Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7.57

v1.c7.57

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