Sthreehathi

Sthreehathi is the grave sin associated with a woman's death. The novel invokes it both as a danger that might be incurred in a storm and as a source of anguished guilt for Sundara Chozhar, whose belief that Mandhakini had died is unsettled when he learns she is alive.

Meaning and Immediate Use

The term is introduced during a report about a palanquin cavalcade caught in a storm near a fort. A tree had crashed onto the party and injured some people; the bearers described it as fortunate that the palanquin itself had not become a casualty, since a woman's death would have incurred the sin of Sthreehathi. The account makes the concept a grave moral consequence attached to the woman's possible death, not merely another danger of the storm.

Guilt and Recognition

Sundara Chozhar later reacts with distress when told that Mandhakini, the woman he had believed dead, is alive. He questions whether the reports of her death were lies and whether the apparitions he thought he had experienced were delusions. Aniruddhar confirms that she survived and admits that he had concealed the truth. In this exchange, Sthreehathi is bound to Sundara Chozhar's painful understanding of his past: he fears that he bears the guilt of killing a woman, while the revelation that Mandhakini lived overturns the belief on which that guilt rested.

Nandhini's Invocation

Nandhini invokes the same charge when persuading her husband to leave before Aditha Karikalan's arrival. She claims that her extraordinary perceptions revealed Sundara Chozhar's guilt of Sthreehathi, and says she had already disclosed this to him. She then uses the alleged past crime as a precedent for the danger facing Karikalan, warning that the world would blame her husband if Karikalan died while he remained at the palace. The concept thus moves from a specific fear of a woman's death to a political argument about responsibility, suspicion, and anticipated blame; the later confirmation that Mandhakini survived complicates the certainty with which that guilt is asserted.