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Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7: V. Woman as Mother

Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7

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V. Woman as Mother

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AT the centre point in this intimate family life is the mother, covered with much glory by Indian literature; and, as has been already pointed out, to the Hindu it is just this side of a woman’s life that is the beginning and the end. Woman as a mother takes up in the Epic, too, an important place.

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In Mahābh., i, 196.16 we find: “Of all guru the mother is the highest guru”; in xii, 342.18: “There is no higher virtue (or: no higher law) than the truth, no guru to equal the mother, a greater thing for weal than the Brahmans is found neither here nor there” (cp. xiii, 63.92); in xiii, 105.14: “Above ten fathers or even the whole earth in worth (gaurava) stands the mother; there is no guru like the mother”¹ (cp. 106.65). Cp. iii, 313.60; xii, 301.44. For all curses there are means of averting and destroying (pratighāta, moksha), but for the mother’s, and hers only, there are none (i, 37.3-5).² Indeed, xii, 161.9 states: “ ‘There is no pious exercise either in the world or in the ascetics’ forest that can stand above the mother (nāti mātaram āçramaḥ).’” Yudhishṭhira in xii, 108 asks Bhīshma: “What is the highest of all duties (virtues, law precepts, dharma)?”; and he gets the answer: “The honouring of mother, father, and teacher (guru) I set high; whoso is diligent about these enjoys the worlds of heaven, and high renown.¹ And the task that these bestow, be it the law, or opposed to the law, that must be done.² What they allow is what is right; they are the three worlds, they are the three spheres of duties in life (āçrama), they are the three Vedas, they are the three holy fires. The father is held to be the gārhapatya fire, the mother the southern fire, the teacher the āhavanīya. This fire trinity is the most important. If thou givest the proper heed to these three, then thou shalt win the three worlds; of this world thou wilt unfailingly be master through the rightful behaviour towards thy father, of the world beyond through that towards thy mother, of the Brahma world through that towards thy teacher. Whoso cares for these three has won all three worlds; but whoso cares not for them, his holy deeds are all barren. Whoso does not at all times hold these three venerable ones in high esteem, for him there is no salvation in this world or the other.³ The mother stands above ten fathers, or even the whole world, in worth (gurutva), there is no guru to equal the mother.”⁴

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¹ The spiritual master (ācārya) stands above ten private teachers (upādhyāya) in worth and dignity, the father above a hundred spiritual masters, but the mother above a thousand fathers. Manu, ii, 145; Vasisṭha, xiii, 48. Cp. MBh., xii, 108.16 f.; K, xiv, 110.60. Also according to Yājñav., i, 35 and Gautama, ii, 51, the mother stands at the head of the venerable ones (guru), and above priests and religious teachers. To the “golden rules which the teacher gives the disciple to take with him on life’s way” belong the following in the old sacred Upanishad: “Honour thy mother like a god. Honour thy father like a god. Honour thy teacher like a god. Honour the guest like a god.” (Taitt.-Up., i, 9.1, 2; Deussen, *Sechzig Upanishad d. Veda*, p. 222.) The mother comes first here also, as, indeed, in the Sanskrit compound it is always; “mother and father”, and never “father and mother”. If the two are united by “and” then, on the other hand, it is oftener the other way. The mother is more venerable than the father because she has carried the child, and had to suffer pain. K., vol. i, p. 212, line 1.

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² So also Mārkaṇḍeyapur., cvi, 28. Though according to lxxvii, 31 there has never yet been such a thing as a mother forgetting her love and cursing her own child. Cp. cvi, 32.

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¹ Father, mother, and the guru who brings a man into the knowledge of Brahman are the mahāguru or Very Venerable, the First Masters. Anyone speaking evil words of them or to them must fast five days. Mahānirvāṇat., xi, 145. Atiguru (“Values above all”) these three are called in Vishṇusmṛiti, xxxi, 1.

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² Opposed to this in the Epic is also an often-recurring saying, that a bad guru, walking along evil paths, must be punished (i, 140.54; xii, 55.15 f.; 57.7; 140.48; Rām., ii, 21.13). Cp. MBh., iv, 51.15, and the words, following later, of Bhīshma addressed to Paraçurāma. —With K. read: dharmam dharmaviruddham vā.

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³ The same teaching in Manu, ii, 228–234; Vishṇu, xxxi; and often elsewhere.

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⁴ In what follows, it is true, all is nicely touched up again, and the spiritual teacher (ācārya) set high above the mother and father;

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Cp. xiii, 104.45. It is even asserted that the mother's origin casts no slur (mātridosho na vidyate, K., i, 99.6). On the other hand we are also told that the father stands above the mother. According to xii, 297.² the father is the highest godhead for men, and is above the mother. “The mother is the wallet (for the father's seed), to the father belongs the son; he is his by whom he has been begotten” (i, 74.110).¹ But we have already seen that the mother is the field, and thus the important thing, the seed can be thrown in by anyone; and while the man might wed a woman from a lower caste, it was most strictly forbidden for a woman to lower herself.

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¹ Cp. for instance Wilson's Vishnupur. (ed. Hall), vol. iv, p. 133 and note; Bhāgavatapur., ix, 20 f.; Kauṭilya (transl.), 260.3.

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How Rāma in a case where his duty towards his father comes into conflict with that towards his mother bears himself as the pattern hero of the Rāmāyaṇa, almost always faithfully Brahmanic, we have already seen. Another example is that Paraçurāma, destroyer of the Kshattriyas, who is so highly glorified by the priestly caste, but who in reality is most repugnant. In the Mahābh. also is related shortly his resolute act towards his mother (iii, 116). Jamadagni, the holy son of that Ricika already mentioned, followed his father's example and wedded a royal princess named Reṇukā. She bore him five sons, of whom the youngest was Rāma with the axe. One day, the sons being away to get fruit, the pious mother went to bathe. There she saw King Citraratha wreathed in lotuses playing in the water with his wives, and her heart was gripped by a longing for him. As a result of this unfaithfulness of hers she came back from the water to the hermitary all wet, with troubled mind, and filled with fear.² The penitent saw she had lost her determination, and had been robbed of her holy splendour, that she had sinned, and one after the other he bade his four

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² K. adds: “having fallen from the air into the Narmadā,” which suggests a remarkable variant of this tale.

