[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915) › v1.c8 # Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c8: VII. The Pleasures of Sex (Surata) Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c8 - **Language:** English ## Contents - [v1.c8.16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.16) — 4 parts ### VII. The Pleasures of Sex (Surata) ### [v1.c8.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.1) ON the fourth day, however, the woman becomes snātā, ṛitusnātā (one that has bathed), and thereby peculiarly fitted for the delights of love, the surata. The woman stands in very great need of them; without them she pines: asambhogo jarā strīṇām (want of sexual enjoyment is decay and old age for women, iv, 39.78b-79a; v, 39.78, 79).¹ In the Indian view the woman has also a far stronger erotic disposition, and her delight in the sexual act is far greater than the man's. This is shown, indeed, in the Epic, in the tale of the king who was changed into a woman. It will be given later on. We can thus understand Lopamudrā's whim (iii, 97 ff.) : ### [v1.c8.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.2) ¹ “Mankind is made old (is worn down) by care, the warrior by fetters, woman by a life without coition, and clothes by the glow of fire.” Thus a saying of Cāṇakya. See Kressler, \*Stimmen indischer Lebensklugheit\*, Leipzig, 1907, p. 159; cp. Garuḍapur., 115.10; Rām., iv, 35.9; etc. ### [v1.c8.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.3) The great saint and artist in digestion Agastya wishes to wed, and woos Lopamudrā, the bewitchingly lovely princess of Vidarbha, brought up in the greatest luxury and ease. The father is not over-delighted with the proposal, and will not agree, but is afraid of the anger and curse of this powerful one. Then his daughter comes to him in his sorrow, and speaks: “Do not distress thyself because of me. Give me to Agastya, and save thyself through me, O father.” So she is wedded to the Ṛishi. But when Agastya had taken Lopamudrā to wife, he spoke unto her: “Lay aside these costly garments and ornaments.” Then she, with the great eyes, with thighs like banana-stems, laid aside her garments so splendid to see, so costly and thin. Then she put on clothes of rags, bast, and skins, and together with him led a strict life of religion, she the lovely one with the great eyes. The best of Ṛishis went to Gaṅgādvāra, and there gave himself up to the hardest penance together with his obedient wife. Filled with joyful love and lofty regard she served her master, and Agastya, the lord, showed glad love towards his wife. Then the glorious Ṛiṣi saw that Lopamudrā, shining with ascetic practice, had already bathed some time (after her period).¹ Gladdened by her deeds of service, her purity, self-control, splendour, and beauty, he invited her to unite. Then, folding her hands before her forehead, as though filled with shame, the fair one spoke these words lovingly to the holy man : " Doubtless the husband wedded the wife for the sake of offspring. But the joyful love I bear to thee, that do thou (too) practise, O Ṛiṣi. On just such a couch as I had at home in my father's palace, do thou visit me. And decked with divine ornaments I would fain glide unto thee according to my wish, thou, too, wreathed and decked. Otherwise, clad in the brown-red penitential garb of rags, I will not approach thee. Of a truth this adornment (the ascetic garb) must not be soiled in any way whatever."² Agastya spoke : " I have not indeed such treasures for thee, Lopamudrā, as thy father has, thou slender one." Lopamudrā spoke : " Through thy asceticism thou, rich in asceticism, hast full power to procure anything in a moment, whatsoever things there are in the world of the living." Agastya spoke : " It is as thou sayest. But through such a thing (that is, through the making use of the Yoga powers) ascetic merit is destroyed. Give me some bidding whereby my penitential merit shall not be lost." Lopamudrā spoke : " Of my ṛitu time there is only very little left, O thou rich in penance. And in other wise I have not the slightest wish to approach thee. I would indeed in no way destroy thy religious perfection ### [v1.c8.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.4) ¹ Taking çl. 23 into account this is perhaps less likely thus : He saw after some time that she had bathed (bahutithe kāle). Cp. the bahutithe 'hani in i, 108.3, already known from the song of Nala (ix, 12). ### [v1.c8.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.5) ² During sexual union the father of the family must have on a special garment, only to be used for this purpose. Āpastamba, ii, 1, 1.20. And when studying the Veda he must not wear anything he has worn during copulation. Manu, iv, 116; Vasiṣṭha, xiii, 26 (here : unless it has been washed). As to ornaments at this time cp. Meyer, Altind. Rechtsschr., 8; 12 f.; 376 f.; also Jolly, " Medizin " (in the Grundriss), p. 38. ### [v1.c8.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.6) THE PLEASURES OF SEX ### [v1.c8.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.7) (dharma), but prithee bring that about which I wish.” Agastya spoke : “If thou, O lovely one, art so set in thy heart upon this wish, then I will go and seek, my loved one. Do thou stay here, and live as thou wilt.” ### [v1.c8.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.8) Then the complaisant husband went off to three kings one after the other to ask for what he needed. All three welcomed him most reverently at the extreme frontiers of the land, and put all their possessions at his disposal. But each time the holy man saw that their income and their expenditure exactly balanced one another, and he had no wish to bring hurt on living beings by having in such a case taken anything for himself. Accompanied by the first king, he came to the second, then together with these two to the third ; and now together with the three and on their suggestion he went on to the exceedingly rich Daitya Ilvala, well known for his malicious wickedness towards the Brahmans. He had been angered by one of the priestly caste, who would not grant him a son equal to Indra. He now magically changed his younger brother Vātāpi into a goat, slaughtered him, made him ready, and set him before the Brahman. When the Brahman had eaten him, the other called back to life him that was eaten, and the laughing monster that came walking out from the belly naturally thereby split his host in twain. Thus did Ilvala slay many Brahmans. When Agastya, with the three kings, now offered himself as his guest, to him too did he dish up his brother, magically turned into a goat and daintily made ready, and great was the fear of the three brave warriors when the good holy man ate the dish up quite calmly. But the wicked man this time had fallen into his own trap : in answer to his wonted loud “ Vātāpi, come out !” there came from under the high-souled one a wind with a mighty roar, like a thundering cloud.