A History of Sanskrit Literature c16.s4.6

c16.s4.6

The varied forms of Indian love are brilliantly portrayed: from the real devotion when each looks into the other’s eyes, and the twain are made one for the moment, to the domestic joys of wedded life, as when mama laughs as the little boy crawls on his father’s back, when he lies at her feet in penitence for some fault, or when she shows the delighted papa the first tooth of their darling. The biting and scratching of Indian love are frankly depicted as well as the beauties of the maidens whose swelling bosoms are compared with the moon breaking through the cloud. Much is from the life of the village, but we hear also of the demi-monde of the towns, whose presence Pischel found in the *Ṛgveda* and which certainly has marked Indian literature ever since the Vedic age.