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these latter are the instrument for the earthly body, while the ācārya brings about the heavenly birth (cp. Manu, ii, 144 ff.; Viṣṇu, xxx, 44). And from what has been said before, through him the world of Brahma is won, a doctrine often found in Smṛti.

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eldest sons, as they came home in turn, to kill the mother. Overcome with confusion,¹ stunned, they answered not a word. Therefore did the angry man curse them, and at once they were bereft of reason, like unto dull beasts. When Rāma appeared, he called on him to slay the sinful woman. Rāma hewed her head off at once with his axe. Then of a sudden the old man’s rage passed away, and he left it to his son to wish anything he wanted for himself. The son asked first that his mother should wake again to life without remembering what had happened, and that his brothers should be roused to live once more like reasoning men; and this came about.²

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¹ Probably sammohāḥ is the reading, as in K.

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² Cp. Zachariae, “Goethes Parialegende,” Zschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk., xi, 186 ff.; xii, 44 ff.; Thurston, Omens and Superstitions, etc. (1912), p. 148 f. (interesting variants).

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Less resolute was the behaviour of another in a like case (xii, 266). Gautama, of the family of the Aṅgirases, had a son who pondered everything slowly, set about it slowly, carried it out slowly, wherefore he was called Slow Doer (Cirakāri, Cirakārin, Cirakārika), and short-sighted people who were brisk and sharp called him a blockhead. When his mother one day had been guilty of unfaithfulness to her husband,³ the holy man went over the heads of his other sons and angrily bid Cirakāri: “Slay thy mother!” After these words the most excellent Gautama, best among the prayer-mutterers, went off without further thought into the forest. Slow Doer said, true to his nature, only after a long while: “Yes,” and being a slow doer, he pondered and reflected long: “How shall I contrive to carry out my father’s bidding and yet not kill my mother? How shall I not sink down like an evil man in this shifting turmoil of duties?⁴ The father’s bidding is the highest law, my own (the natural) law is to shield my mother;

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³ Her name was Ahalya. Of her love adventure with Indra more will be said later.

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⁴ Dharmachala, lit., deceit of duties, deceit of virtue, seeming virtue, juggling with virtue. The word is often found in the MBh., and generally means a deceitful injuring of virtue, especially under the cover of virtue. So ix, 60.26; xii, 270.12; xiii, 20.13.

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and to be a son is to be subject. But what is there then that will not torment me later? Who could ever be happy, if he has killed a woman, and moreover his own mother! And who could ever win calm and peace who has not heeded his father? Not to disregard the father is right and fitting, and it is a firm principle to shield one's mother. Both duties are right and salutary. How can I act, that the matter may not get beyond me? For the father sets his own self in the mother at the begetting, we are told, to keep virtue, good ways, race, and family in being. I here have been made a son by my mother and father; how should I not have the knowledge! Of both I know that they are my origin. That which my father said at the birth ceremony and at the by-ceremony—its confirmation is made complete in the firm resolve to honour my father.¹ The first guru who has nourished and taught a man is the highest law; what a father says is the moral rule set down as fixed even in the Vedas. For the father the son is but a joy, but for the son the father is all; he alone gives as an offering his body and all else there is to give. Therefore a man shall act according to his father's words, and never take thought upon it; mortal sins (pātaka) even are washed away from him who follows his father's bidding. In matters of eating and of other things that are for use, in the instruction and in the whole view of life, at the union with a lord (or with the husband), and at the holy custom of parting the hair the father is the law, the father is heaven, the father is the loftiest asceticism. If the father is made to rejoice, then all the gods rejoice. Those words of blessing are fulfilled for a man which

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¹ At the birth ceremony the father says to the son:—

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Be thou a stone, be thou an axe,
Be thou gold that is beyond valuing!
Thou art the Veda called "son".
Live a hundred autumns long!

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If the father comes home from a journey, he must say to the boy: Thou art born limb from limb, etc., as already given (Āçval., i, 15.9 f.; Pārask., i, 18; Gobh., ii, 8.21; Hirany., ii, 1, 4.16 ff.; Āpast., 15, 12 ff.; Khād., ii, 3, 13 ff.). This according to Nil. is the by-ceremony, and he says that this precept holds good till the boy is brought to the teacher.

