Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.103

v1.c5.103

¹ My translation of sādhayishyāmi and prasthita is quite a possible one, and it was chosen so as to make the tale in some measure consistent with itself. But the natural reading would be: "I will now go off, thou wilt, etc. Then spoke the young woman . . . as he went off, etc." In the following there is a change from the çloka into the trishtubh; it is evidently a piece from another account which was inserted without the joins being properly filled in—a constant practice in the MBh. The çloka and the first version is taken up again with: "Then Pṛthā conceived a fruit of her body." Were it not for çl. 125, the two trishtubh could naturally be easily taken as a concluding summary; with that çloka this is difficult, if we take sādhayishyāmi and prasthita in the usual meaning. There is probably, too, an unskilful join made in the tale in so far as the sun god "touches (the woman) on the navel", after the way of ascetics who do not want to harm their chastity and yet to help in bringing a son into being (e.g. Jātaka, Nos. 497 and 540; Windisch, Buddhas Geburt, etc., p. 20 ff.; Reitzenstein, Zeitschr. f. Ethnol., Bd. 41, p. 648). Of course, divyena vidhinā in 308.13 seems to point to exactly such a begetting—which allusion, however, may be secondary—and impregnation through the touch of the hand, is often found in India and elsewhere (e.g. i, 104.51 f.).