Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.106

v1.c5.106

and folk noticed nothing about her. For no other woman knew of it but her nurse's daughter, a young girl in the city, who well understood how to shield her. Later in due time the lovely-faced one brought forth her child, and as an unharmed virgin through the favour of that god : like an immortal, wearing armour and shining ear-rings of gold, yellow-eyed, bull-shouldered, just as his father. And so soon as the lovely one had borne this child, she took counsel with the nurse, and laid it in a chest that was well lined all round, waxed over, soft and easy, and well fastened ; and weeping, she set the child forth thus in the river Açva. Though she knew that a maid must bear no fruit of her body, yet she wailed bitterly out of love for her little son. The words spoken in tears then by Kuntī, as she set him forth in the chest in the river's waters—hear them : " Good come to thee from the beings in the air and the earth and in the sky and those in the water, my little son ! Blessed be thy paths ! May the waylayers keep far from thee ! And even so may they that have come hither along the road (āgata) be friendly-hearted towards thee ! May King Varuṇa, the prince of the waters, watch over thee in the water, and in the air the god of the wind, who is in the air, and goeth everywhere. May thy father ward thee everywhere, the shining one and best of the shining ones, who has given me thee, O son, in divine wise. May the Ādityas, Vasus, Rudras, Sādhyas, and the All-gods, the Maruts together with Indra, and the quarters of the world with the wardens thereof watch over thee, may all the gods watch over thee on smooth and on rugged paths ! I shall know thee, too, abroad, for the armour betrays thee. Happy, my son, is thy father, the blazing sun god, who sees thee in the river with his god's eye. Happy the woman who shall take thee for son, O son, and whose breast thou shalt thirstily suck, thou god-begotten one ! What (happiness-bringing) dream she indeed had who makes thee to be her son, thee blazing like the sun, endowed with heavenly armour, decked with heavenly ear-rings, thee that hast long white lotus-eyes, that shinest like a red lotus-leaf,¹ that hast a lovely forehead and lovely hair. It is happy folk that will see thee, my son, a little crawler about the earth and, covered in dust, babbling darling words. Happy folk will see thee then, my son, come into the years of youth, like the maned lion born in the Himālaya forest.” Pṛthā having thus bitterly lamented in various wise, now set forth the chest on the waters of the Açva river. Weeping, tortured with sorrow for her son, and filled with the yearning to see him, then Pṛthā, the lotus-eyed, in the middle of the night together with her nurse, again came into the king’s palace, sick with sorrow, after having had the box sent drifting away through fear lest her father should come to know of the thing. But the chest swam from the Açva river into the river Carmaṇvatī, from the Carmaṇvatī into the Yamunā, and from there into the Gaṅgā. On the Gaṅgā the child in the chest came into the territory of the chariot-driver, to the city of Campā, as the little one was carried along by the waves.¹