Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c6.71

v1.c6.71

Pāṇḍu, himself prevented from the use of his manly powers, bewails in i, 120 his being condemned to unhappiness in this world and the next, because he has no son; he exhorts his wife Kuntī to see to it that this be made otherwise, and goes on to say: “Therefore do I now send thee, being myself deprived of begetting. Do thou win offspring from one that is equal to me, or better than I. Hearken, O Kuntī, to this tale of Ṣāradaṇḍāyinī. This heroic wife was charged (niyukta) by her husband to get a son. She now went, having had her period, with pure and holy mind, having bathed (on the fourth day); she went in the night to a cross-road, and picked out a Brahman that had come to perfection (dvijam siddham), after she had made sacrifice to the fire god to get a son. And when