¹ When he went on calling to arouse his brother again, the pious belly-hero laughed him to scorn, and let him know that the brother had long ago been digested.¹ The Daitya prince was beaten and humbly offered his services. Agastya demanded for each of the three kings ten thousand oxen, and the same number of gold pieces, but for himself twice as much, and a golden chariot forthwith, with two fleet steeds before it, swift as thought. All this the poor demon had to give, and with the three kings and all the treasure the holy artist in eating and drinking drove into his hermitage. Then there was nothing more to stand in the way of the longed for love union. Lopamudrā got her princessly wish and a lusty son. ### [v1.c8.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.9) ¹ No wonder that the genius of digestion, Agastya (Wilson’s Vishṇup., iii, p. 128) shows such an overflowing health. As among the peasants in Zola’s \*La terre\*, and elsewhere in the world, things all go their good way amid this blessed noise as the body is thus eased, so, too, the Indian sees in it a token of food well taken and of the favour of the gods, and, in fact, of general present and future happiness. See Dubois-Beauchamp ³, p. 329 ; Schmidt, \*Liebe u. Ehe in Indien\*, p. 397 ; E. Thurston, \*Omens\*, etc. (1912), p. 26. ### [v1.c8.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.10) ¹ Another time Agastya drank up the ocean, and digested it, to the terror of the gods, only too quickly, so that they did not know now how they should fill the mighty bed again with water (i, 105). ### [v1.c8.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.11) We are told, too, of a fair one who reached a remarkably high pitch of virtue in the pleasures of love. King Parikshit rides off at full speed in the forest, lost by his retinue, and follows after a gazelle. Thus he is carried far away. Hungry, thirsty, and wearied, he sees there in the thicket an enchanting lake, covered with lotus-flowers. He throws his horse some of the lotus-stalks and sits down to rest. Then he hears sweet singing. As no human traces are anywhere to be seen, the king is filled with wonder, follows the voice, and finds a wondrous-fair maiden singing and plucking flowers. He woos her, and she consents, on condition that water must never be shown her. The king promises this, and so she becomes his wife. Meanwhile his followers come up, and she is borne in the litter to the royal city. Here Parikshit lives with her in great joy. But the minister has a delightful grove with a splendid tank laid out, and when the king goes to walk in it with his beloved, and sees the tank, he asks her to go down into the water. She goes down below, but does not come up again. The king in despair has the water drawn off from the tank : they find only a frog. " The frogs have eaten my beloved !" the king cries, and orders a general slaughter of the frogs in his kingdom. Then the king of the frogs comes in ascetic garb, shows the prince the wrong he is doing, and tells him that the lady is his daughter Suçobhanā, who has already befooled many kings. On Parikshit’s beseeching him, he gives her to him as wife. And when the king had received her, it was to him as though he had won the lordship of the three worlds; for his heart was hers because of her surpassing excellences in the surata; and with words choked with tears of joy he went down, did reverence to the king of the frogs, and said: “I thank thee”¹ (iii, 192.1 ff.). ### [v1.c8.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.12) ¹ Literally: “I have been granted a favour.” This and like expressions are quite regular, and may be compared with the regular German “genade!” (French, merci) of the Middle Ages. ### [v1.c8.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.13) That the disturbance of the enjoyment of sex was felt as especially inhuman can be easily understood. King Kalmāshapāda (“Pied Foot”),² who had had the curse of man-eating laid on him, comes upon a Brahman and his wife in the forest, engaged in the joys of love. They flee in terror before the business is brought to its end. But the man-eater runs after them and falls on the Brahman. The wife beseeches him with tears to have pity on his victim, for she is not yet satisfied, has her ritu, and wishes for a child. But the king’s mind is shaken by the curse, and he eats the Brahman. Angry tears run down from the poor wife’s face, and turn to fire which sets the whole neighbourhood alight. Then she curses him: “Since thou before my very eyes, before my business was done, hast eaten my husband, thou wilt leave thy life when thou drawest nigh to thy wife during the ṛtu. But Vasiṣṭha will beget thee an heir.” Then she throws herself into the fire and is burned. Kalmāṣapāda’s wife is with him, and later she keeps him away, when he has got his wits back again, but not the memory of this event, and now wishes to approach her during the ṛtu. In his fear of dying he stands aside, and gives Vasiṣṭha the commission (i, 182).¹ ### [v1.c8.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.14) ² This prince when hunting in the forest met Çakti, the eldest son of that Vasisṭha held by him in high honour. He ordered the Muni to give him the path. But the Muni insisted that under the eternal law the Kshattriya must give way to the Brahman. (Cp. Āpast., ii, 5, 11.5, and parallels). So they went on wrangling; at length the angry king struck the priest’s son with his whip “like a Rākshasa”, and had the curse put on him by the insulted man that he should eat human flesh “like a Rākshasa”—one of those curses by holy men and Brahmans which almost always bring down misfortune on the innocent. But in this case a kind of strange Nemesis was at work: the first victim of the new monster was Çakti himself, then he was followed by his ninety-nine brothers into Kalmāshapāda’s maw (i, 176). According to Brihaddevatā, vi, 28 these 100 sons were slain by the Saudāsas (sons or followers of Sudās); according to Sāyaṇa on Rigveda, vii, 104.2 it was a Rākshasa. Cp. Muir, \*Original Sanskrit Texts\*, i, p. 326 ff. ### [v1.c8.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.15) ¹ The same tale is, for instance, in Wilson’s Viṣṇupur., iii, p. 306 ff. (4th Book, 4th chapt.); Bhāgavatapur., iv, 9.20-39 (in both places the explanation is also given of how the king became “Pied Foot”). ### [v1.c8.16.