Sometime in the first half of the nineteenth century, Birbal Kachru (1775-1865, takhallos “Varasteh”), a Persian poet, distinguished prose stylist, and historian of Kashmir, composed a masnavi boldly titled “Satinameh”. The poem is a strange and wonderful black-humour fusion of the classical Persian “suz o godaz” register and the theme of sati, where the widow is described, quite literally, as burning with the grief of separation. Though the practice of sati had long been frowned upon by Mughal officials and was eventually banned by the British in the nineteenth century, an incident of sati occurred during Varasteh’s lifetime, in 1831, only two years after the latest in a series British sati bans. Whether or not it was inspired by this historical incident, as Girdhari Tikku has suggested, Varasteh’s poem is a brilliant example of the verbal pyrotechnics associated with sabk-e hendi, whereby clichéd tropes and images from the poetic and conceptual lexica of Zoroastrianism, Sufism, and Hinduism are melted down and reforged anew. Surprisingly, Varasteh was not the first to take up this unusual topos. Molla Nou'i-e Khabushani (d. 1610), a student of Mohtasham-e Kashani (1528-1588) and court poet under Emperors Akbar and Jahangir, had composed a masnavi titled “Suz o godaz”, describing two lovers' separation and their subsequent mystical reunion – a tragic tale with unmistakable sati undertones. But possibly the earliest example of a Persian poem on the theme of sati was penned by Amir Hasan Dihlavi (1254-1338), a disciple of Nezam od-Din Ouleya and close friend of Amir Khosrou. Originally from Sistan, his limpid, earnest verse earned him the title of “Sa'di of Hendustan”, and among his extant poems is a masnavi titled “'Eshqnameh”, which, as has been noted, shares both its meter (hazaj) and theme with Nou'i’s poem. In what posture does Varasteh’s poem preside over this mini-canon of Indo-Persian sati poems? Does he unambiguously imitate and extend the mystical and/or social aims of his predecessors, or does he invert their themes into a sati satire? What did it mean for a Kashmiri brahmin to compose a poem on sati, in Persian, during British rule? This paper will address these questions through close readings of all three poems.