Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.400

v1.c5.400

fruits and filled with birds at all times of the year, and a wonderful penitential grove there. Then he sees a magnificent dwelling, surpassing even Kubera’s, great mountains of jewels and gold, all kinds of precious stones, flowers from one of the trees of the gods, and other splendours. Seven ravishing maidens, differing in form, welcome the guest, and whichever of them he beholds, each delights him, and he can make no choice of one; but he bids his heart be still. They lead him up to an old woman who is lying on a couch, decked in magnificent ornaments. He says that they are all to go away, and only the most understanding and passionless one is to stay behind to wait on him. The seven take their leave, and only the old woman stays. But in the night she comes up into his bed, pretending that she is so cold. When she then clasps the Rishi, he lies like a log. “This she saw with sorrow, and said: ‘Brahman, otherwise than through love, to women there can come no rest and content from the man.¹ I am crazed with love. Love me, her that loves. Be roused, Rishi of the Brahmans, unite with me. Take me in thine arms; I am sore tried with love for thee. For thereby it is, thou that art steeped in virtue, that the fruits of thy work of mortification come into their own; and the bare sight of them gives a longing.² Thou art the lord over all this wealth here, and over me myself. In the entrancing forest we will dally in love together, all divine and human delights we will try. For to the woman there is never anything higher than sexual union with the man ; that is her highest reward. Driven on by love, women live after their own appetites. And so they are not burned, though they walk on hot-glowing sand.’ Aṣṭavakra spoke : ‘To stranger women I never go. By those learned in the text-books of the law the touching of strange women has been declared to be evil. Know, my dear one, that I will wed, I swear it on the truth ; I know nought of the pleasures of the senses ; offspring is here for the sake of the holy dispensation. So I wish through sons to come into the heavenly worlds. My dear one, acknowledge the moral good, and cease.’ The woman spoke : ‘Neither the god of wind, nor he of fire, nor Varuṇa, nor the other thirty-three gods are so dear to women as the god of love ; for to women the pleasure of love is all. Among thousands of women, nay, among hundreds of thousands, there is to be found only one that is faithful to her husband, if, indeed, one at all. They know not father, family, mother, brothers, husband, or brothers-in-law ; given up to their pleasure, they destroy families, as great rivers destroy their banks.’ Once more repelled by the Ṛishi, she exhorted him to stay ; then would his work be done. She bathed¹ and anointed him, and gave him hospitality in the most splendid wise ; thus the night and the next day went by without his noticing it. In the following night she again slipped into bed to him, but he said : ‘My dear, my mind does not lean to strange women. Rise, if it please thee, and desist of thine own will.’ She answered : ‘I am without ties. Thou dost, then, not deal wrongly with righteousness and virtue.’² Aṣṭavakra spoke : ‘There is no being without ties for women, for the fair are tied. The teaching of Prajāpati is this : “Woman is not fit for independence.”’ The woman spoke :