Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c8.46

v1.c8.46

¹ The prohibition of intercourse with the pregnant woman is well known to be widespread throughout the world, and of course above all because the pregnant woman is looked on as unclean and bringing disaster. See Ploss-Bartels ⁴, i, 601 ff.; Elsie Clews Parsons, *The Old-Fashioned Woman* (1913), p. 80 ff. If her bare shadow falls on a snake, it becomes blind. Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, ii, 143. And yet Vasisṭha, xii, 24, at least, brings forward an old and holy authority for women being allowed to share in the sport of love, even when far advanced in pregnancy, in virtue of a favour granted them by Indra.