Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.327

v1.c5.327

¹ Winternitz in Wiener Zschr. f. d. Kunde d. Morgenlandes, xiv, 65 f. brings forward MBh., i, 191 and Arjuna’s speech there as a leading proof of the reality of polyandric marriage, and says : “ Arjuna therefore holds it as quite wrong even to think of making Draupadī the wife of him alone. He, Yudhishṭhira, must, he says, marry her first,” etc. But although this reading is in agreement with the marriage of the five, as told in the Epic, and there is also no doubt about the polyandry of the Pāṇḍavas, yet this latter cannot be deduced from that passage. Nivic means simply : to found a household for oneself, and not at all : to wed a certain person. Arjuna says only this : “ First Y. must take a wife, then we four brothers come in the order of our ages, and as he is the lord of us all, so he is, too, of Draupadī whom I have won.” He might quite well mean here : “ If he wishes to marry her for himself only, that is right and good.” In any case what is here expressed is only the dread of the sin of “ re-marrying ”.