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Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c9: IX. The Pleasures of Venal Love

Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c9

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IX. The Pleasures of Venal Love

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AWAY in the forest the penitent buried himself in the deepest mysteries, or lived piously cut off from the world, and strove earnestly, although not always with complete success, after a stainless chastity; but in the towns and cities the harlot, often very wealthy and of great distinction and quite often very well educated, went in her splendour along the street, taking to herself the fiery eyes and hearts of the men, but above all their purses—India is the land of sharpest contrasts. And in what civilized land has not “venal love” played its part? The Hindu has always sung the praises of “the public woman” as the very type and embodiment of perfect womanhood.¹ In the Epic, too, as already in the Veda, the woman for sale is something that is a matter of course, even though the enraptured song of praise to these earthly lieutenants of the unembodied god of love, as sung especially in the artificial poetry, is here wanting. Ever since those dim days, when, according to the already told legend of the Mahābh. (i, 104.36), Dīrghatamas, saint, and poet of the Veda songs, blind from birth, brought into the world the pleasures of love granted for ringing coin, the horizontal trade had been flourishing in the land of India; and if the “public woman, open to the visits of all” (nārī prakāçā sarvagamyā) wore a red garment, a red wreath, and red gold (viii, 94.26), by this garb, recalling the god of death and the public execution,¹ she was not marked out as something criminal or ill-omened, although, of course, her class took a low rank in the social order, but it was far rather that she must be distinguishable for the greater ease and comfort of the world of men, as for instance the charitable sisters of the order of Saint Amor, in the German Middle Ages by their yellow dress so often spoken of.²

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¹ On her see my three books: Daṇḍin’s Daçakumāracaritam, p. 46 ff. and 205 ff., Kshemendra’s Samayamātṛkā, and Dāmodaragupta’s Kuṭṭanimatam (all published by Lotosverlag, Leipzig), where, however, I should now like to add much, and in some things to make some changes. See, too, in my Kauṭilya the passages under “Lustdirne”. There is no need, perhaps, to make mention of R. Schmidt’s excellent works: Vātsyāyanas Kāmasutra, Indische Erotik, and Liebe und Ehe in Indien. In them will be found abundant information on this leading figure in the Indian life of love, or rather lechery.

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¹ In a model city, according to Meyer, Kauṭilya, 75.1; Agnip., 106.7, they must dwell also in the southern part, that is, in Yama’s quarter of the heavens. On red as the colour of death see the good essay of Fr. v. Duhn, “Rot und Tot”, *Arch. f. Religionswissenschaft*, Bd. 9, p. 1 ff.

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² But the German city-fathers may usually have had quite other ends in view in laying down such marks for them. See, e.g., G. Wustmann, “Frauenhäuser u. freie Frauen i. Mittelalter,” *Arch. f. Kulturgesch.*, Bd. 5, p. 469 ff.; Max Bauer, *Die Dirne u. ihr Anhang*, p. 110 ff. Mantegazza (*Geschlechtsverhältnisse d. Menschen*, p. 363, note) reports a catalogue of the sixteenth century which came out in Venice, and offered for everyone’s needs the most exact information as to the public women living in this city. Suchlike lists from old and from modern times are to be found in Iwan Bloch, *Die Prostitution*, i, 491. About the red garb of the harlot see *Daçakumāracar.*, p. 51. Red is the most favoured colour on earth (Stratz, *Die Frauenkleidung*³, p. 74), and also in India the colour of life, passion, love (*Hindu Tales*, p. 106; Tod, *Rajasthan*, i, 612; red at the Holi festival; and so on); it is the most usual colour for women’s clothing in the Epic also (e.g. i, 221.19; 212.9; xii, 296.20; xiii, 45.5), and then yellow. Both are very elegant, as yellow was the modish colour, too, in the German Middle Ages. Cp. Billington, *Woman in India*, pp. 76; 181; 183. Then harlots and criminals like keeping up survivals from a rougher culture, as for instance tattooing and a superstitious religiosity among ourselves also (cp. e.g. Maupassant’s “Maison Tellier”). As red is so mighty a scarer of demons, it is no doubt on this account that it is to the liking of the always-highly-endangered lightning conductors of public vice. At the love visit by night, it is true, Rambhā in the Rām., and Urvaçī in the MBh. wear dark clothing, but naturally to be less seen. The white garments of the fair one hastening to the tryst is often mentioned in Indian literature, and made use of for poetical feats of skill. Red wreaths are worn too by the hetæræ of heaven when they make their way to the hour of dalliance (Rām., iv, 24.34).

