Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c6.80

Language: English

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The gods themselves, who, indeed, in the sagas of the most different peoples take in hand the begetting of famous heroes, step in with their help in the most famous case in the Epic of the love proxyship contrived by the husband: the birth of the chief heroes of the Mahābh., the five Pāṇḍavas (i, 120 ff.). King Pāṇḍu has drawn down on himself the curse that he shall at once die, if he do copulate. Therefore from then on he refrains. But he needs sons. Therefore does he urge his wife Kuntī to get from another what he cannot give her.¹ But she makes answer: “Thou must not speak thus to me, who am a virtuous wife, and find my delight by thee, O lotus-eyed one. But thou, O hero, wilt beget with me, in lawful wise, children endowed with heroes’ strength. I will go into heaven together with thee. Come thou to me that there may be offspring. I myself, indeed, could draw nigh unto no other man in my thoughts but thee. And what man on earth were more excellent than thou?” Then she relates to him the old legend of the loving wife who even got children from her dead husband; and winds up by saying he shall bestow offspring on her in purely spiritual wise, through the yoga powers he has won by stern asceticism. But now he tells her of the primitive hetæristic conditions that were done away with by Çvetaketu, and of the charge which Çvetaketu himself then laid later on his wife Madayantī;

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he teaches her that wives are still sexually free except at the time after their period, and, that they must be wholly obedient to their husband, whether he demand right or wrong of them; and he ends by beseeching her not to deprive him of the well-being in the beyond which belongs to those endowed with sons. Then she consents, tells of the magic given her by Durvāsas, and asks which god she shall now call up.² He names Dharma, the god of right and virtue, for then of a surety, he thinks, no stain will lie on the matter, and a pious son will be his. She offered up the bali gift, and murmured her cabbalistic prayer. Then came the god in a heavenly chariot shining as the sun, and laughingly spoke : “ Kuntī, what shall I give thee ? ” She answered, though he laughed at her : “ Give me a son.” He united with her in a shape formed by his magic powers, and so she received that Yudhishṭhira, the friend to all beings. When he had been born, Pāṇḍu spoke : “ It is said that what is greatest in the Kshattriya is strength, therefore do thou choose for thyself a son marked out by his strength.” So she called the god of the wind. And to his question she answered with a shame-faced laugh : “ Grant me a son, a strong, a great one, a shatterer of the pride of all !” So came the warrior-giant, the man of might, Bhīma or Bhīmasena to life, who directly after birth fell from his mother’s lap onto a rock, and crushed it with his limbs.

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Indra was to beget her the third son, that he might become an all-powerful hero and overcomer of foes, like the king of the gods himself ; and so her husband taught her a strict way of mortification, which she had to carry out for a whole year, and he, too, gave himself up, for the same end, to most fervent devotion and asceticism, standing on one leg. And this yielded fruit. Indra appeared to Pāṇḍu and promised to fulfil his wish ; Kuntī now brought up the prince of heaven by magic, and he begat Arjuna with her. The happy father, for whom others, immortals too, themselves so willingly brought the finest boys into the world, was now really caught up in a wave of enthusiasm and in a stronger yearning after sons ; so he wanted still more of Kuntī. But she repulsed him angrily : “ More than three sons are not granted even in misfortune. If there were another the wife would become one that is unbridled (svairiṇī), and with a fifth she would be a worthless woman (bandhakī). How canst thou, a wise man, who hast learned this law, now go beyond it and ask me for offspring ? ” Then came Pāṇḍu’s second wife, Mādrī, and said to him : “ I am not sorrowed that thou art not a proper man, nor that I am ever set behind her that is worthy of thy favour (Kuntī). But this is my great sorrow, that I, though we are equal (both thy wives) have no son.”