History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v4.c63.t2.925

v4.c63.t2.925

39. 'Allowing social intercourse to women who have become polluted by rape and the like (when they have performed prāyaścitta) as prescribed in the śāstras' (l. 31).¹⁸⁶⁰ Vas. 28. 2-3 state, 'when a woman is polluted by being raped or kidnapped by a thief, she should not be abandoned; one should wait till her monthly illness (making her undergo certain expiations till then) and she becomes pure after it.' Atri (V. 2-3) has the same verses, which are quoted (from Vas.) by Viśvarūpa on Yāj. III. 256 (p. 133. Tri. ed.) and explained at great length. The Matsyapurāṇa 227. 126 is liberal enough to say that the man who commits rape should be punished with death but the woman raped incurs no blame. Parāśara (X. 27) provides that if a woman is raped by an evil-doer only once she becomes pure by undergoing the Prājāpatya expiation and after the following monthly illness. Even so late a smṛti writer as Devala provides that if a woman of any class is raped by *mlecchas* and she conceives she can be purified by the expiation of Sāntapana.