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The vecyā or strumpets are in the Epic, as elsewhere in Indian literature, an important part of the life of the city. When the great fight is to burst forth, and the armies are there fully equipped, Yudhishṭhira, the pious one, sends into the royal city, among many other more or less tender greetings, one, too, to these granters of delight: “My dear friend, ask after the welfare of the fair-decked, fair-clad, scented, pleasing,

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as they are by the earthly abhisārikā. Although according to xiii, 104.84 no red wreaths are to be worn, but only white ones, yet red flowers may be worn on the head. But kamala and kuvalaya are to be altogether avoided. Vishṇu, lxxi, 11-12 is very strong that no red wreaths but water-flowers are to be worn. Cp. Gobhila, Gṛihyas., iii, 5.15. As, indeed, white is in general the lucky colour, and red often the colour of ill-hap, of evil magic, and of death, white wreaths are among the lucky things, red among those foreboding evil. In the main, white flowers are also to be offered to the gods, red ones and black to the spirits (bhūta), and red-flowered plants with prickles serve to bewitch foes. To the Yakshas, Gandharvas, and Nāgas let water-flowers be offered. That Kāma, however, the god of love, was worshipped with red aṣoka-flowers is shown, for instance, by Gauḍavaho, 754. It is natural that Çiva, the god of the souls of the dead, and of procreation, should wear red wreaths (xii, 284.147). Cp., too, Billington, p. 222 f. Flowers that have grown on a graveyard or in sanctuaries of the gods must not be brought along to the wedding or to the pleasures of love (rahas). See Rām., v, 27; ii, 25.28; MBh., xiii, 98.28 ff.; and cp. also Zachariae, Zeitschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk., Bd. 14, p. 303 f., 397, note 3; Lewy, Zeitschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk., Bd. 3, p. 136 f.; then Dubois-Beauchamp ³, p. 645 (red flowers for the bhūta); ibid., 388 (red flowers offered at magic rites); Thurston, Omens and Superstitions, etc., pp. 42, 47, 48 (white flowers lucky, red unlucky). Red turbans and red garments are to be worn by the priests at the sacrifice that is offered up as magic against foes. Baudh., i, 6, 13.9. Cp. ii, 8, 15.5. Here no less belongs the following solemn magical rite: He who in disputes fixes the boundary wears red garb and on his head red wreaths (and earth). Yājñav., ii, 152; Nārada, xi, 10; Bṛihaspati, xix, 11; Manu, viii, 256. Rules as to which flowers are to be offered the gods and the forefathers, and which not are given also in Vishṇusmṛiti, lxvi, 5-9. Cp. Agnipur., ccii, 1 ff. and cclxviii, as also Mahānirvāṇat., v, 147 ff. In the third passage it is, however, at the same time taught that best as offerings are the fifteen spiritual flowers.

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happy, pleasure-fraught women of the houses of joy (veçastriyaḥ), whose glance and speech glide so easily and sweetly along" (v, 30.38). Indeed, the heroes in their camps have no need to feel themselves alone: on both sides, besides other objects of a luxurious life, they have taken with them plenty of these most necessary supplies. When they march out to the battlefield of Kurukshetra, in the midst of the army of the Pāṇḍavas is Yudhishṭhira, as also çakaṭāpaṇaveçaç ca yānayugaṃ ca sarvaçaḥ "carts, traders' goods, and pavilions, and the chariots and draught-animals in a body" (v, 151.57-58; cp. 196.26). These chariots and draught-animals are certainly for the hetæræ also, perhaps for them first of all, for in the Epic the better sort of women, particularly the noblewomen and the Kshattriyas, usually drive in yāna.¹ When the camp has been pitched on the battlefield, these sections take their place in the baggage-train in the rear. The enemy force under Duryodhana is accompanied by craftsmen, professional singers, spies, and gaṇikā (women of pleasure, v, 195.18, 19); and in çloka 12 we are further told expressly: "But Duryodhana had the encampment made like another embellished Hāstinapura." In the Rāmāyaṇa (ii, 36) Daçaratha gives orders for a splendid army to be fitted out for his son Rāma, and there says (çl. 3) : “ Women that live by their beauty, those skilled in words, and rich merchants shall adorn the well drawn up troops of the prince.” Even when the Pāṇḍavas with Draupadī and other women, and the burghers that wish to go with them set out in deepest grief to make sorrowful visit to their mother, who has withdrawn into the penitential forest, and their other kinsfolk there dwelling, Yudhishṭhira gives orders not only that the very splendid royal household shall go with them as a necessary retinue, but also that the “ chariots, traders’ goods, and brothels ” shall also be taken (xv, 22.21). These womenfolk were indeed an indispensable part of any expedition. Therefore the rulers took them with them when they went hunting, or took their diversion in the country, not to speak of the excursions to the pleasure-gardens. Thus Duryodhana goes hunting with his brothers and friends, and to brand the cattle in the herdsmen’s stations away in the forest. It is a splendid setting out for the green depths, which is very excellently described : the wives of the Kshattriyas go with them in thousands, burghers along with their wives, then singers, too, and skilled huntsmen in crowds ; and traders and the girls of joy have their regular place (iii, 239.22 ff.). Princes that find their delight in horses, elephants, and harlots are evidently not an unusual thing (Rām., ii, 100.50). As so often in other literature, the strumpet is not only the camp’s ornament, but the ornament too of civic life, that lovely-coloured, scented flower that the city puts in its hair for all to see, when a festival or some other joyful event is being celebrated.¹ King Virāṭa

