Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.116

v1.c5.116

Many years after the bloody battles, when the sun's great son has long been slain through low cunning, Kuntī is still being irked by the memory of her youthful sin, for which fate is punishing her so heavily, and to which she had been led, setting aside a forgivable maiden curiosity, mainly by her loving thought for her father and the holy Brahman. She gives a short tale of what happened to her then with the sun god, and declares: “Although I knew my son, yet in my blindness I left him unnoticed. This is burning me.” The holy Vyāsa, however, consoles her: “Thou didst do no sin, and didst become a maid again.² And the gods of a truth have dominion in their hands; men's virtue is not brought to shame³ by the virtue of the gods. All for the strong is wholesome, for the strong all is pure, all for the strong is rightful and virtuous, all belongs to the strong” (xv, 30; cp. Kuntī's lament for Karṇa, xv, 16.11 ff.; also xi, 27.6 ff.).