The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s6.96

c2.s6.96

In the great Sabhā scene of our poem the heroine is dragged into the hall where the men sit after their gambling. In her deep distress she cries out ‘I, I whom neither wind nor sun have ever before beheld at home, I now enter the assembly hall’ (ii. 69. 5). And this indignity, even more than the forcible disrobing, seems to fire the indignation of the helpless heroes, who exclaim, ‘they never of old have caused a righteous woman to enter the assembly-hall; the law of old, the law eternal, has hereby been put to naught.’† It was only in grief, and as a sign of mourning, that the veil was laid aside.