Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c6.122.2

v1.c6.122.2

Others are born into money and corn, and all kinds of things of delight gathered together by their fathers, have fallen to the share (of their parents) through these very happiness-bringing things (cp. iii, 209.11 ff.). The two having drawn nigh unto one another, a fruit of the body comes into the womb, like an intruding misfortune, at the union in the pleasure of love [perhaps: in just as inexplicable wise. I read yonim, which is confirmed by K. But possibly the somewhat unusual yoni is older: "a bodily fruit of the womb comes into being"]. Dost thou see through what pains the fruit of the body lives, deposited by pure chance as an unconscious drop of seed in the womb, (the fruit) which (as a soul again embodied), separated (from its earlier abode) with other bodies, cut off from its earlier source with the bearer of a body (that is, with a new being), stirring in flesh and slime at (that is, after) the ending of its (earlier) life, is bound up with a (new) living person, after being burnt, indeed, in one body with another moving or unmoving body, and perishes when this (body) perishes in the end, like a little ship that is fastened to another one (cp. Meyer, Kauṭilya, addit. 56.47)? [I read with K. cīrṇam instead of cīghram on purely stylistic grounds, and take çarīriṇam, prāṇinam, and paradeham as accusatives depending on āhitam; of course çarīriṇam and prāṇinam could also be referred were at least only very seldom in the first set.