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.16.1) The, in parts very clumsy, legend of Pāṇḍu seems to be an imitation of this last one. The king shot at a couple of antelopes that were just in the joys of pairing.² But it was really a young Ṛishi, who had thus transformed himself and his wife, and was then love-making with her. With a human voice spoke he that had been brought to the ground: “Even they that are seized by hot desire and rage, they that are robbed of understanding, even men that take their delight in evil shun gruesome deeds. Born thou wast in the glorious race of men whose soul lived ever in virtue; how then couldst thou, overcome by desire and greed, so go astray in thy mind?” Pāṇḍu insisted he had every right to slay the beasts of the forest.³ But the male antelope said: “It is not for my own sake that I upbraid thee for killing the antelopes. But thou shouldst out of friendly thoughtfulness have taken heed that I was just pairing. For what man of sense could bring himself at such a time dear to all beings, longed after by all beings, to slay in the forest an antelope when in the act of pairing? For thee, born of the race of the Pauravas, unwearied in the doing of noble deeds, this deed is not seemly, which is cruel, unheard of, one that all men will condemn, which leads not to heaven, but to shame, and is called accursed. ### [v1.c8.16.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.16.2) Thou, who understandest well the particularities and excellences of the enjoyment of women, and knowest the books of the doctrine, and the nature of religious duty and human well-being, shouldst not have done a thing which thus brings about the loss of heaven. I am a Muni purified through asceticism, my name is Kindama. It was because I felt ashamed and shy before men that I did pair with the she-antelope. Turned into an antelope, I roam about with antelopes in the depths of the forest. But as thou didst not know that, for thee it will not be as the murder of a Brahman that thou hast thus slain me, who was wearing an antelope’s shape, and was mazed with love. Yet, O blinded one, thou shalt have this requital: when thou, bewildered with love, art in the embraces of thy wedded wife, thou wilt in this very state go into the world of the dead. The loved one whom thou art embracing at the time of thy death will, however, out of loving devotion, follow thee, O best of the prudent, when thou hast reached the city of the dead, into which all beings come but unwillingly.” When these words had died away life left the antelope, and Pāṇḍu at once was gripped with sorrow (i, 118). From that time on he lived in strict continence as a forest penitent, together with his two wives, and he had his five sons through the gods. “One day the king with his wives was wandering through the forest in spring-time, when the forest blooms and living beings are all mazed. ### [v1.c8.16.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.16.3) When Pāṇḍu beheld the forest with its bloom- and fruit-laden trees, its varied waters and lotus-clumps, love came into his heart. As now he roamed there with joy-lifted mind like an immortal, Mādrī wearing magnificent garb, alone was with him. As now he gazed on the youthful one, clad in thin garments, his love blazed up, like a fire lit in the thick forest. And as he stealthily beheld the lotus-eyed one thus alone, he was overcome with longing and could not keep back his passion. And then the king fell with force on her that was alone, although the queen kept him off, and sought with the strength of her body to wrest herself away. But his senses filled with love, he gave no thought to the curse. In love's longing, forcibly he drew nigh to Mādrī, and himself drew nigh to death, fallen under the spell of love's desire, as he bade fear begone, goaded on by fate. As Pāṇḍu, the Kuru scion of highly virtuous mind, united himself with his wife in the joys of love, he united himself with death. Then Mādrī clasped the lifeless king, and again and again uttered loud cries of woe. Kuntī with her sons, and Mādrī's two children came to where the king was lying in this state. Then spoke Mādrī in torture these words to Kuntī : ‘Come thou hither quite alone; ### [v1.c8.16.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.16.4) the children must stay there.’ When Kuntī heard these words of hers, she left the children there and ran quickly to her, screaming out : ‘I am death's own!’ She now upbraided Mādrī with having led the king on to being stirred with love (praharsha), and called her blessed withal in that she had gazed on the prince's face stirred with love. Mādrī told her how the king would not be held back, and Kuntī claimed as eldest wife, to die with him. Mādrī, she said, must rise, and take the children into her care. But Mādrī spoke: ‘I shall follow after my brave husband, for I have not yet taken my fill of love; let the elder one grant me this. And as he was drawing nigh to me, he lost love. How should I cut this love off from him in Yama's abode there? And I cannot fully make atonement by having borne myself impartially towards thy sons; and so a sin would be laid upon me. With the king's body shall this dead body of mine, well wrapped, be burned. Do this for love of me, O noble one! And take good care for the children, and love me.¹ I do not see anything more to charge thee with.’ After these words the law-keeping wife, the splendid daughter of the king of the Madras, climbed swiftly up to him as he lay on the funeral pyre.”