Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7.24

v1.c7.24

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