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the father utters. It is absolution from all sins when the father finds his joy in him. The bloom loosens itself from the stalk, the fruit from the tree—if the father has to suffer sorrow and pain (through his son), yet because of his tender love for the child he does not loosen himself from the son.¹ Thus then have I pondered the reverence the son owes his father²; the father is no small thing. Now will I consider the mother. The cause of this body here with me in the mortal world, and made up of the five elements, is my mother, as that of fire is the rubbing-stick. The mother is the rubbing-stick of the body for mankind, the comfort of all that suffer. If one has a mother, one is sheltered, but unsheltered if one has her not. He does not grieve, age does not weigh on him, even though fortune betray him, who comes back home to his house and can say ‘Mother!’ And let a man be surrounded by sons and grandsons, and stand at the end of his hundredth year, yet if he takes refuge with his mother, he acts like a child of two years.³ Whether he is capable or incapable, unimportant or important, the mother protects the son; no other career has been appointed by fate. He is old, he is unhappy, the world is an empty desert for him, if he is parted from his mother. There is no shadow like the mother,⁴ there is no refuge like the mother, there is no shelter like the mother, there is no beloved like the mother. Since she has carried him in her body, she is, according to the tradition, the carrier (dhātrī), since she has borne him she is the bearer (jananī), since she has nourished his limbs to greatness, she is his little mother (ambā), since she has borne a man, she is the bearer of men, since the child humbly listens to her, she is the kinswoman (çuçrū); the mother is his own body.⁵ Could a man who is in his senses and whose head is not hollow¹ kill *her*! The purpose which the married pair cherish when they unite their life powers is also cherished by the mother and father, so it is said; actually the case is so only with the mother.² The mother knows to what paternal family (gotra) he belongs, the mother knows whose he is. The mother by the mere carrying (of the fruit of her body) feels a joyful love and tenderness; for the father the children are offspring (pituḥ prajāḥ). If men at first (at the wedding) themselves carry out the entwining of hands, and enter on the state of common duty, and then go off to others, women do not deserve any blame.³ For from supporting the wife the man is called her spouse (bhartar), and from protecting the wife her husband (or lord, pati); but where this attribute is gone, there there is no longer spouse, and no longer husband.⁴ Therefore the woman does not sin, only the man sins; and if he goes astray into the great crime of

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¹ So according to K., where sutasnehaiḥ stands instead of sutam snehaiḥ (272). ² Nature of a guru, that is, dignity, or else, worth, importance (for the son). ³ Or: If he goes to his mother, he is wont to act like a child of two years. ⁴ So cooling and so faithful. ⁵ Liter.: the identical, unparted body.

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¹ K. (272.33) reads more smoothly: cetanāvān sa ko hanyād. ² The man in sexual union really seeks only his pleasure, but the woman seeks the child, which rule will always be true. ³ Should they break faith, too, with the faithless men. I read vācyatām instead of yācyatām. The Bomb. text would mean: then women are not fit for wooing, that is, if they are asked, they cannot say no. K. has yāpyatām, which is translated under the text by tyājyatām. According to Böhtlingk Bühler for yāpya gives the rendering: to whom a rebuke is to be given. This would agree with my amendment, but I should not be able to justify it. Essentially the meaning is always the same, and we should here have a confirmation of my reading of xiii, 19 ff.: Women are what men make them, which, indeed, Forel, for example, also rightly stresses in his *Sexuelle Frage*.—With yāsyati I follow the interpretation of the schol., which fits in well with the exposition that follows. It is true that there is only there: “if men (had to) go,” and Deussen in his *Vier philosoph. Texten des MBh.* gives the rendering “run away”. This, indeed, fits in with the general position: Gautama has evidently neglected his wife from the beginning, and after her offence also he at once runs off again into the forest (cp. also cl. 62). But with such sermons we must not insist unbendingly on such strict logic. ⁴ According to the context, this saying, which we found already in i, 104.30, means: The husband has as his duty, by his own example especially, to give in the ethical sense strength, stay, and protection to the wife, not only to feed her, and cherish and care for her.

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adultery, it is only the man who sins in this.¹ The greatest thing of all for the woman, according to the tradition, is the husband, he is her highest godhead. But now she has given him her own self, that stands equal to his self, as the highest thing.² On women no sin is laid, only the man sins ; since in all cases it is women who have to let themselves be the object of sin, so women do not sin. And since from the woman's side no invitation³ has gone to him to satisfy the desire for love, the wrongdoing is undoubtedly his, who clearly gave the call to it. But even the unreasoning beasts would thence know that a woman, and moreover the mother that is in highest honour, must not be killed. In the father is seen the whole assemblage of the divinities united in one person ; but in the mother, because of her love, we come to the whole assemblage of mortals and gods.”⁴ While in this wise he pondered deeply because of his slow doing, a long time went by him. Then his father came up, the very wise Medhātithi, that Gautama living an ascetic life, having during this time weighed the offence against the established order done by his wife. In great torment he spoke, shedding tears in his pain, filled with remorse by the helping grace of his holy knowledge, and firmness of character : “ Into my hermitage came Indra, the ruler of the world, the shatterer of strongholds, giving himself out as a guest, and taking a Brahman's shape. Friendly words I spoke to him, and honoured him with a joyful welcome ; guest water and water for the feet I brought him, as is seemly. And if he is told, ‘ I am at thy bidding,’ he will then start love-making.⁵ If then something evil happened, it is not

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¹ According to Manu, viii, 317 ; Vasisṭha, xix, 44, the adulteress casts off her sin onto the husband ; he should have kept her from it. ² The very expression ātmānam dadau does not seem at all to allow of a reference to the son she has borne him. ³ Liter. : suggestion, reference, hint. On this conception cp. Freidank's *Bescheidenheit* ed. Bezzenberger, p. 158 : Swâ wîp, etc. ⁴ Probably not so well : the whole assemblage, etc., comes into the mother. ⁵ Or : If a man is told : “ I am at thy bidding,” then he (in the world, anyhow) will show his inclination. This version is after all

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the woman that has done wrong. So neither the woman, nor myself, nor the wanderer (the guest) Indra can be accused of sinning against the law.¹ But it is my want of thought that sinned. Therefore do the holy men that are wholly chaste say that from jealousy comes woe. Carried away now by jealousy, I have sunk into the sea of evil-doing. Who will bring me safely to the shore, who have slain a good woman and a wife, and one brought to lechery through evil fate,² and, as I should have cherished and cared for her, my ‘foster-ward’ (my wife, bhāryā)? If Slow Doer, he with the noble soul, to whom in a weak moment I gave the order, were to-day indeed a slow doer, then he would keep me from a mortal sin (pātaka). Slow Doer, hail to thee! Hail to thee, Slow Doer! If thou to-day art a slow doer, then thou art indeed a slow doer. Save me and thy mother and the penitential merit I have acquired, and thyself from mortal sin; to-day be a slow doer. Long wast thou yearned for by thy mother, long borne in the womb; to-day let thy slow doing yield fruit, thou Slow Doer.”³ As Gautama, the great Ṛishi, thus was grieving himself, he saw his son Cirakāri standing near. But so soon as Cirakāri had seen his father, he threw the knife away, filled with deepest sorrow, and set about winning his

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¹ I did in accordance with law, custom (and reason) when I welcomed the guest so unreservedly, and Indra was only following his own law (his nature, dharma) when he as a woman-hunter paid her court.

