Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c6.27

v1.c6.27

An impressive legend meant to show this is told more than once in the Mahābhārata. The great penitent Jaratkāru goes throughout the world, living by the wind, dried up, bathing at holy places. Then one day he sees hunger-racked, emaciated, woeful beings hanging head down in a cave, clinging to a bunch of the *Andropogon muricatus* plant, which itself holds on only by a thread, which is furthermore being greedily gnawed at by a mouse. All the other roots have been already bitten through by it. Moved by pity, he asks the wretched creatures: “Who are ye? When the mouse has gnawed through this one root, then ye will fall headlong down. What can I do for you unhappy ones? I will give you a fourth, a third, or the half of what I have earned by penance, or even the whole of it, to save you.” “Thou art old, and livest in chastity, but our sore plight cannot be altered by asceticism. We ourselves have penitential fruits. It is through the lack of offspring that we are falling into the unclean hell. For to beget offspring is the highest duty and virtue, so Brahma has said. While we hang here thus, there is no glimmer of consciousness in us; therefore we know thee not, whose manly prowess is famous in the world. We are the race of the Yāyāvaras, Ṛishis of strict piety, sunk down hither from a pure and holy world through the lack of offspring. Our mighty asceticism is lost, for we have no thread of family left. One man there is, indeed, for us unhappy ones, but he is as good as wanting; for this fatal one does but give himself up to asceticism; Jaratkāru is the name of the famous knower of the Vedas and the Vedāngas. By him we have been set in this awful plight because of his greed for strength by penance. He has neither wife nor child, nor any kinsman. Therefore do we hang in the cave, robbed of consciousness. The mouse is time, which now having gnawed through all our other family threads, is fastening its teeth, too, into the last: into that simple, mad Jaratkāru, who yearns only after asceticism. Look how we have come down to the depths are acquitted of filthy conversation; and by Him in whose hand is my soul, the devil hath not a weapon more effective against the virtuous, both men and women, than the neglect of marriage.’” Lane, *Arabian Society in the Middle Ages*, London, 1883, p. 221; Garnett, *Women of Turkey*, ii, 480.