Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c3: Editor's Introduction
Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c3
- Language
- English
Editor's Introduction
v1.c3.1
IN the preface to the German edition of this book, Professor Meyer tells us that it is an attempt to give a true and vivid account of the life of woman in ancient India, based upon the immense masses of material imbedded in the two great Epics, the *Mahābhārata* and the *Rāmāyaṇa*. His method has been to make liberal use of the very words of the Epics.
v1.c3.2
The *Mahābhārata* seems to occupy an unique place in the literature of the world. Parts of it, like the *Bhagavad-gītā*, and the story of Nala and Damayantī, have become familiar to educated readers in almost every country of the west, but these are only fragments of an enormous work, consisting of about a hundred thousand couplets, of which Professor Macdonell says ¹:—
v1.c3.3
¹ *India’s Past* (p. 88). Oxford, 1927.
v1.c3.4
“Its epic kernel, amounting to about one-fifth of the whole work, became so much overgrown with didactic matter that it could hardly be regarded as an epic at all, and has rather taken the place of a moral encyclopaedia in Indian literature.”
v1.c3.5
It provides us with most valuable sources of information about the relations of the sexes, and the concepts underlying those relations, in India fifteen hundred and more years ago.
v1.c3.6
Professor Meyer has used the Bombay edition of the *Rāmāyaṇa*, and the second impression of the Bombay *Mahābhārata*. All his references which do not specify a particular title are to this version of the *Mahābhārata*. To some extent, he has consulted what he calls the Kumbakonam version “mainly based on the South Indian texts”. This he refers to as K.
v1.c3.7
For the present translation, Professor Meyer has completely revised the German work, made various alterations in the text, and considerably enlarged the number of references.
Linked texts (3)
- Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa — Vālmīki, Sanskrit
- Bhagavadgītā — Vyāsa, Sanskrit