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² Indra came in Gautama’s shape to her, at least according to the usual version. But here it is not clear whether this is the leading motive here, indeed, Gautama’s words in particular about the guest in Brahman’s shape rather speak against it, so after all “through evil passion” might be better. Of course, for this meaning of the word I can only bring forward from the MBh., xii, 290.20: avyasanitā, passionlessness. Cp. too the later note on the fact that Ahalya knew Indra very well.

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³ K. reads Cirakārika. But the nom. too can be read (“as Slow Doer”). The following çloka to me seems to be an insertion, although K. too has it (272.58).

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to be preferred, and because, too, Indra’s guilt thus stands out all the sharper.

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favour with his head. When Gautama then saw him with head sunk towards the ground, and saw his wife all mazed,¹ he was filled with the greatest joy. He clasped his son long in his arms, and in a lengthy speech praised him for his blessed procrastination; for: "Slowly let the friend be knit to one, and slowly let go again the friend that has been won; for the friend slowly won can be long kept. Where passion, pride, arrogance, hurtfulness, evil-doing, and anything unfriendly that is to be done (to another) are in question, then is the slow doer praised. Where the question is of trespasses not cleared up of kindred and friends, servants and wives the slow doer is praised."

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¹ Lit.: without (fair, dignified) appearance; cp. "to lose countenance", and "like a whipped dog". Cp. xii, 333.18; vii, 72.10.

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In the eyes of the law, of course, and also in practice, so far as the rule was not weakened or altogether annulled through more than ordinary strength in the woman or for some other reason, the patriarchal system prevailed in India then as now, and, to the aforesaid high position of the mother, was opposed her, in many respects, lower valuation as a woman. But the Epic gives us glimpses enough to show us that in those times the woman held in general a more important position than she did later.² We shall speak of that below. And again, in the narrative parts themselves are to be found plenty of indications not only of that loving and pious attitude towards the two parents, but also of the attitude towards the mother in particular. When his house-priest or Purohita has given Yudhishṭhira a long lecture on the proper behaviour which the brothers must observe as servants to the prince, he that is thus preached to says: "Now we are instructed, and I beg leave to say, that none can set this forth but our mother Kuntī and the high-souled Vidura" (iv, 4.52). Together with his brothers he shows over and over again throughout the long narrative the same attitude of mind towards his mother; and Bhīma, the man of deep feelings, by far the most human and attractive of the Pāṇḍavas, stands out, too, through a tender regard towards Kuntī. The visit paid by the Pāṇḍavas to their old mother in the hermitage, their farewell of the aged woman, and their sorrow at learning that she has been burned in the forest, are likewise affectingly drawn for us (xv, 21 ff. ; 36.27, 28, 35 ff. ; 37.18 ff.). We hear, too, the note of the heart’s true feeling in Yudhiṣṭhira’s words about Kuntī’s womanly virtues, motherly tenderness, and bitter lot (v, 83.37 ff.). For her is the first and far the most urgent greeting sent by him through Vidura to Hāstinapura. And so for other cases.

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² Or perhaps rather: that in the world of the MBh., which at least grew up out of an original Kshattriya poetry, the woman was in far higher esteem than she was when controlled by more priestly notions and conditions (or in other social classes).

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And towards the other wives of the father the sons show in the Epic a pious spirit like that we have already met with in Rāma. Along with other heroes Yudhiṣṭhira should here again be mentioned, who begs Nakula off from death and not his own brothers, when the Yaksha in the pond lets him have only one of the four dead, and who gives as the reason : “ Both the wives of my father are dear alike to me ; both Mādrī and Kuntī shall have a son ” (iii, 313.13).¹

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¹ For the tale itself cp. e.g. Jāt. No. 6 (this one is weak and secondary, patched up late from various fragments; for Yaksha’s questions, Jāt. No. 377); Franke in WZKM, xx, 324 ff.; Hertel, Kathāratnākara, i, 58 ff.; Daçāvatāracaritam, viii, 533–540; Holtzmann, Das Mahābhārata, etc., ii, p. 82, 96, 246; my transl. of the Daçakumārac., p. 297; Crooke, Popular Relig., etc., ii, 128.

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But not only the Pāṇḍavas, who are painted as Indian patterns of virtue, but even Duryodhana, set before us in the colours of the arch-villain, listens rather to his mother than to his father and his other kinsfolk. Kṛṣṇa goes as the messenger of the five brothers to the court of Dhṛtarāṣṭra to negotiate a peace. In a solemn state gathering all strive to talk Duryodhana into giving way and coming to terms with the sons of Pāṇḍu. But in vain. Then Kṛṣṇa, who has it in his heart only to offend Duryodhana and light the fires of war, addresses biting words to the stubborn man, and at last the latter together with his followers leaves the hall, blazing with anger. Now no other means can be thought of : his mother Gāndhārī, the “ far-seeing one ”, is sent for, and she begins by reading her husband a fitting lesson before all the illustrious lords, and then she orders Duryodhana to be at once called. And though he is spitting with rage like a snake, he obediently comes there, “ filled with longing for his mother’s words.” In a long speech she shows him how wrong he is, and points out to him that the kingdom really belongs to the Pāṇḍavas, and that he must be satisfied with the half of it, otherwise he will yet lose all through his wilfulness and blindness, and bring disaster on all. But, on the one hand, her words are not very motherly and loving in tone, on the other the self-willed, angry man is not now disposed to listen to such things; so he storms out again indignantly without speaking a word, away to his comrades.¹

