[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915) › v1.c7.49 # Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7.49 Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7.49 - **Language:** English ### [v1.c7.49](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c7.49) 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. - [Previous: v1.c7.48](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c7.48) - [Next: v1.c7.50](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c7.50) - [Up: v1.c7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c7) ## Cites (1) - [Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.purana.markandeya.21.74) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c7.49](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c7.49) · Pramāṇa