes, especially the Rajputs. One of the stanzas in the Mahabharata describes Madri's suicide by sati, but is likely an interpolation given that it has contradictions with the succeeding verses. According to Dehejia, sati originated within the kshatriyas (warrior) aristocracy and remained mostly limited to the warrior class among Hindus. According to Thapar, the introduction and growth of the practice of sati as a fire sacrifice is related to new Kshatriyas, who forged their own culture and took some rules "rather literally", with a variant reading of the Veda turning the symbolic practice into the practice of a widow burning herself with her husband. Thapar further points to the "subordination of women in patriarchal society", "changing 'systems of kinship, and "control over female sexuality" as factors in the rise of sati. Medieval spread The practice of sati was emulated by those seeking to achieve high status of the royalty and the warriors as part of the process of sanskritisation, but