[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915) › v1.c5.331 # Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.331 Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.331 - **Language:** English ### [v1.c5.331](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.331) It is a remarkable fact that the chief heroes of the Mahābh., the five brothers, have one wife or head-wife in common, Draupadī. Yet this is not so wonderful if we bear in mind the origin of the Pāṇḍavas. In very many places the Epic shows with the utmost clearness that the Kauravas are the original heroes of the poem, and, as I hold, not, so to say, only those of "ballads or ballad cycles" which came before the putting together of the actual Epic, but those of a greater poem, of an epic of the Bharatas. No less clearly does the present text also show us what unauthorized stranger intruders of a later date the Pāṇḍavas are. Nothing could be more evident, whatever one's attitude may be to Holtzmann's theory in detail. To all seeming, the Pāṇḍavas were even of non-Aryan stock; and no one with an open mind can let himself think that they were any cousins of the Kauravas, as the later revision would have us believe. Polyandry must probably be called non-Aryan, in spite of the objection raised by Jolly (\*Recht und Sitte\*, p. 48), and the five brothers, too, were certainly non-Aryan. They may very well have belonged to one of the many aboriginal peoples or tribes which dwelt and still dwell in India and on its boundaries, and have kept polyandry down to this day.¹ It then of those deprived of caste, if born after the criminal offence, and that of the child, likewise outside the law, which was begotten of a woman of higher caste. Cp. Gautama, xxviii, 45, and especially Kauṭilya (transl.) 257.3 ff. and addits.) Among the South Slavs also it is held to be "a firm-based principle of customary law"—and this prevails among them as among the Indians, and among all primitive peoples and tribes—"that younger brothers and sisters must not marry before the elder ones." But exceptions are made, when the elder brother has a mental or serious bodily illness, or becomes a priest, or expressly gives his leave. Krauss, \*Sitte und Brauch\*, etc. 334 f. - [Previous: v1.c5.330](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.330) - [Next: v1.c5.332](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.332) - [Up: v1.c5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.331](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.331) · Pramāṇa