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¹ Yudhishṭhira, indeed, once also speaks harshly to his mother. But one must say she had really acted then to all appearance with unwarrantable thoughtlessness (i, 162.5-11). Then we hear from Vidura’s wise lips: “ These six always despise him who earlier has done good by them: disciples despise the teacher, when their instruction is ended; the sons the mother, when they have married; the lover the woman, when his love is dead; they whose business has been carried through, him that does it; he that has crossed the waste of the sea (nistīrṇakāntāra, cp. e.g. ‘pilot of the waste’ in the 2nd Jātaka), the ship; and the healed sick, the leech” (v, 33.87 f.). Of the lover the rule holds all over the world; Ward especially in his View of the Hindus has tried to show how thankless in general the Hindus are, but partly without sufficient warrant; and Bose, The Hindoos as They Are, p. 223 note, has something to say of the married son’s contempt towards his mother. But it is certain that the son’s love for the mother cannot be denied of the Indian, and really unique evidence of it is given in Samayamātṛkā, iv, 44-65 (pp. 44-46 in my translation).

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The mother of Old India, like her daughter to-day, shows herself fully worthy of this childish love. The Epic, too, offers both in the inwoven tales and in the main narrative many heart-gladdening pictures of the tender love of the mother, self-forgetting and only thinking of the child’s welfare. Here only one or two features in the life of the leading heroines may be given. Kuntī, whose youthful adventure with the sun god was to bring her so much sorrow throughout her life, had also to go through much anxiety, care, and suffering for the sake of her other sons.² In their childhood days they, indeed, already gave her many an anxious moment. Bhīma was a very high-spirited lad, and as he had the strength of a giant, not only did he surpass his cousins and play-fellows in all trials of strength and skill, but he picked them out to be the victims, too, of the wildest pranks. “By the hair did the strong one catch hold of them, pulled them headlong down, and dragged them screaming along the ground, barking their knees, heads, and shoulders. When playing in the water he clasped ten boys (at once), took a long dive with them under the water, and only let them go when they were half-dead. When they climbed trees to look for fruit, Bhīma would make the trees quiver by kicking them. Then the trees would shake to and fro under the wild force of his blows, and the frightened boys would soon fall down, together with the fruit” (i, 128.19 ff.).

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In this wise he found he had no friends at all, and Duryodhana especially pursued him with a bitter hatred. This cousin now one day had splendid “houses of cloths and rugs” made by the Ganges, and furnished with choicest food and heady drinks. There the princes then made merry, and threw cakes into one another’s mouths. Duryodhana kept this game up with Bhīma a long time with great spirit, for Bhīma, the “wolf’s belly” (Vṛikodara), was a mighty eater. But he put poison withal into the cakes, and while Bhīma lay fast asleep, wearied with many athletic exercises, and overcome with drunkenness, Duryodhana had him bound and thrown into the Ganges without his brothers knowing anything about it. When they wanted to go home, they could not find him, and the good mother was now in mortal anguish, when they came back without him; for she knew his cousin’s hatred and cruelty (i, 118 f.).—But they all grew up to be strong and skilful youths, and at the festal exhibition, where the accomplished sons of Pāṇḍu and of Dhṛitarāshṭra gave a show of their skill, Kuntī sat glad and proud among the women onlookers. When now Arjuna so greatly distinguished himself and was greeted with a storm of shouts by the onlookers, then did Kuntī’s bosom grow wet with the flood of her tears of joy (i, 135.13).¹ But short was the time her delight lasted, as we have seen : Karṇa came onto the stage, the son of her maidenhood, and the embittered opponent of Arjuna, and challenged him to fight.

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Swooning, the mother of them both sank to the ground (i, 136.27 ff.). Together with her sons she was to be burned in the house of resin but escaped with them, and now shared their wanderings filled with danger and hardship 1; her splendid children, from whom she had hoped so much, were fugitives and beggars, and with them she lived on alms. Arjuna’s skill with the bow now won the princess Draupadī, and in spite of the strong opposition of the disillusioned rivals they brought home this fair prize of victory. The mother knew nothing of all this, and hovered in the darkness of anguish lest the hostile men or evil spirits had slain the sons who did not come back in the evening at the proper time (i, 190.43 ff.). The evil game of dice followed, and the thirteen years’ banishment of her children. Filled with the sorrow of despair, she bade them farewell, and showed herself especially anxious on behalf of Sahadeva, the son of her fellow-wife Mādrī—a complement to the love which the sons in the Epic are wont to give the fellow-wives of their mother.² But not one word of reproach against Yudh., who has brought about all the wretchedness, escapes from her lips here ; it is only her own, her deserved fate that she makes responsible — a true Indian mother (ii, 79.10 ff.).

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In the end the great fight blazed up which brought her the long wished for triumph of her reviled sons, but along with it sorrow abounding beyond words, and so finally, as an old woman with her blind brother-in-law and his wife, she went off into the penitential forest—a much-tried, much-loving mother, but no weak or faint-hearted one, as we shall yet see. Characteristic, too, is Draupadī’s behaviour (ii, 71.26 ff.). She has been gambled away by Yudhiṣṭhira, and has fallen into slavery and shameful ill-treatment, and Dhṛtarāṣṭra now offers her a favour. She says : “Yudhishṭhira must be free, that my son may not be called a slave’s son.”¹ The unmotherly disposition shown by Gāndhārī towards her son, which comes out especially in her sermon to Dhṛitarāshṭra, ii, 75, stands alone, and has been put in her mouth by a calculated partisan distortion.

