A Study of Suicide (London, 1971). He includes personal re-
flections on his own suicide attempt, and describes his
friendship with the poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide
in 1963.Among the older studies of the topic, still useful are Suicide: A So-
cial and Historical Study by Henry Romilly Fedden (London,
1938) and To Be or Not to Be: A Study of Suicide by Louis
I. Dublin and Bessie Bunzel (New York, 1933).
There are relatively few sources that consider religiously motivated
suicide in specific traditions. For the Western religious tradi-
tions, the reader should refer to the bibliography of the arti-
cle Martyrdom as well as to the various primary sources men-
tioned throughout this article. In addition, for Judaism, the
reader will find useful Yigael Yadin’s Masada: Herod’s Fortress
and the Zealots’ Last Stand (New York, 1966) and Cecil
Roth’s A History of the Jews in England (Oxford, 1941),
which discusses the events at York. On Christianity, particu-
larly informative is Samuel E. Sprott’s The English Debate on
Suicide from Donne to Hume (La Salle, Ill., 1961). William
A. Clebsch has prepared a new edition of John Donne’s
work, translated as Suicide (Chico, Calif., 1983), with a very
helpful introduction. Robert O. Crummey presents a fasci-
nating account of suicides among the RaskolDniki in his book
The Old Believers and the World of Antichrist: The Vyg Com-
munity and the Russian State, 1694–1855 (Madison, Wis.,
1970). See especially his chapter entitled “Death by Fire.”
On Islam, the most useful secondary source remains Franz
Rosenthal’s “On Suicide in Islam,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 66 (1946): 239–259. For the Assassins, one
should consult the comprehensive historical account by Mar-
shall G. S. Hodgson in The Order of Assassins: The Struggle
of the Early Nizârï IsmâEïlïs against the Islamic World (1955;
New York, 1980).
For the Eastern traditions, in addition to the volume edited by
Holck and the primary texts mentioned in the article, the fol-
lowing books are useful sources for individual traditions. For
Hinduism, see both the older account by Edward Thomp-
son, Suttee: A Historical and Philosophical Enquiry into the
Hindu Rite of Widow-Burning (London, 1928), and the more
comprehensive study by Upendra Thakur, The History of
Suicide in India: An Introduction (Delhi, 1963). For Jainism,
Padmanabh S. Jaini offers a detailed account of sallekhana ̄ in
his book The Jaina Path of Purification (Berkeley, 1979). The
Buddhist account entitled “The Bodhisattva and the Hungry
Tigress” may be found in the volume edited by Edward
Conze, Buddhist Scriptures (Harmondsworth, 1959). For the
Japanese attitude toward suicide and death, see the fascinat-
ing work by Ivan I. Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic
Heroes in the History of Japan (New York, 1975), and for the
study of seppuku among the warrior class, see The Samurai:
A Military History by S. R. Turnbull (New York, 1977).
New Sources
Buddhism
Jan, Yün-Hua. “Buddhist Self-Immolation in Medieval China.”
History of Religions 4 (1965): 243–268. A survey of Chinese
Buddhist texts providing justifications of religious suicide.
Lamotte, Etienne. “Le suicide religieux dans le bouddhisme.” Bul-
letin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences de l’Académie royale
de Belgique 51 (1965). 156–168. A monographic study by
the foremost scholar of classic Buddhism.
McCutcheon, Russell. Manufacturing Religion. Oxford, 1997. See
the pp. 167–177 for the self-immolations of the Vietnamese
Buddhist monks, providing a non-historical political expla-
nation which is unreliable from the religious-historical point
of view.
Hinduism
Bosch, Lourens P. van den. “A Burning Question: Sati and Sati
Temples as the Focus of Political Interest.” Numen 37
(1990): 174–194. The issue is situated in the context of reli-
gion’s definition.
Weinberger-Thomas, Catherine. Ashes of Immortality: Widow-
Burning in India. Chicago, 1999. A radically new interpreta-
tion of sat ̄ı based on fieldwork in northern India as well as
extensive textual analysis.
New Cults
Introvigne, Massimo. “The Magic of Death: The Suicides of the
Solar Temple.” In Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence.
Historical Cases edited by Catherine Wessinger. Syracuse,
N.Y., 2000, pp. 287–321.
Kabazzi-Kisiniria, S. Deusdedit, R. K. Nkurunziza, and Gerald
Banura. The Kanungu Cult-Saga. Suicide, Murder or Salva-
tion? Kampala, Uganda, 2000.
Mayer, Jean-François. Il Tempio Solare. Turin, Italy, 1997.
Nesci, Domenico Arturo. The Lessons of Jonestown. An Ethnopsy-
choanalytic Study of Suicidal Communities. Rome, 1999. The
author is a professional psychoanalyst and psychiatrist but
writes as a humanist
Wessinger, Catherine. How the Millenium Comes Violently. From
Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate. New York and London, 2000.
Islam
Cook, David. “Suicide Attacks or ‘Martyrdom Operations’ in
Contemporary Jihad Literature” Nova Religio: The Journal of
Alternative and Emergent Religions. 6, no. 1 (2002): 7–44.
MARILYN J. HARRAN (1987)
Revised BibliographySUKKOT is the Hebrew name for the Jewish autumnal
festival, also called the Festival of Booths, or Tabernacles.
Sukkot begins on the fifteenth day of the month of Tishri
and lasts for seven days, followed by an eighth day called
EAtseret (possibly meaning “assembly”; see Lv. 23:36, Nm.
29:35). (Outside Israel, EAtseret is observed also on the ninth
day.) Thus, according to Jewish tradition, there are really two
distinct but interconnected festivals: Sukkot proper and
Shemini EAtseret (“eighth day of EAtseret”). The Sukkot ritu-
als are carried out only on Sukkot proper; two are essential.
The first is to dwell in booths or tabernacles (sukkot; sg. suk-
kah) as a reminder of the dwellings in which the Israelites
lived at the time of the Exodus from Egypt (Lv. 23:33–44).
The second is derived from the biblical verse regarding four
plants: lulav (palm branch), etrog (citron), Earavot (willows),
and hadassim (myrtles) (Lv. 23:40). It is traditionally under-
stood that these four plants are to be ritually held in the
hand. Sukkot, as the culmination of the three pilgrim festi-
vals, is the season of special rejoicing (Dt. 16:13–17) and is
referred to in the liturgy as “the season of our joy.”SUKKOT 8833