\[²\] See, too, Rām., i, 36.5 ff. ### [v1.c8.17](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.17) ² With this tale cp. Mārkaṇḍeyapur., lxxiv, 23 ff. ### [v1.c8.18](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.18) ³ Not only are all Kṣattriyas in the Epic, and the holy kings of earliest times mighty hunters before the Lord, but even in the midst of a rhapsody on the ahiṃsā and the awfulness of killing living beings and of eating flesh hunting is held up to praise and declared to be wholly sinless; for the Kṣattriya while so engaged sets his own life at stake, it is slaying foes. And moreover Agastya, the great saint, and in our days the hero above all others, of the Tamil people, not only did hunt himself, but also besprinkled (that is, consecrated) the beasts of the forest as sacrifices for all the gods, and thereby made them outlaws (i, 118.12 ff.; xiii, 115.56 ff.; 116.15 ff.; Vasiṣṭha, xiv, 15; Manu, v, 22). The hunt is looked on as a right and virtue of the nobles (Mahāvīracaritam ed. T. R. Ratnam Ayar, S. Ranga-chariar, and K. P. Parab, Bombay, 1892, p. 220: mṛgayā ca rājñāṃ dharma eva); indeed it is called their eternal law (sanātana dharma, Mahānirvāṇat., xi, 142). Cp. my Daçakumāracar., p. 340 f., and Rām., iv, 18.36 ff. ### [v1.c8.19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.19) ¹ Or: Be careful and kind with my children. ### [v1.c8.20](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.20) ² As in the following chapters we are told how the penitents bring the two bodies, Kuntī, and the children to Hāstinapura and hand them ### [v1.c8.21](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.21) If women, then, have such a healthy and natural joy in the surata, the men indeed are in no wise behind. The frequently seen ideal of the Indian, and above all of the warrior, of the blissful life is intercourse with thousands of lovely women in the bloom of youth, smiling with long lotus-eyes at the man, winding their rounded arms about his neck, and pressing their swelling firm breasts against him—women who press great over, and how the two corpses are then burned with all proper ceremonies, this short enigmatic sentence strikes oddly. We only expect to find that Mādrī has killed herself, at least if what follows is looked on as belonging to the original, or at least to the same account. K. for this part has a true flood of words evidently from a very late period (i, 134 ff.). Kuntī here at the sight of the dead man falls to the ground like a felled tree, and gives herself up to a long conventionally-phrased wailing. The penitents who come running up also raise cries of woe, and the five brothers come up in single file, and in the order of their ages say their little verses of lamentation. Then there follows a regular suttee scene: first the penitents do all to dissuade the two wives from offering themselves up; they were to live in chastity and good works, and so be serviceable to their dead husband. Kuntī humbly consents to this, but Mādrī repeats her earlier declarations, solemnly makes her farewell, addresses a wise exhortation to the children, and is consecrated with pious prayers by Kuntī. The Purohita Kāçyapa has bits of gold, sacrificial butter, sèsame, sour milk, rice grains, water-jugs, and an axe brought by the penitents, and has the wood-pile set alight by Yudhishṭhira with fire from a horse-sacrifice (!), whereupon she dedicated to death leaps into the flames (i, 135). In what follows there is then a description given, somewhat as in the Bomb. text, of the body-burning, which in both places must now be thought of as carried out only on what is left of the bones, though this does not agree very well with the actual account. The whole is probably patched together from different versions. It looks as though the idea of the burning which had taken place before this in the penitential forest were borrowed from the example of the Brahman’s wife. In her case all happens naturally; for Mādrī was the wood-pile inserted for better or worse. The fact of the penitents only reaching Hāstinapura on the 17th day after Pāṇḍu’s death does not of course give any support to the text as handed down. Needless to say, however, there may have been a version of the tale in which the final burial was carried out at once in the forest, and then Mādrī’s fiery death quite fits in. But there was an unwillingness, I think, to lose the solemn and splendid public ceremony. Cp. i, 150.10 ff. ### [v1.c8.22](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.22) swelling hips, and thighs like banana-stems against his body, who give lips red as the bimba-fruit to be sucked by his, and who as they glow in the surata not only receive, but also give. And thus the princes of Old India in particular were much given to the joys of love, and Indian literature tells us of many who, owing to an over-eager indulgence in the surata, fell victims to consumption and an early death. So it was with Vicitravīrya, who secretly turned all the women's heads, and through his two big brown wives, with their black curly hair, red high-arched finger-nails, and swelling hips and breasts, became from a dharmātman (virtuous-souled) a kāmātman (one whose soul is love, i, 102.66 ff. ; v, 147.25 ; cf. i, 119.3-4 ; v, 11.10 f.). As he died without children, Vyāsa had to call up offspring for him. The same lot of an early death, uncrowned by offspring, fell to King Vyushitāçva, only too madly in love with his intoxicatingly lovely wife, Kakshīvatī. Then after his death he brought about that which in life was not possible, as will be told later (i, 121.17 ff.). More will be said when we deal with the love life of the Epic hero. Then, too, the sexual embrace comes before us as a healing remedy : The soul has the greatest influence on the body, "for through pain of the soul the body is heated in torment like water in a pitcher by a glowing ball of iron."¹ Skilful leeches therefore in dealing with bodily ills first remove those of the soul, and this is done by their providing the man with sexual enjoyment (iii, 2.21 ff.). ### [v1.c8.23](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.23) ¹ "As thought, so the mind ; as the mind (manas), so the body becomes" (sick and healthy, too). Pañcaçatiprabandha ed. Ballini, p. 34. ### [v1.c8.24](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.24) It is well known also that in the more formal poetry of India and in the doctrinal books various refinements play a great part in the ordinary love embrace. Of these the Epic refers to one only : in the description of the horses wandering about in a battle we find as follows : "Trampled by the hoofs of these steeds, the earth shone in many colours like a woman that is marked with scratches this way and that by the nails (of the lover)" (ix, 9.13). To heighten the powers of love² flesh has from times of old been recommended, and the Indians of the Epic, above all the Kshattriyas, are great, nay enthusiastic, meat-eaters. So even that pattern of virtue, Yudhishṭhira, acknowledges in xiii, 115 that he prizes flesh above everything, and would now learn the good and the evil of flesh-eating from the dying Bhīshma. And Bhīshma grants, too, that there is nothing better than flesh, and that among other things it has many advantages for those who are given up with all their ### [v1.c8.25](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.25) ² Means of heightening the sexual powers of the man, so much even that in one night he can satisfy a thousand women, are known in ### [v1.c8.26](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.26) the