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¹ Ratha is seldom found here. See iii, 293.19; iv, 22.11. Yāna, so far as I know, does not denote a litter in the MBh.; this is called çibikā or perhaps nṛi-(nara-) yukta yāna, and is used especially for carrying out dead bodies, but also for women. See i, 127.7, 9; xi, 10.1 f.; 16.13; xii, 37.41; xv, 22.20; 23.12; xvi, 7.19; cp. xvi, 7.11 and 33. On the other hand, at least Rām., vi, 114 uses yāna and çibikā as equivalent to one another. Cp. too MBh., iii, 69.21, 23. The ladies' chariot is drawn by horses, the most distinguished or typical beast of the Kshattriyas (cp. also Baudh., ii, 2; 3.4, 9), and by she-mules, sometimes by oxen (the Brahmans' beasts), asses, or camels (xvi, 7.11, 33; iv, 22.11), while according to the law writings the ass and the camel are tabu as draught and saddle beasts (see, for instance, Viṣṇu, liv, 23; Manu, xi, 202; Yājñav., i, 151; iii, 291; Jahn, Saurapurāṇa, p. 141); and it is an ill omen also for the man in the Epic, if he in a vision drives with asses (southwards). But see also ix, 35.23. According to the Çiçupālavadha the women ride on asses or horses in the army, or drive in light chariots (v, 7; xii, 20; xii, 14). That in particular the 'circulating beauties' (vāramukhyā) drive along in yāna we learn for instance from Bhāgavatapur., i, 11.20.

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¹ It is mentioned times beyond number that the “ city beauties ” dance on joyful occasions. So, too, Mārk.-Pur., cxxviii, 9. The very sight of them brings good luck, while, for instance, the sight of a pregnant woman foretells evil. Agnipur., 230.4, 11 ; v. Negelein, *Traumschlüssel d. Jagaddeva*, p. 132 f. ; Bloch, *Die Prostitution*, i, 474-476. Therefore the Vishṇusmṛiti (lxiii, 29) bids the father of a family : When he is on the journey—well known to be an undertaking under the threat of magic—he shall, as on Brahmans, filled water-pitchers, fire, and other things bringing blessings, so also look on harlots. Cp. Thurston, *Omens and Superstitions*, etc., pp. 23 ; 46 f. It is no wonder therefore that these women at public festivals

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has with the Pāṇḍavas' help been victorious in a dreadful battle, and now sends messengers with the bidding : " Go into the city, and make known my victory in the fight. Young girls shall bedeck themselves, and come out of the city to meet me, and all kinds of musical instruments, and the beautifully adorned gaṇikā " (iv, 34.17.18). So, too, as soon as he hears his son's arms have been successful, he has him welcomed in the triumphal procession of youths and sellers of love, and by the young sister of him that is wearing the diadem of fortune, and her girl-friends (iv, 68.24, 26, 29). When Rāma is to be consecrated as the " young king ", the priest Vasisṭha directs the city to be given a festal garb and the things set up in it that bring good fortune, the temples of the gods and holy places to be put in order, and all other preparations to be made. Among these is a band of fair-dight daughters of pleasure drawn up within the second wall of the royal palace (Rām., ii, 3.17, 18). And in 14.33 ff. he then sends to tell the king in a long list all the holy and worldly requirements whose fulfilment he has now seen to, and of all the multitudes of musical instruments, and of the well-decked harlots (çl. 39). Rāma, instead of going to be dedicated as prince goes into long exile and to the stern fight with Rāvaṇa ; but at length he comes home again victorious, and then his half-brother, filled with holy joy, gives the command : " Pure men shall honour all the divinities and the holy places of the city with scented wreaths and the playing of music. Sūta, well-versed in songs of praise and old legends, as also all panegyrists (vaitālika), all masters of musical instruments, and the gaṇikā in full numbers, the king's wives and ministers, the soldiery and the bands of army women, the Brahmans and the nobles, and the corporations (gaṇa) with the heads of the guilds¹—all these shall go out to behold the moonlike countenance of Rāma " (Rām., vi, 127.1 ff.). And when King Kuçika, together with his wife, comes back to his capital after a heavy trial of patience laid on him by the Rishi Cyavana, he is received by an escort of honour made up

