History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c95.332

v7.c95.332

As regards husband and wife, the Dharmaśāstra works say a good deal but all that is said should not be taken literally. For example, Manu (V. 164–166) states²⁵⁸⁵ 'by playing false to her husband (i. e. by adultery) the wife is censured in this world, she becomes (after death) a female jackal and is tormented by evil diseases (such as leprosy). That woman controlling herself in thought, word and deed, who does not play false to her husband, resides in the same world (heaven) as her husband, and is called a virtuous wife. A woman restrained in thought, word and deed, secures by such conduct (as is laid down for her) in this life highest renown and residence with her husband in the next world'. For hyperbolical descriptions of the power of a chaste wife (*pativratā*) in the great epic and Purāṇas, vide H. of Dh. vol II. pp. 567-568. A verse cited there may be repeated here 'just as a snake-charmer forcibly draws out from a hole a snake, so a chaste wife snatches away her husband's life from the messengers of death and reaches heaven with her husband'. This is also an *arthavāda* but it probably reflected the popular ideas of those times.