Old Indian literature in great abundance. See Rich. Schmidt, \*Indische Erotik\*, 842-857; Garuḍapur., 182.2; 184.13; 192.20-23; 202.25-28; Bṛihatsaṃh., 76; Agnipur., 302.15-16; Chavannes, \*Cinq cents contes\*, ii, 205; iii, 235; etc. It is to be noted that onions, garlic, and beans play a part in this. Because of their magical nature onions, leeks, and garlic are foods strictly forbidden in the law literature (Āpast., i, 5, 17.26; Manu, v, 19; Yājñav., i, 176; Vishṇu, li, 3), and the well-known prohibition of beans would seem, seeing this effect of the anti-Pythagorean field-fruit, easy to understand. As I know from one who has lived long in India, one hears there in our days as the explanation of the onion tabu its too great likeness to flesh. But it is the well-known erotic, magical, and religious importance of the onion plants that seems to be the main reason here. Onions and garlic are found as aphrodisiacs e.g. in Samayamātṛikā, ii, 26. Garlic is among the Ainu the favourite food of the gods (\*Anthropos\*, v, 766); onions and leeks were talismans among the Classical peoples (Schurtz, \*Urgesch. d. Kult.\*, 599); and to-day among the South Slavs the garlic is "a protection against witchcraft and haunting" (Krauss, \*Sitte u. Brauch\*, 398; cp. 545; \*Slav. Volksforschungen\*, pp. 37, 66, 95, 148, 250). The fire of love, too, in Slav belief is made hotter by the eating of garlic (Krauss, \*Sitte\*, etc., 240 f.). Cp. further R. Andree, \*Ethnol. Parallel.\* (1878), i, 41-43; Th. Zachariae, \*Kleine Schriften\*, 358; K. E. Franzos, \*Vom Don zur Donau\* (1878), i, 211; ii, 8; 80; also MBh. K, xii, 141.91 f.; xiii, 91.38 f. That among the old Hindus, too, the onion was prized as a food, anyhow by many, seems to be shown by the tale of the onion-thief, which has wandered into the West and is known there in many places: he was caught, and was given the choice of paying 100 rupees, getting 100 blows with a stick, or eating 100 onions; he chose at first, of course, the onions, but then, with streaming eyes and a face drawn in torment, the cudgelling, and under the pain of the first stroke quickly chose the money fine. See Hertel, \*Studien z. vergl. Literaturgesch.\*, Bd. 5, p. 129 ff., and especially Zachariae, ibid., Bd. 6, p. 356 ff. ### [v1.c8.27](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.27) soul to the “villagers’ custom” (pleasures of love); and there is no doubt but that flesh arises out of the seed (çl. 9 ff.).¹ Çiva and his wife are the ideal figures, carried beyond all bounds, even to grotesqueness, of the Indian power of imagination, in this respect, that they can immeasurably lengthen the embraces of love. When under the mountains this god had wedded the daughter of the prince, he set himself with his wife to sporting in bed. But a long thousand years of the gods went by,² and the heaven-dwellers grew anxious lest the fruit of so endless a begetting should be far too mighty for the world to tolerate. They went therefore to the tireless pair, and begged Çiva that for the weal of all beings he would put a check on his manly powers. He graciously consented, but asked who should catch up the seed already aroused. The earth was chosen for this, but it filled up altogether with it, and so the god of fire was called in to help; he penetrated this flood, and so there arose the mountain Çvetaparvata, and the heavenly cane-forest, where from the god’s procreative fluid the war-god Kārtikeya or Kumāra came into being (Rām., i, 36.5 ff.).³ ### [v1.c8.28](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.28) ¹ Ascetic literature lays stress in India on the view that one must abstain from eating flesh for the very reason that it hinders the control of the senses. So, for instance, Amitagati, Subhāṣitasaṃdoha, xxi, 13 (also honey has an erotic effect, xxii, 18). The main reason for the turning away from flesh is suggested by me in my \*Altind. Rechtsschr.\*, p. 45 (middle); 370, note. ### [v1.c8.29](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.29) ² A year for men is equal to a day for the gods (e.g. Manu, i, 67). ### [v1.c8.30](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.30) ³ Somadeva gives a still more drastic turn to the legend (Kathās., 20.60 ff.). According to MBh., xiii, 84.60 ff., where no mention is made of the love joys of the heavenly pair lasting so long, the gods come to them and get Çiva to promise to beget no offspring, for they are anxious lest it should be too powerful and terrible. Umā’s mother-urge is thus scornfully cheated of its rights, and “since she is a woman, to the gods she utters the hot, raw words of the curse : Now ye, too, shall all be childless!” ### [v1.c8.31](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.31) Neither myths like these, however, nor the sensuality so often blazing up, in any way alter the ethical view of the surata found in the Epic, especially in its didactic parts. Here also it comes before us as something unclean. The evil spirits Pramatha are asked by the gods, the dead, and the Rishis what it is that ### [v1.c8.32](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.32) makes anyone ucchiṣṭa (usually he that has not yet undertaken the needful washings after eating), açuci (unclean), and kṣudra (low, common), and thereby fall a victim to their destroying power. And they answer among other things: “Through copulation men become ever ucchiṣṭa, and if they have practised the ‘upside-down’” (xii, 131.4)¹. And in the golden age there was no sexual union whatever. So we find in xii, 207.37 ff.: “So long as men chose to retain the body, so long they lived; there was no fear of death. Nor did they know either the custom of copulation; their offspring came into being through the mere wish. In the days of the Tretāyuga (silver age) thereafter, the children were begotten by touch; for they, too, had not the custom of copulation. In the Dvāpara age arose among creatures the custom of copulation.” In our own evil or Kali age it is now needful; but it is regulated. It must not be practised in the open air (ākāçe, xii, 228.45; cp. Meyer, \*Altind. Rechtsschr.\*, 237), and must be practised secretly (xiii, 162.47; xii, 193.17²); in the latter passage is added that it must also be in lawful wise, which may mean the restriction to one's own wife, but according to Nil. refers to the ṛitu. Then there is only the vulva for it; done in the mouth it is a crime (vii, 73.43). The āsyamaithuna is also named as one of the dreadful things making their appearance towards the end of the world: Bahuprajāḥ, hrasvadehāḥ, çīlācāravarjitāḥ, mukhebhagāḥ striyo, rājan, bhaviṣyanti yugakshaye (iii, 188.41; cp. vii, 73.38 ff.).