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¹ Or : with the guilds at the head ?

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and shows had their own particular seats for the spectacle (gaṇikānāṃ pṛthagmañcāḥ). See Wilson's Viṣṇupur., ed. Hall, vol. 5, p. 24 f. ; p. 58, note; and cp. my Daçakum., p. 50 ff.

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of the army, the great ones of his kingdom, and the hetæræ (xiii, 53.65, 66). To Janaka of Videha, the pious king who has penetrated into the deepest secrets of the world, Çuka is sent by his father, Çuka who came into being from the araṇī¹ and the seed of Vyāsa that fell on it, and who as a wonder-youth stands out through deepest knowledge, loftiest purity of heart, and a mighty asceticism, is sent that the prince so filled with the knowledge of salvation may bring him into the holy of holies of that knowledge. The guest is welcomed with great honours; the minister takes him into the third walled court of the royal abode, and there into a splendid pleasure-grove, escorts him to a seat, and goes off. “To him came running up quite fifty pleasure-girls,² splendidly dight, fair-hipped, young and tender, sweet to gaze on, wearing a thin red garment, decked with gleaming gold, well versed in speech and honeyed words, skilled in dance and song, speaking mid smiles, like the Apsarases in loveliness, practised in the service of love, gifted with the knowledge of the heart’s stirrings, in all things skilful; they offered him water for the feet, and other things, and marked him out for the tokens of highest honour. Then did they offer him well-tasting foods belonging to the season of the year. When he had eaten, they showed him in all its details the enchanting pleasure-wood by the women’s abode. And playing, laughing, and singing gloriously, thus did the women, wise in their knowledge, wait on the youth of the noble nature. But he that was sprung from the araṇī, he the pure-minded, bare of all doubt, was set only on the work before him, and as one master of his senses and overcomer of his anger he took no joy,³ nor felt anger. These glorious women offered him a heaven-like couch (çayyāsana) worthy of the gods, adorned with precious stones, spread with priceless rugs. But when Çuka had washed his feet, and performed his evening worship, he sat himself down on a bare seat, pondering only on his task.” He then spent almost the whole night sunk in his thoughts, and with holy works (xii, 325.33 ff.).

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¹ The lower rubbing-stick in making fire (naturally often compared to the woman).

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² Anyhow such as the Old Indian rulers are wont to keep in their harems. Cp. my Daçakum., p. 54; Gauḍavaho, 161-166 (haughty and merry do bathe the hetæræ of King Yaçovarman in the pleasure-tanks of the rulers he has conquered); ZDMG, 60, p. 282 f.; Meghadūta, 35; Karpūramañjarī, i, 18.6-8; Prasannarāghava, iii, str. 11; Daçarūpa, ed. Hall, p. 141 at top; Çiçupālav., xi, 20.

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³ Or: was not amorously roused (hṛiṣyate).

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It was better than this youthful penitent, who was assuredly to be put to the test,¹ that the woman’s hero Kṛiṣhṇa knew how to appreciate such marks of hospitality as these. When he is sent by the Pāṇḍavas to the Kauravas, if possible to bring peace about, not only did Duryodhana have rest-houses with women and other needful comforts provided for him everywhere on his road thither, but Dhṛitarāṣhṭra also gives orders : “ My sons and grandsons, except Duryodhana, shall all drive to meet Janārdana in splendid chariots, and finely adorned. And the fair harlots shall go on foot, comely-decked, to meet the most high Keçava. And all lovely maidens, too, who wish to go forth from the city to behold Janārdana may go unhindered ” (v, 86.15, 16).² exhibition of woman's nakedness in the Middle Ages and later, see especially R. Günther, *Weib u. Sittlichkeit*, Berlin, 1898, pp. 141-163; and on the public exposure of the hetæræ in Greece and Rome, and other matters, see the same, p. 134 ff., Ploss-Bartels, i, 336-48.

