Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7.78

Language: English

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In the Indian law writings, too, the precept is found that a menstruating woman must not be approached; and whoever so offends must, according to Yājñav., iii, 288 fast and eat *ghī* for three days. The woman must not inflict her presence on others at this time; detailed rules for her behaviour are given, e.g. in Vasisṭha, v, 9.5 ff.; cp. Parāçara, vii, 9-18. She was kept away from the ancestral sacrifice (Mārk.-Pur., xxxii, 25); her very glance makes unclean (ibid., l, 47; Dubois-Beauchamp, 347, cp. 708-10); even speaking to her sullies (Āpast., i, 3, 9.13), and food she has touched must not be eaten (Vasisṭha, v, 7; Yājñav., i, 168; Manu, iv, 208; Viṣṇu, li, 16; etc.). If she wilfully touches a twice-born man, she shall be flogged with a whip (Viṣṇu, v, 105). It should be said that Bṛihaspati tells us that the women “in the north” have sexual intercourse during their period (ii, 30), but this, at any rate, is probably not Aryan India. That the monthly issue is a mark of sin, but also a setting free from ill, that it is, indeed, a third or fourth part of the murder of a Brahman, is often asserted with the legend belonging thereto. So Vasisṭha, v, 4 ff.; and here the following account according to Taitt.-Saṃh., ii, 5, 1.2-5 is given: Indra, tortured by the murder of a Brahman, unloaded a third of his guilt onto women, but for this he had to grant them the grace that they should get children from their husbands during the ṛitu.

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On the other hand in accord with a true Indian view we are told as follows in Bhāgavatapur., vi, 9.9: For the boon of constant enjoyment of love (or: to be allowed to live after their own desires? caçvatkāmavareṇa) women took on themselves a quarter of the sin; this is seen in them month after month in the form of the menstrual blood. But the woman in this wise is fully rid of the sins she has herself done, particularly those of sex, as has been already established from the MBh. (p. 219). With this the law literature and the Purāṇa literature is in agreement. The monthly flow cleanses her from married unfaithfulness (vyabhicāra), Yājñav., i, 72; Agnipur., clxv, 6 f. (where we must read na tyajed); 19 ff.; from pollution in thought, Manu, v, 108; Viṣṇu, xxii, 91; cp. Parāçara, vii, 2; x, 12. Baudhāyana, ii, 2, 4.4 teaches that women have an incomparable means of cleansing, they are never wholly stained; for month after month their sin is carried away. Exactly the same in Vasisṭha, xxviii, 4, and essentially the same in v, 4; iii, 58. Hence, then, comes the ordinance in Parāçara, x, 16-19: The woman who does wrong with a Caṇḍāla (pariah) must confess her guilt before a gathering of ten Brahmans, then fast a day and night plunged up to the neck in a well with cow-dung, water, and mud, then shave her head quite bald, and live outside the house practising further mortifications and cleansing acts, up to the time of her period;

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then she is clean, but must furthermore give food to Brahmans, and bestow a pair of oxen. According to 20, however, she is absolved through the Cāndrāyaṇa vow. Vasisṭha, xxviii, 1 ff. even declares: The woman even through a lover becomes no more unclean than water through urine and dung, than fire through rubbish it destroys; no matter how bad she may be, or what adventures she may have experienced, let her husband wait till she gets her courses; through these she then becomes spotless again. Before this, as a maid, she has already belonged to Soma, Gandharva, and the fire god, to them that hallow, and cannot after that be polluted by the fact of going from hand to hand—a conception to be discussed in another connection. According to Parāçara, x, 20, woman is like the earth, and can never become wholly unclean. Women, water, and pearls are never spoiled, as we have already been told. Cp. Muir, *Metrical Translations*, p. 277 f. Her mouth, that is, her kiss, is always clean, happen what may (Manu, v, 130; Yājñav., i, 187; Viṣṇu, xxiii, 49; etc.), and she herself during the pleasures of love (Vasisṭha, xxviii, 8; Baudh., i, 5, 9.2). Parāçara, viii, 34, declares that a woman, a child, and an old man are never unclean. Çrī, the goddess of happiness, abides, indeed, in the body of wedded and unwedded women (Viṣṇu, xcix, 8 ff.). A marriageable woman who is not actually having her period is the godlike draught of immortality (Vasisṭha, v, 1).

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Indeed, Vasisṭha, xxviii, 9, proclaims: Woman is pure in all her limbs, while the cow is pure only behind (cp. Meyer, *Altind. Rechtsschr.*, 146). Then there are views which also give other reasons for this monthly *purgatorium terrestre et naturale* of woman, which is generally looked on as so uncanny and fraught with evil. Mārkaṇḍeyapur., xlix, 8 ff., relates: In the beginning, women knew nothing of this contrivance of nature, but in spite of copulation they got no children. Later the passion of love (rāga) came into the world, and then, with it, both the woman's period, and offspring through the sexual union; for till then propagation had only been by means of concentrated thought (dhyānena manasā), and that very sparingly (11; cp. this book, p. 370). Cp. the already mentioned passage in Vasiṣṭha, v, 4 ff., and its source. As is clear enough from the puberty customs, savages, too, know that the monthly flow is needful for impregnation. See further *Anthropos*, v, p. 772 f.; vi, 703. The American Indians quoted in the last-named reference share moreover the belief that this flow is first called forth through sexual intercourse. It would thus be the holy duty of the girl to indulge in love in good time. It is no wonder that evil spirits, then, disturb and destroy this blessed monthly act. See, for instance, Mārk.-Pur., li, 42 ff.; 114 ff. Cp. also Winternitz, *Altind. Hochzeitsrituell*, pp. 92-95.