¹ So, too, homosexuality is a dreadful sin: “The blind ones, evil-livers, very foolish ones, however, who find their delight in intercourse with a base womb (especially of an animal, but also of a woman of low rank) (viyonau), and with men, are born again as men incapable of begetting” (xiii, 145.52).² Here, too, seems to belong the passage from the description of the evil state of things at the time when a world age is coming to its end: “Men and women will walk their ways after their own wishes, and not be able to suffer one another, when the end of a yuga has come about. Then, when the end of the world is at hand, the woman will not find content with her husband, nor the man with his wife ” (iii, 190.45, 50).¹ And you shall not be a thrall to the pleasures of love, when you celebrate a sacrifice to the forefathers (çrāddha). The çrāddhamaithunika is set before us, in vii, 17.32, as a great sinner. All those taking part are then bound to keep chaste. “ It is held that on this day copulation is to be avoided. It is as one pure that you shall always partake of the death-meal (çrāddha). He that gives or shares in a death-meal, and goes to a woman, his fathers must lie that month in the seed ” (xiii, 125.42, 24).² Further, we find (xiii, 104.29) : “ In the first night of the new moon, in the night of the full moon, in the fourteenth night and in the eighth night of each half of the month you shall always practise complete chastity.” ³ ### [v1.c8.33](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.33) ¹ Adharottara is here probably an expression for “perverse” love (viparīta surata), for the usual meaning (here also accepted by the schol.) does not fit very well.—Here belongs also iii, 136.13: To the penitent Yavakrī(ta) there comes a magical being (kṛtyā) in the shape of a woman beloved by him, infatuates him, and takes away his water-jug. Since he is now ucchiṣṭa and robbed of his water-jug, an enemy Rākshasa gets him in his power. Then even the public harlot washes her hands and feet after the act of love, and rinses her mouth out (Kuṭṭanimata, 162 f.). A bath or wash afterwards is enjoined, for instance, in Manu, v, 144; Viṣṇu, xxii, 67; Parāçara, xii, 1; Mahānirvāṇatantra, vii, 75. Cp. Kāmasūtra, p. 179 of the edit.; and Wasserschleben, \*Die Bussordnungen d. abendländ. Kirche\*, 1851, p. 216: Maritus, qui cum uxore sua dormierit, lavet se, antequam intret in ecclesiam. Among the Hovas of Madagascar for one week before the circumcision the parents and sponsors of the child to be circumcised must abstain from coition, otherwise \*l'opération ne réussirait pas bien\* (Anthropos, iv, 378). And dozens of such cases. Cp. too Thurston, \*Omens, etc.\*, p. 29. ### [v1.c8.34](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.34) ² Cp. e.g. Vasistha, vi, 9. ### [v1.c8.35](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.35) ¹ We are told by Nil.: The women in Bengal (Vaṅgeshu) are known for beginning with their mouth the business of the vulva to excite the man's desires, owing to their excessive craving for the joys of love. Such a thing is, of course, strongly condemned by the law books. Whoso has unnatural intercourse with his wife, his forefathers have to live the month through in his seed (Vasiṣṭha, xii, 22 f.); according to Mahānirvāṇat., xi, 44 he is even to be punished with death. For unnatural desires, of whatever kind, the law writings and the Purāṇas lay down various purifications and penances (and expulsion from the caste). Anyone practising such lewdness or other forbidden sexual intercourse is, according to Baudhāyana, iii, 7.2, the same as a Brahman-murderer. ### [v1.c8.36](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.36) ² But perhaps more likely so: “the blind ones, evil-livers, among men (persons) very foolish ones, who delight themselves with intercourse with a base womb,” which then of course might be meant for sodomy; according to xii, 228.45 rather for intercourse with women of low standing. Cp. xii, 227.14, and as to viyoni also xii, 296.11; xiii, 104.133; 106.72; K, xiii, 53.1 f. For: maithunam puruṣeshu compare: maithunam pumsi in Manu, xi, 68. According to this passage and Viṣṇu, xxxviii, 5 by homosexual perversion the man loses his caste; while Manu, xi, 175, Viṣṇu, liii, 4, prescribe bathing in the clothes as the atonement. Lesbian love between girls is punished with a heavy money fine and ten strokes of the whip (çiphā); the married woman who thus stains a maid shall be at once shaved bald, have two fingers cut off, and be led on an ass through the place. Manu, viii, 369 f. ### [v1.c8.37](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.37) ¹ Also MBh., xii, 228.73 would belong here, if kaççic chishyasakho guruḥ has been rightly translated by Deussen : “ Now and then the teacher was the disciple’s lover ” (the immorality which spread among the Daityas is being spoken of). But perhaps it only means that the disciple’s reverential relation towards the teacher vanished, and too little restraint, or over-familiarity, came in its stead. As an evil habit of the degenerates it may here be further mentioned that the men dressed in women’s clothes and the women in men’s, and they so associated with one another (çl. 68), which reminds us of other phenomena known. Cp. xiii, 104.85.—The passage in the text (iii, 190.45, 50) could, it is true, also be speaking only of adultery. ### [v1.c8.38](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.38) ² The same threat is in Mārk.-Pur., xxxi, 31-34, while according to Vasiṣṭha, xi, 37 they have to live on the seed. Cp. Manu, iii, 250; Gautama, xv, 22. The sinner himself goes to hell. Garuḍapurāṇasārod., iv, 41. ### [v1.c8.39](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.39) ³ Not on the 8th, 14th, 15th day of the half month (the Parvan days) nor on the four days when the moon changes must love be indulged in. Baudh., i, 11, 21.18 (cp. 22); Vasiṣṭha, xii, 21; Manu, iii, 45; iv, 128; Yājñav., i, 79; Viṣṇu, lxix, 1; Mārk.-Pur., xxxiv, 43-44. Otherwise the sinner goes to hell. Garuḍapurāṇasārod., iv, 41. The root of these (and of who knows how many similar and seemingly purely ethical) precepts is shown quite correctly in Baudhāyana, i, 11, 21.19: “ On the Parvan days evil spirits are in wait.” Especially dangerous then are naturally an empty house, a graveyard, a tree, water, etc. (see e.g. Viṣṇu, lxix, 7, 8; MBh., xiii, 131.4 f.; i, 170.8-11; 15 f.; 89; Manu, xi, 174 f. (= Agnipur., 169.36 f.) ). ### [v1.c8.40](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.40) Cp. xiii, 104.89 ; 228.45 ; K, xiii, 211.43 ; 233.50. And for the permitted times, too, the rule holds: "Only in the evening (in the night)!" For the morning belongs to the religious duties, midday to the worldly (artha). Cp. for instance xiii, 22.27 ; vii, 73.38 ff. ; ii, 5.20, and comment. Among the most dreadful sins coition during the day is given in vii, 73.38 ff. ; so also in xiii, 93.121 ; 94.24 ; and in the self-cursing formula of Arjuna, already given (vii, 73.41, 43).