Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.39

v1.c5.39

¹ How the ball-game befitted the fascination of a young girl, and how she strengthened her conquest by it is to be gathered, too, from Bhāgavata-Purāṇa, viii, 12.15 ff.: Rudra or Çiva comes on a visit to Viṣṇu. The latter by his Māyā (magic) calls up a bewitchingly fair maiden, who plays at ball, and whose garments are carried off by the wind. Although Çiva’s wife is beside him he rushes up to the charmer and then goes after her as she wrests herself from his grip; in the pursuit *semen ejus ejicitur*. It goes, of course, without saying that in the Epic the girl plays with dolls. But when Hopkins, because Uttarā still took pleasure in this at the time of her marriage, concludes she was still in her childhood, he makes a mistake. Cf. Billington, *Woman in India*, p. 215; Çrīvara’s Kathākautukam, Sanskrit and German by R. Schmidt, vi, 15, 48, 69.