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¹ So Marco Polo (Yule) [^3], ii, p. 366 relates of the Yogis that when a man wished to be received as one of them, they first sent beautiful temple-dancers to him to make trial of his steadfastness (cp. the note there, p. 370). But following the Venetian’s description, it seems to be not Brahmans who are in question, but rather Jains.

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² In like wise Kṛiṣhṇa when he comes back to Dvārakā (Bhāgavatapur., i, 11.20) is, among other things, given a festal welcome by the servants of love, driving in chariots; and the Abbé Dubois, moreover, tells us that “ Ordinary politeness requires that when persons of any distinction make formal visits to each other they must be accompanied by a certain number of these courtesans ” (p. 585). But on the next page he stresses that in public the Indian prostitutes are far better behaved than their European sisters, and are treated there correspondingly. Taken by itself, the translation could also be: “ All the fair maidens from the city who wish to go to see Janārdana must go there naked.” But, as already explained, anāvṛita in the MBh. does not seem to mean “ unclothed ”. Furthermore cp. say xv, 22.22. Then, again, such a piece of lewdness would seem to be foreign to the Indian of old, however little squeamish he often is. It is mainly confined to the West, especially to the older history of the Christian lands. There it often happened that the fairest maidens of the town or city, and these the daughters of the patricians, went to meet a distinguished guest in the costume of Eve in paradise, and escorted him in. On the

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As is well known, the vast numbers of prostitutes were in the Middle Ages also, and not least in Germany, well cared for by the State, looked on with favour by the townsfolk and the rulers, and the object especially of keen interest from the clergy and monks, and so forth. Cp. addition, 375.27 in my Kautilya, and as an explanation of Manu, x, 47, Agnipur., 151.14b: *strijivanam tu, tadrakshā, proktam vaidehakasya ca*. A visiting prince was entertained with the free entry into the houses of ill fame; the public women even went to meet such august lords outside the gates as his escort of honour, was done for King Sigismund at Ulm in 1434. References are to be found in Ploss-Bartels, i, 416 ff.; Günther, *Weib u. Sittlichkeit*, p. 197 ff.; Weinhold, *Die deutschen Frauen i. d. Mittelalter*, ii, 2 ff.; Schultz, *Das höfische Leben zur Zeit d. Minnesinger*, chap. vii; Max Bauer, *Die Dirne u. ihr Anhang*, pp. 94-100. Here we give only one more passage: "Everywhere at public festivities, especially the reception of princes, they (the public women) were represented as a separate class beside the rest of the people organized in corporations. When important persons were passing through, their (the women's) houses were specially ornamented and lighted to receive them; indeed sometimes on such occasions they were clothed at the town's expense. In Zürich it was still the custom in 1516 that the burgomaster, the servants of the court of justice, and the public women should eat together with the foreign envoys who came to the town" (Dr. C. Bücher, *Die Frauenfrage im Mittelalter*, p. 46 f.).

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The counterpart to the Old Indian glorification of the gaṇikā is, as is well known, the high esteem in which the hetæræ were held among the Greeks of old; and in the time of the Abbasids also such ladies are said to have held a like position in Baghdad (Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, *Die Frauen d. Orients*, espec. p. 114). They are likewise held in high esteem in Java, in many parts of Africa, and so forth. Günther even delivers himself as follows on p. 82: "Intercourse with the hetæræ raised the man (in Hellas) quite consciously (!) onto a higher level; for it brought out the individual in him who sought out, heedless of the State, that other individual akin to him, who brought him, over and above the sensual, a lofty spiritual pleasure." Such words would have sounded, to the ears of an old Greek, both quite incomprehensible and ridiculous. He looked for the beautiful body, the refinements of love, and entertainment. This the hetæræ offered him. He had, indeed, honour This being the actual importance and value set on the girls of pleasure, it can easily be also understood that the Epic is filled with zeal against them in its didactic parts. A vigorous saying that is found again and again goes : “ As bad as ten slaughter-houses is one oil-miller’s wheel,¹ as bad as ten oil-miller’s wheels is an inn-sign, as bad as ten inn-signs is a harlot, as bad as ten harlots is a king ” (xiii, 125.9). The ruler is then sharply told : “ Drinking-halls and strumpets, as also traders and mimes, and gamblers and others like them—all these are to be held in check as harmful to the kingdom. Where they set their feet fast in the kingdom,² they are an infliction for honest subjects ” (xii, 88.14, 15).³

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¹ Because of destroying living beings. For this reason by a decree of Rana Jey Sing no oil-mill might work during the four rainy months. Tod, *Rajasthan*, i, 586. Cp. Glasenapp, *Der Jainismus*, 69. For when there is much rain there swarm huge numbers of gnats, insects, and all kinds of nuisances in the air. See MBh., iii, 182.4; Fuller, *Studies of Indian Life*, p. 12 f.

