Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.38

v1.c5.38

the life of the unwedded girl, yet we may take to be true for the Epic world what is told us of the happy time spent by the Indian girl before she goes to her husband’s house in, for instance, Ramabai Sarasvati, *The High Caste Hindu Woman* (London, 1890), p. 23, and the far too romantic Sister Nivedita, *The Web of Indian Life* (London, 1906), p. 35. Thus we read of the merry game which the girls enjoyed in the evening in the pleasure groves (Rām., ii, 67.17; cf. 71.22). The ball-game of the grown-up girls, often referred to in the Classical literature, and described at such length in the Daçakumāracaritam (p. 290 ff. of my translation), is also found in the Epic. Çāntā plays ball in iii, 111.16. The small girls, too, amuse themselves in this way (v, 90.63). The balls used would seem to have been very finely coloured, at any rate those of the upper classes (iii, 112.10).¹ Bhīshma declares: “The son is as one’s very self; the daughter is like the son. How could it be, so long as she is alive, that any other should have the property?” (xiii, 45.11). Then he sets forth