Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c7.78.1

v1.c7.78.1

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.