Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.412

v1.c5.412

This may seem to some extent a curious "education for marriage"; at least, such a thing would hardly be likely to arouse very great pleasure in a wooer, and this answer to a puzzling and tangled question is shadowy enough, indeed. Yet out of this story, by no means friendly towards women, there looks forth a spirit of deep and earnest morality, and a beautiful meaning. It sounds cynical, but it is steeped in the light of an infinitely higher and purer idealism than the seemingly mystical ecstatic lifting of the eyes of the typical knight of western lands, dreaming of his "madonna". In unsullied chastity and truth, and steadfast in both—thus shall the man enter into wedlock with the beloved maiden, urged by religion, not by the lower lust of the senses, and fully aware with himself that the woman is a wavering reed. Thus he will not make too great demands on her, but rather on himself. This may then, too, have an ennobling and strengthening effect on his mate, who as a woman is so susceptible, and the husband may experience untroubled joy with her, as did Aṣṭavakra. Marriage, therefore, comes from the inspired seers, it is divine, even if men fall behind it—a great and fine thought and of deep truth.¹ also *Wide Awake Stories*, p. 193; Benfey, *Pantschatantra*, i, p. 254. Perhaps with this there is a connection also of the motive so widely found in the fairy tales of various lands, and in particular so finely treated by William Morris, *The Earthly Paradise*, ii, pp. 164 ff. ("The Lady of the Land")—the motive, namely, that the bewitched human being or spirit gets back his true shape by being kissed or clasped in love. An Indian form, for instance, Mārk.-Pur., lxvi, 13 ff. (a goddess turned into a gazelle is so restored).