History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c28.s2.39

v2.c28.s2.39

In the Mahābhārata and the purāṇas hyperbolical descriptions of the power of the *pativratā* occur at every step. Vide Vana-parva 63 where we are told (vv. 38–39) that when Damayantī cursed by her faithfulness to her husband the young hunter who had evil designs on her, he fell down a dead man. In the Anuśāsanaparva 123 Śāṇḍilī who¹³¹⁹ had attained heavenly worlds tells Sumanā Kaikeyī how she reached that state without wearing kāṣāyas (dyed garments worn by saṁnyāsins) or bark garments and without having matted hair or without tonsuring her head (as ascetics do), but by strictly following the rules laid down for virtuous wives, such as not addressing harsh words to their husband, abandoning all food that the husband did not like. Anuśāsana (146. 4–6) names several *pativratās* of ancient times and the following verses dilate upon the rules of conduct for virtuous wives. The story of Sāvitrī in the Vanaparva (293–299) illustrates the power of a pativratā, who wrung back even from Yama, the dread god of Death, the life of her husband.¹³²⁰ Sāvitrī and Sītā have been held by the women of India for thousands of years as the highest ideals of womanly virtue, to which they have always endeavoured to approach and one may say that Indian women generally have most successfully lived up to that high and ennobling ideal that was set before them. Vanaparva (205-206) tells the story of a learned brāhmaṇa, who by his mere angry look made a female crane die when the latter voided its faeces on to the head of the brāhmaṇa and who was rebuked by a pativratā that the latter was not a crane, when the brāhmaṇa tried to frighten the virtuous woman for her tardiness in welcoming him as a guest and for looking only after her husband. The Śalyaparva (63) narrates how awful the power of a pativratā like Gāndhārī is in that she can, if she choose, burn the world, she can stop even the motions of the sun and¹³²¹ the moon. The Skanda-purāṇa III (Brahma-khaṇḍa, Brahmāraṇya section chap. 7) first names (verses 14-15) several pativratās like Arundhatī, Anasūyā, Sāvitrī, Śāṇḍilyā, Satyā, Menā and then waxes eloquent over the tremendous spiritual power of a pativratā 'just as a snake-charmer¹³²² forcibly draws out from a hole a snake, so a pativratā snatches away her husband's life from the messengers of Death and reaches heaven with her husband and the messengers of Death, on seeing the pativratā, beat a hasty retreat.'