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² “ It is decreed of mothers that their birth pangs shall not cease until they die.” John Galsworthy, The Country House, p. 236.

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¹ Her milk also flows from her, as it so often does from the Indian mother, even the elderly one, at the sight of her child (e.g. i, 105.26; 135.13; iii, 226.24; vii, 78.16; ix, 44.12. In K, i, 310.13 even from a woman that has never brought forth).

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¹ The episode of the burning of the house of resin is imitated, altered, and further elaborated in the Jain tale in my *Hindu Tales*, p. 21 ff.

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² Passages which there show how attached she is to Sahadeva, and he to her, are : ii, 79.8, 28 ; 19.32 ff. ; v, 90.35-42 (here including Nakula, Mādrī’s other son) ; xv, 16.10 ; 26.9 ff. ; xv, 24. espec. 8 ff. ; 36.36 ; 39.18.

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¹ The Indian mother listens with greedy ears to the predictions uttered of her little son by the wise Brahmans, and hopes for their fulfilment later, even when he seems to show no promise whatever (v, 134.8, 9). And even of Kuntī we read at that test of her sons in doctrine : “But since K. in the master of the Aṅgas (in Karṇa) had recognized her son, betrayed by his divine marks, a secret joy glowed in her” (i, 137.23). A woman has truly lived when she with her husband has practised the duties of religion, has enjoyed companionship with him, and has had children from him (i, 158.33). Parents and daughter are saddened beyond measure in this tale, because the father must be the food of the Rākshasa. Then the little son runs up to all these as they weep, tries to comfort them, takes a hay-straw, and shouts : “I will kill the monster with it!” And joy shines into the darkness of their souls (i, 159.20 f.).

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WHILE woman in the Indian view is above all destined for motherhood, yet this cannot be brought about without man, and woman in her sexual relations, therefore, makes up an important chapter. Furthermore, there is the fact that love and the life of love presents in itself a subject which is ever new, ever inexhaustible, ever filled with enchantment; and poetry, moreover, has in more senses than one its vital nerve therein. The Epic, too, yields many contributions to this theme: tales, sayings, details. But in agreement with the stricter, relatively pure and moral outlook governing the Epic poetry, we are not to seek here any variegated collection of love and even lecherous adventures, allusions, and so forth. Dramas and short plays of adultery, or merry cuckold tales are not found in the fare here set before us; and the loose relations, too, between maidens and men, which are in many other lands so much a matter of course, and not a rare thing in the later Indian literature, are quite foreign to the Epic, for all that even Vyāsa, the so-called author of the Mahābh., and playing no unimportant a part in it, and the hero Karṇa, unsurpassed in Indian literature, are sons of unmarried women. We saw, indeed, how they owed their life only to the whim of their fathers, and not to the loving choice of their mothers. True indeed that also the Epic has in it very many tales and references that in the Western world would be branded as improper. But in this a great injustice is done them. Such things are almost always brought forward in all scientific seriousness, and quite simply as a matter of fact, as though we were in an anatomical lecture-room. The Indian, the old Italian novelist, a French poet of Troubadour times, and, for instance, a Brantôme can apparently tell us something more or less of the same kind, but *si duo faciunt, idem non est idem*. Brantôme grunts in his slush like five hundred erotomaniac swine; the fabliau poet treats us, indeed, to the nastiest filth, sometimes with finesse, but often to our taste unspeakably gross; from the Italian's face there not seldom looks out what is rather a very naughty, but almost innocent child of nature—one might almost say urchin—and this along with even a fully ripened mind and style. How the Old Indian, however, describes such things, at least usually, is seen, we hope, clearly enough in this book. Love tales of the usual, and above all European kind are, therefore, not to be found in the Epic. Love and wedlock here cannot be separated.¹ The Trojan War came about through a flighty wife choosing to let herself be seduced—the struggle between the Pāṇḍavas and the Kauravas, the subject of the Mahābh. proper, breaks forth, as we are assured several times in the poem, because the slight cannot be forgotten which has been cast on a noble lady, though this can only be looked on as "the straw that breaks the camel's back", and in the Rāmāyaṇa all that is really dealt with is the chastising of the insolent robber of the chaste Sītā, and the setting free of this great lady. The world's literature has no more lovely songs of the faithful wife's love for her husband than the poem of Damayantī and that of Sāvitrī. Both are found in the Mahābh., and they are not the only ones to treat of this subject. The heroine, moreover, of the Rāmāyaṇa has for thousands of years in India been shining forth as a picture of most spotless womanhood.

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¹ Love for one's wife is impossible; this is what the basic principle, as we well know, of the old French polite world tells us; and to-day love between husband and wife is still almost always scorned, particularly by works of romance, as a subject for treatment. But times out of count on the other hand we find in Old Indian books, just as in the Epic: It is on the wife that the attainment of the three great goals of life depends—religious merit, worldly gain, and kāma (enjoyment, love): and Mārkaṇḍeyapur., xxi, 74 lays down the principle: "Without a wife no love." The man of the world in India—and often enough he has his say in Hindu literature—will, it is true, add in brackets as an explanation not only: itarasya, the other man's, that is to say, the wife or the future wife, as with us, but besides this the main object of Indian eroticism—the harlot.

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"When women become ripe for love"—this for the Indian is no romance, but a practical chapter in the physiology of sex.

