Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.383

v1.c5.383

¹ Caṅkha is here an expression for vulva, though the dictionaries do not show anything of this kind. In the “gallant” time of German literature also, “Muschel” (shell) was used for the woman’s pudenda. ² Or: forehead marks (apāṅga)? ³ Cp. Caland, *Die altind. Toten- u. Bestattungsgebräuche*, pp. 123 f. So far as I know this ointment does not seem to be particularly valuable otherwise, and if we take our passage in the Mahābhārata, it was looked on, indeed, as something vulgar. The Hindu, indeed, has often declared that “what mankind eats its gods eat”. And yet we know that often only the worthless is dedicated to gods and spirits and their service; they are cheated. Thus, to keep to the dead, these in Old India get fringes of garments to clothe themselves, and have to nourish themselves with only the hot steam of the cakes (Caland, *Altind. Ahnenkult*, 9; 64; 180; the same, *Totenverehrung*, 6). If now what is worse was, in an earlier culture, looked on as altogether excellent, to the supernatural powers it is, as something old, doubly pleasing (cp. Schurtz, *Urgesch. d. Kultur*, 306). When the Indian Aryans learned how to prepare a better drink, the soma was therefore left for the gods. So this ointment which is so highly prized in the ritual of the dead in “pre-Epic” times may also have seemed a thing of excellence to the ritually pure Aryans. K. for trikakuḍañjanāḥ has the easier reading: gauryas tāḥ kākukūjitāḥ “these mournfully cooing”. ⁴ Their beloved rice gruel is naturally one such heady drink. Sir Bampfylde Fuller writes that the mountain-tribes make a gruel from a dwarf-rice, that quickly changes to an alcoholic state; even that which has only been boiled a short time before is, he says, a mild intoxicant (*Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment*, p. 152).