Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c8.45

v1.c8.45

vii, 78.24 : “ Go thou, my little son, to the same place whither come through their chastity the Munis obeying strict vows, and whither come the men with but one wife ” (cp. çl. 31.32). “ The men who find delight only in their own wife, and ever act towards other women as they do towards their mother, their sister, their daughter, they whose eyes through good ways of life are shut to strange women, who do no hurt to strange women even in thought, even when these women approach them secretly with love—such men come into heaven ” (xiii, 144.10-15 ; 33). In the long and solemn imprecatory formula wherein Bharata wishes all the most dreadful horrors and evils for him who has been glad to see Rāma banished, he also says : “ May the evil-minded one, with whose consent the noble one went forth, set in the second place his wife that has bathed after her period and is keeping her ritu ! Given up to the pleasures of a love against law and virtue, blinded, may he leave his own wife on one side, and consort with other women, he with whose consent the noble one went forth ! ” (Rām., ii, 75.52, 55). Mahābhārata, xii, 90.32 says emphatically : “ With unknown women, with such beings as belong to the third sex, with women of loose morals, with the wives of others, and with maidens let not a man have union.” Besides the unknown woman, the woman with child is named as forbidden in xiii, 104.47.¹ Furthermore, we read (xiii, 104.20 ff.) : In all castes a man must never approach the wife of another. For there is nought in the world which so shortens life as that the man on earth should visit the wife of another (= Manu, iv, 134). As many pores as are on women's bodies, so many years will he sit in