¹ ### [v1.c8.41](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.41) ¹ The same prohibition is in the law books. According to Mārk.-Pur., xiv, 74, 76 he that copulates by day is badly tortured in hell. So in other Purāṇas. Furthermore in the morning and at twilight continence must be observed. Mārk.-Pur., xxxiv, 82.73 ; Viṣṇusmṛti, lxix, 10. And in a vehicle must Venus not be sacrificed to (e.g. Manu, xi, 175 ; Viṣṇu, liii, 4 ; Agnipur., 169.37 (= Manu, 175, cp. Meyer, \*Altind. Rechtsschr.\*, 237)). Thus then the conduct of the loving couples in Flaubert's \*Madame Bovary\* and Maupassant's \*Bel-Ami\* and doubtless elsewhere, who quench their desires in the hired coach, is doubly wicked. Speaking, too, during the "work of darkness" is banned (Agnipur., 166.17a-18a), naturally, as with the other dispositions there given, so as not to arouse evil influences. A shorter compilation of rules for sexual intercourse with the wife is to be found in Manu, iii, 45 (cp. Bühler's parallels), and a good one, somewhat more in detail, in Viṣṇu, lxix ; particularly excellent is Carakasamhitā, iv, 8, and good, too, is Garuḍapur., Pretakalpa, xxxii, 7-19 ; Bṛhatsamh., 78.11 ff. ; etc. Much that is beautiful is given us, for instance, in Viṣṇupurāṇa, iii, 11.110 ff., a passage which may here be given as an example of such similar precepts often to be found in the law books and other writings: "At the time of the ṛitu do thou, O lord of the earth, approach thy wife, happy, under a constellation bearing a masculine name, at a propitious time, during the best even-numbered nights. But go not to the unbathed woman, to the sick one, to the menstruating one, not to her without desire, not to the angry one, not to one in ill-repute, not to one with child, not to one uncomplaisant, not to her that longs for another man or is without love (or: that is unwilling), not to another man's wife, not to one that is faint with hunger, not to one that has overeaten. Nor do thou thyself be weighed down with such qualities as these. Bathed, wearing a wreath and scented, bursting with strength (sphīta), not wearied or hungry, filled with love and tender inclination, let the man go to sexual union. The fourteenth and the eighth day of the half-month, the day of the new moon, as also the day of the full moon and also the ### [v1.c8.42](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.42) But the Epic particularly often stresses the prohibition against a man embracing any woman other than his own wife. This has already been touched on. A few more passages are given here. He who in other things is pious, and is content with his own wife, and does not even in thought covet another woman, wins a glorious lot in the other world, and the same merit even as one that offers a thousand horse-sacrifices (xiii, 107.10, 50 ff.).¹ Subhadrā bewailing her son, says in ### [v1.c8.43](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.43) ¹ But he has also the duty laid on him to speak no untruth, even for his father and mother, to sacrifice to the fire god constantly for twelve months, and to eat havis, when the eleventh day has come ; and as the two last-mentioned things are extraordinarily meritorious, ### [v1.c8.44](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.44) day when the sun comes into a new house of the zodiac—these are the Parvan days, O ruler of princes. The man who on these Parvan days partakes of oil, flesh, and woman goes after death to hell, where dung and urine must be his food. . . . Neither outside the vulva, nor in the vulva of another (not human) being, nor using medicines (exciting or strengthening the manly powers), nor in the house of a Brahman, a god, or a Guru, let a man give himself up to love’s pleasures, nor near holy trees (or : village shrines, caitya), nor by cross-roads, nor in places where many roads meet, nor in graveyards, nor in groves, nor in the water, O lord of the earth. Neither on the Parvan days named, nor in either twilight, nor troubled by urine or stool, must the wise man go to the joyful union. Copulation on the Parvan days brings misfortune on men, that by day brings evil (or : sin), that done on the ground has sickness after it, and calamitous is that done in water. Let none ever approach the wedded wife of another, not even in thought, how much less in words. Not even longing (asthibandha) have those who lie with such a woman ; after death such a man goes to hell, and already here his life is shortened. Intercourse with the wedded wife of another is destruction for men, even in both worlds. Mindful of this, let the wise man go to his own wife, when she is in her ṛitu and free from the blemishes already told ; and if she has a longing for love, then even outside the ṛitu.” (Translated after the Bomb. edit. Çaka 1811.) The places and times here set forth, but not exhaustively, have of course become tabu because of their magical danger. A highly instructive parallel to them is offered, for example, by the monstrously intricate rules of behaviour for the Snātaka, which take up so much room in the Gṛihyasūtras, the law books, and the Purāṇas, and form a real store-house for the history of superstition and of mankind. ### [v1.c8.45](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.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 ### [v1.c8.46](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.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. ### [v1.c8.47](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.47) the chastity and truthfulness that is demanded besides them, play, anyhow in the present text, a secondary part. ### [v1.c8.48](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.48) hell. “Men who give themselves up to promiscuous intercourse (prakīrṇamaithuna) have, as men of vice and spurners of order, a short life, go to hell, and invite their being reborn impotent” (xiii, 104.12; 145.53).