Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c8.59

v1.c8.59

ments: chastity for so many years, a year of the Mahāvrata mortification, the highest possible and also lower money fines, and so forth. The adulterer is a thief (caura). Yājñav., ii, 301, etc. (cp. Saṃyuttanikāya, ii, p. 188). Intercourse with another’s wife is reckoned among criminal deeds of violence (Nārada, xvi, 2), and according to 6, along with murder of any kind it belongs to the worst class of all. The punishments are: Not less than 1,000 paṇa fine, confiscation of all property, banishment, branding, cutting off the offending member, death (8). Cp. Bṛhaspati, xxii, 1. So, as in robbery and violence, in adultery also the witnesses are not to be, as happens in other cases, most carefully examined first, but anyone can here be a witness. Manu, viii, 72; Nārada, i, 189 (p. 101 in Jolly’s edit.); Yājñav., ii, 72; Viṣṇu, viii, 6. The adulterer, indeed, is reckoned among the seven kinds of murderers (ātatāyin), as the man, too, who raises his hand to utter a curse against another, and he that makes use of a destructive magic from the Atharvaveda against another man; and as a murderer he can be slain without further ado. Viṣṇu, v, 189 ff. Cp. MBh. K, xii, 14.79-83. So Mahānirvāṇatantra, xi, 53 enjoins: If a man comes upon his wife in another man’s arms, and kills both, then the king must not punish him. A memorable case out of Rājput history is told by Tod, Rājasthan, ii, 523: Prince Gopināth of Bundi goes in the night to a Brahman’s wife. The husband takes and in the end binds him, goes to the sinner’s royal father, and announces he has taken a thief who has stolen his honour. What did the man deserve? “Death.” The injured man hurries home, beats in the prince’s head with a hammer, and throws him into the street. The king, his father, silently submits. Among the Gurkhas, who are said to descend from the Rājputs, the husband kills the adulterer publicly. Wright, Hist. of Nepal, 32. In the case of certain women there can be no question whatever of adultery. The wives of actors and singers have already been mentioned on this point. As to the abhisārikā see later. The following can be freely visited: the public harlot (vecyā), the svairiṇī, if she is not a Brahman, and the slave-woman who is not held back (demanded) by her master (dāsī niṣkāsinī “who may go out freely”). But intercourse with such women as these (bhujishyā) is adultery too, if they are the concubines (parigraha) of another man. So Nārada, xii, 78 f. But on the other hand, Bṛhaspati, xv, 7 says: He that lies with the slave-girl of a man becomes himself his slave. And in other places too she is found not without protection. Yājñav., ii, 290 lays down: In the case of confiscated serving-women and slave-women (harlots? avaruddhāsu dāsīshu bhujishyāsu tathaiva ca) the man must pay a 50 paṇa fine. Cp. Kauṭilya (transl.), 311.10 ff.; Manu, viii, 363. The svairiṇī