Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7.26

v1.c7.26

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.