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This, the most important part of the woman's life, makes its appearance with the ṛitu; with the ṛitu begins, with it it ends, in it it has always its central point. Ṛitu denotes the monthly cleansing, and then in particular those days after the period, from the fourth day onwards,¹ which in the Indian view are proper for conception. In what follows I shall use the Sanskrit word only in the second and narrower meaning. The setting in of the menses brings with it not only the capacity for the full sexual life, and the right thereto, but first and foremost the divine call to it, the unavoidable duty. A menstruating girl in a father's house is a heavy sin for him; the daughter is now dedicated to the divinities of married state. The legal provision, therefore, already touched upon often makes its appearance, namely that the father shall marry his daughter off before the beginning of this time, and then, so soon as she is sexually ripe, the husband fetches her home.² As already mentioned, child marriage has no place in the narrative parts of the Epic.¹ The heroines of the main story and of the inserted episodes are already grown up on their marriage, just like the love heroines of the ordinary Indian narrative literature (cp. Leumann, *Die Nonne*, strophe 122 ff.; Meyer, Kauṭilya, addit., 246.14). But the Epic also stresses the point that that time, the ṛitu, must not slip by without being made use of. For the woman is there that she may bring forth, and her calling must not be barred to her or made harder. Therefore, during each ṛitu not only has she the urge to coition, but for her this is then also a holy right and command.

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¹ The first twelve, or according to other statements, the first sixteen nights after menstruation begins, excluding the three (or four) first nights. Also the eleventh (and the thirteenth) and certain moon-days are often put under a ban. Cp. Manu, iii, 45-50; iv, 128; Jolly, "Medizin" (in Bühler's Grundriss), p. 50; Winternitz, Die Frau i. d. ind. Religionen, p. 32 [6]. See further below.

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² Pradānam prāg ṛitoḥ "the girl must be married before the coming of menstruation". Gautama, xviii, 21; so also Viṣṇu, xxiv, 41; and in 23 Gaut. gives as the opinion of others: "before she wears clothes." This view is also in Vasiṣṭha, xvii, 70; Baudh., iv, 1.11. Cp. Manu, ix, 88 f. The point stressed by the law books is the fear lest otherwise the ṛitu of the young woman be left unused. As a matter of fact child marriage is really based not so much on religious grounds, as on economic: on the heavy competition in the marriage market. The father must find his daughter a good husband, and dare not wait long. This Risley has penetratingly and understandingly shown in Caste in Relation to Marriage (quoted in Billington, Woman in India, p. 59 ff.). Love comes, too, according to him, in marriage. Indeed, it comes perhaps the more surely just because a very early marriage may keep the girl from falling in love elsewhere, and perhaps very foolishly. Anyhow the thing is one that commends itself because of this fear too, to those in authority over the girl. Cp. Daçakumāraçar., p. 285, line 27 ff. of my translation. Indeed, the fear that the daughter may one day bring shame on the family

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¹ Bhandarkar in ZDMG, Bd. 47, “History of Child Marriage,” has very skilfully defended the statement that “in the time of Āçvalāyana and many other authors of Gṛihyasūtras marriages after puberty were a matter of course” (p. 153). Mahānirvāṇatantra, viii, 107, seems to be opposed to the marrying of the daughter before she has reached ripeness of understanding; and Nārada, who in matters of women otherwise shows a remarkably open mind, says she must be given away when the monthly flow has shown itself (pravṛitte rajasi); but what goes before teaches that then this is to be at once (xii, 24–27).

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It is often emphatically laid down that the husband during the ṛitu must visit (ṛitugamana) the wife, and it is a sin for him not to fulfil his married duty then. In Rām., ii, 75 in a long imprecatory formula, a very great number of the worst sins and atrocities is set forth, and in śl. 52 is mentioned the evil-minded man (duṣṭātman) who does not let his wife have her rights, when she has bathed after the monthly cleansing. In MBh., vii, 17.28–36 we likewise find a list of especially horrible

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through love entanglements is even given as a main reason for the killing of girls among the old Arabs (*Anthropos*, iii, p. 62 ff. Perhaps a misunderstanding? Cp. Welhausen, *Gött. Nachr.* (1893), p. 458). Dubois ed. Beauchamp³, p. 207, even states that Indian maidens could not be entrusted with their own honour up to their marriageable years, since they would not be able to resist temptation. “Therefore measures cannot be taken too early to place them intact in their husband’s hands.” On the other hand he himself declares on p. 314 that “Hindu women are naturally chaste”; and on p. 354 he remarks that they are chaster than the women of many lands possessing a higher culture.

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sins, punished with torments in the other world, and among them we find the neglect to approach the wife at the ṛitu times.¹ On the contrary, it is highly virtuous to practise love on those days with the wife. Subhadrā in vii, 78 bewails her son fallen in the tender bloom of youth, Abhimanyu, and for him wishes in a long drawn out prayer of blessing that he may in the world beyond enjoy the happiness to be won through the noblest, best, and most pious human deeds and thoughts. And here she brings this in, too: “Thine be the lot of those that are obedient to father and mother, and of those that only find their delight with their own wife; and mayest thou hasten towards the lot of the wise men who at the time of the ṛitu go to their wife and keep from strange women” (çl. 31, 32). In the same way in xii, 110.9: “They who do as is fitting with their own wife at each ṛitu, and faithfully carry out the sacrifice by fire, overcome disasters.” Cohabitation in the ṛitu is one of the virtues leading to heaven (xiii, 144.13-14), and also one of the things whereby a Çūdra obtains the being born again as a Brahman (although not without intermediate stages, xiii, 143.29 ff.). But on the other hand it is then found to be an ethical command that the husband keep not only from all other women, but from his own wife, too, outside the ṛitu or ṛitukāla (time of the ṛitu). He that obeys this law practises chastity, is equal in virtue to him that wholly abstains. So, for instance, in xiii, 162.41,42. Cp. iii, 208.15; 207.33; xiii, 157.9 ff.; xii, 193.11. Chastity has two forms: monasticism, and copulation in the ṛitu only (Rām., i, 9.5, and comment.). “How does one become a brahmacārin (sexual ascetic)?” Yudhishṭhira asks Bhīshma, and the answer is: “Let a man go to his own wife during the ṛitu” (xii, 221.11). In xii, 243, the holy duties of the father of the family are enumerated, and there in çl. 7 we find: “Let him call his wife only at the time of the ṛitu (nānṛitau).” In xiii, 93.124, copulation outside the ṛitu is set beside killing a cow and relieving the body into water, and in 94.27 it stands along with the denial of the divine revelation of the Veda. The ethical standpoint is given, for instance, by the fine saying in xii, 110.23 : “ He who eats only to maintain life, who copulates only to beget offspring, who speaks only to utter the truth—he escapes vexations.”¹

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¹ Whoso does not know his wife carnally during the ṛitu must suffer the pains of hell. Mārk.-Pur., xiv, 1 ff.; Garuḍapurāṇasārod., iv, 40; Parāçara, iv, 2 f. (the wife that forgets her duty goes to hell, the husband who does so becomes an embryo-slayer), etc.