¹ He that touches another’s wife is born as a wolf, as a dog, as a jackal, then born as a vulture, a snake, a heron, as also a crane (baka). The blinded villain who defiles his brother’s wife becomes for a year a kokila cock. He that to slake his lust lays hands on the wife of his friend (cf. xiii, 101.16), of his teacher (guru), or of the king, is born after death as a swine. He will be five years a swine, ten years a porcupine, five years a cat, ten years a cock, three months an ant, one month an insect (kīṭa), and then, having had these embodiments (saṃsāra, cp. iii, 183.70), will be born in a worm’s existence (kṛimiyoni). In this worm’s existence he will live fourteen months, and then, having atoned for his evil (adharma), be born again as a human being (xiii, 111.75 ff.). For five offences, indeed, there is no atonement (niṣkṛiti), through them a man becomes an outcast, unworthy of intercourse (asambhāṣhya) with forefathers, gods,² and pious men, goes to hell, is roasted there like a fish, and has to live there on matter and blood. These are: the murder of a Brahman, cow-slaying, intercourse with another’s wife, unbelief, and living on a woman (xiii, 130.37-40). In the same way Rām., iii, 38.30 teaches: “There is no greater sin than to touch another’s wife.” On the other hand xii, 35.25 prescribes, indeed, an atonement for him that seduces the wife of another; but it is noteworthy that it is the same vow of mortification that is also laid on the Brahman-murderer. The former, however, only need keep it for a year. “Then he is free of his sin.” This punishment falls on him “as a robber of another’s property” (paradārāpahārī tu parasyāpaharan vasu). The matter is in xiii, 129.1-4, looked at from the same, though sharper defined, standpoint: He that lies with another man’s wife has to bear the same guilt as he that takes property away from a Brahman, which is, indeed, an offence crying to heaven. He is equal to a Brahman-murderer (v, 35.46 ff.). But if the Brahman himself takes some woman who is not his wedded wife to his bed, then to atone for his guilt he must lie with his (bare) back on the grass (xii, 165.28), and so, and only in three years does he wipe out the sin of a night. The member of the priestly caste becomes apaṅkteya, loses his social position, if he is a pander or brothel-keeper (kuṇḍācin), has his wife's lover living in the house (that is probably, also makes profit from him), and if he visits the wife of another. On the other hand he is deemed to be a brahmacārin or continent man, if he at the time of the ṛtu always embraces his lawful wife (xiii, 9.7 ff., 28, 29; 89.7–9).¹ But also the noble view that sexual self-control is the holy and pure thing finds expression. In xii, 269.27 Kapila sets forth the rule: “Let the man delight no woman that is the wife of a hero,² nor let him call a woman when she is not in the ṛtu; let him keep in his person the pious vow of wedded faith (bhāryāvrata).³ Thus will the gate of his sexual parts be warded.”⁴ There is then the magnificent verse, xii, 210.37, wherein the body is called “the holy city with the nine gates” (navadvāram puraṃ puṇyam).⁵ Among the four gates that must be watched over is found the male member, both in xii, 269.23 ff., and in xii, 299.28; 335.4.¹ If the wife is unfaithful to the husband or the husband to the wife, then this is an evil state of things which forebodes universal and dreadful disaster (xvi, 2.11). Of course, he, too, is a wicked man who helps others to adultery: “He that seduces or touches another’s wife, or gets her for another, goes to hell” (xiii, 23.61).² ### [v1.c8.49](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.49) ¹ They also fall out of the caste (e.g. Agnipur., p. 644). ### [v1.c8.50](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.50) ² The explanation of this expression given in xiii, 130.3 is that gods and forefathers scorn his sacrificial gift. ### [v1.c8.51](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.51) ¹ That the priestly caste in Old India was not so very distinguished for its chaste living is shown indeed by this passage, but still more so by many others in the literature. But it is well to use some care in accepting tales of priests not only among ourselves, but also in the Hindu land. According to an old proverb the he-goat and a Veda-learned Brahman are the lewdest of beings. Āpast., ii, 6, 14.13. In the Epic, however, what is told of them does not give a particularly unfavourable picture of their sexual morality. That they anyhow preached a loftier sexual ethic is also shown by numerous passages in the Epic. ### [v1.c8.52](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.52) ² It would be quite easy instead of vīrapatnīm to read vīrāpatnīm, “let him delight no woman that is not his wife, O hero.” But a hero's wife is very dangerous (xii, 82.51). ### [v1.c8.53](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.53) ³ So Manu, ix, 101, enjoins: “Unto death shall they keep wedded faith to another. This in a word is what is to be recognized as the highest duty of wife and husband.” ### [v1.c8.54](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.54) ⁴ The often-appearing thought of the gates of the human body is then dealt with in the following śloka, and appears, too, elsewhere in the Epic. ### [v1.c8.55](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.55) ⁵ What is probably meant is the nine openings (srotas, kha, chidra): mouth, nostrils, ears, eyes, anus, penis. The wholly arbitrary interpretation of Nīlakaṇṭha is, indeed, different, and besides it there is a like one ### [v1.c8.56](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.56) ¹ The three others are arms (and feet), the tongue, and the belly. ### [v1.c8.57](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c8.57) ² The views held in the law literature and the Purāṇas on intercourse with the woman that is not one’s wedded wife, but particularly with the wife of another, are no less severe. Here we can only give a few instances. The adulterer has a short life and goes to a hell of torment. Mārk.-Pur., xxxiv, 62; xiv, 76; Agnipur., 203.15, 20. He shall be put to death, unless he is a Brahman. Baudh., ii, 2, 4.1; Manu, viii, 539 (cp. 352 f.). In adultery the man’s penis and testicles are to be cut off, in evil-doing with a maiden his property shall be seized, and he banished from the land. Āpast., ii, 10, 26.20-21; 27.1. The king must then shield such women and maidens from stain and hand them over to their guardian, if they promise to undertake the prescribed penances. When they have done these they must be treated as they were before their fall. Cp. Meyer, \*Altind. Rechtsschr.\*, index under “Ehebruch”. Besides these, however, there are also lighter punish- _First 60 of 104 passages. 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