Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.25

v1.c5.25

It is now well known, and it has been stressed by many with a special knowledge of India, that these two great Epics still exert an influence to-day on the mind and the life of the Hindu people like no other literary work.¹ There is the further fact that the literature of the "post-Epic" times is often very greatly dependent on the Epic, or influenced in many places by it. Owing to these inner relations between the Epic and the Classical literature, there thus arises, furthermore, a far-reaching indirect influence. What Indian woman (to speak only of the obvious) did not know and honour Sītā and Sāvitrī and other heroines of the Epic poems!