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¹ For the sake of offspring was the coitus made. K. i, 107.21. ² This belief, spread over the whole earth, has its place, too, in the Old Indian marriage-songs, and in the wedding ritual (Çāṅkhy.-Grihy., i, 16, 2 ff.; 18, 2 ff.; Pārask., i, 11 ; Hirany., i, 6, 20.2 ; 7, 24).

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Sexual union not from the fire of love, but only during the ṛitu is the old and holy rule for all the four castes, too, which prevailed in the golden age ; and great was the blessing. Thus, i, 64.4 ff. tells us : When Paraçurāma had destroyed all the Kshattriyas in the world, the Kshattriya women to get children approached the Brahmans. With them the pious Brahmans united at every ṛitu, but not from greed of love, nor at any other time. The Kshattriya women now bore offspring strong and long-lived beyond the ordinary, and all creatures ever kept to the pious rule of rightful copulation, even the beasts. So, then, they went to their wives during the ṛitu only, then they throve through their virtuous ways and lived a hundred thousand years. From all pain, of mind and body, mankind was freed ; none died in childhood ; none that had not reached the bloom of youth knew woman (na ca striyam prajānāti kaçcid aprāptayauvanaḥ, çl. 17). They practised all that was fair, good, and pious ; the kings ruled with justice ; and so it rained at the right time and in the right place, and everywhere prevailed nothing but happiness, and strength and peace—it was the golden age. Such glory as this was naturally in the first place due to the most excelling begetters of this race, the Brahmans, but then, too, to their way of begetting virtuous, strong, and beautiful offspring. At this time the woman is not only well fitted and with the right and duty to procreate, but also she is clean. Otherwise uncleanness dwells in her, and every kind of magical harm,² and in the peculiarly mysterious menstrual blood are concentrated all these dread powers, but in it, too, they are discharged. Therefore, the Epic declares, too : “ This according to the law is an incomparable means of cleansing the woman, O Dushyanta ; for month after month the menstrual blood takes all the evil in them away ” (duritāni in the magical and in the moral meaning, K., i, 100.5). Indeed, even if the man suspects his wife of unfaithfulness, he must confidently lie with her again after she has had her courses, since she is thereby cleansed again, like a vessel by ashes (xii, 35.30).¹ So, therefore, the woman can for this reason, too, demand her natural and religious rights during the ṛitu.

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¹ The parallels will be given later. We even encounter a belief that intercourse with the adulteress is magically dangerous to her husband. Hartland, *Prim. Patern.*, ii, 122.

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And she wills to have them : “ As the fire at the time of the sacrifice by fire awaits its time (the time when the offering shall be brought it), so the woman awaits in the time of the ṛitu the ṛitu embrace ” (xiii, 162.41). Ṛitum dehi, the menstruating woman says to the husband, “ give me the ṛitu right, the ṛitu embrace, make that my ṛitu may not be in vain.” So it is in the following tale. As we have seen, the energetic daughter of a Brahman, Devayānī, made the king Yayāti her husband. Her father straitly enjoined on him not to touch her friend and slave-girl, the king’s daughter Ṣarmiṣṭhā. Ṣarmiṣṭhā saw that the time of her ripeness was come, and she thought of her period. “ The time of the ṛitu is come, and I have chosen no husband. What is fitting now, what is to be done now ? What am I to do that the matter may be truly done ? Devayānī has borne, but I am become ripe to no end. As she chose her husband, so will I choose him. The king must grant me the fruit of a son ; that is my fast resolve. And now at this very time perhaps he of the just heart will secretly come before my eyes.” And about this time the king happened to go forth, and tarried near the aṣoka-wood (where the fair one was dwelling), and gazed at Ṣarmiṣṭhā.

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When the sweet-smiling Ṣarmiṣṭhā secretly saw him thus alone, she went up to him, folded her hands before her forehead, and spoke the words unto the king : “ Who can visit a woman in the house of Soma, Indra, Viṣṇu, Yama, and Varuṇa, or in thine, O son of Nahuṣa ? Thou knowest that I am ever gifted with beauty, nobility, and good character. I pray thee, as I ask thy favour of thee : Give me the ṛitu, O highest herdsman of men !” Yayāti spoke : “ I know thee to be perfected in good character, thou faultless daughter of the Daitya. And in thy form I cannot see a needle's point of anything that were to blame. But Uçanas, the Kāvya, said, when I brought Devayānī home : ‘This daughter of Vṛishaparvan shalt thou not call onto thy bed.’” Çarmishṭhā spoke : “An untrue word spoken in jest, or among women, or at a wedding, or when in danger of life, or where all a man's belongings are to be taken from him, does no hurt. These five lies, it is said, are not grave sins (pātakāni).” Yayāti spoke : “The king is the law of life for beings ; he falls to destruction, when he utters untruth ; even though earthly ill¹ befall me, I cannot act falsely.” Çarmishṭhā spoke : “These two are held to be identical : one's own husband, and the husband of the woman friend. Marriage, it is said, is the same for both (one and the same, common, sama).

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