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² Or : become masters of the kingdom.

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³ As is especially to be seen from Indian narrative literature, the harlot and dicing go together. But when Hopkins deduces from MBh., ii, 68.1 that “ loose women frequent the gambling halls ”, he has misunderstood the text. In the same way thieves and other criminals are inseparable from public women, as, for instance, is so often seen from the Daçakumāracaritam. Yājñavalkya, ii, 266, therefore, among the four tokens by which the police can catch a thief gives that of living in a house of ill-fame (açuddha vāsaka); cp. Meyer, Kauṭilya, 335.8–336.14; addit. 336.34. In the Jaina tale Agaladatta, the harlots’ abodes are given as the first places where

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from such unions, but mainly because he could afford himself such a luxury. This had to be dearly bought. The small townsman gave his money, the poor poet or artist the fruits of his talent. Then it was something distinguished to yield fitting homage to this the “ eternal woman ”. Cp. Iwan Bloch, *Die Prostitution*, i, 283 f.; 340 ff.; 354 ff. The same thing is probably true of Old India. Setting aside a few exceptions, there could probably be no question in either place of real “ spiritual pleasures ”, not to speak of all the fine things in Indian poets, and the mystic-Germanic sentimentalism about the union of souls between “ kindred individuals ”. More sensible here is the glowing dithyramb of Robert Hamerling in Socrates’ words addressed to Theodata (*Aspasia*, i, p. 234).

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thieves are to be looked for (*Hindu Tales*, p. 249 f.). A list very like that given there of the places preferred by criminals is found in Manu, ix, 264 ff., and in it, of course, the veça (pleasure-house) has also its place. The same is true of MBh., xii, 140.41-42. Here praveçashu, if it cannot exactly mean brothel (and I do not know of any evidence in support), should anyhow be changed to ca veçeshu. But as the singular panagare here is in any case extraordinarily rare, we must in all probability read : panagareshu veçeshu. Thus, too, the parallel, in great part like-worded, in i, 140.63-65. Over and above the fact that the list in the MBh. is so like the two former, in Indian literature the wine-house and the women's house are separated from one another only by a very well oiled folding-door. Among the "open thieves or tricksters" (prakāçavañcaka, prakāçalokataskara) is the harlot, together with the gamblers and those who use false measures and weights, who demand bribes, who make attacks with violence, and who live by giving information as to lucky times and ceremonies (Nārada, Pariçishta, 2 and 3; Manu, ix, 256 ff.); and Bṛihaspati, xxii, 9, says: Gamesters, prostitutes, and other swindlers must be punished. Cp. Wustmann, "Frauenhäuser u. Freie Frauen in Leipzig im Mittelalter," *Zeitschr. f. Kulturgesch.*, v, p. 473. So the tale comes back then again to the ruinousness of inns, harlots, kings, and so on in Manu, iv, 85 also, and, with some changes, in Yājñav., i, 141.

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From the harlot the Brahman (or the father of a family) must not accept anything, nor eat any of her food. Vasishtha, xiv, 10; li, 14; Manu, iv, 209 (cp. 85, 86); Vishnu, li, 7 (otherwise fast seven days!); Yājñav., i, 161 (cp. 141); Agnipur., 168.3-9 (otherwise atonement by mortification). The man of the priestly caste must, of course, never visit her. If a Brahman goes to an hetæra, then he must carry out a heavy mortification so as to be cleansed. Jahn, Saurapurāṇa, p. 140. Intercourse with her is on a level with sodomy (Parāçara, x, 12; Mahānirvāṇatantra, xl, 43). The slaying of a woman that belongs to all is even free from punishment according to Gautama, xxii, 27. But the law writings also give them a somewhat more humane consideration. Their ornaments, being the tools of their craft, must not be confiscated, even though the rest of their property be taken from them. Nārada, xviii, 10 f. And this "public cheat" must also act honourably. If she has received her hire from a man, and then refuses, she must pay the double as a fine. Yājñav., ii, 292. According to Agnipur., 227.44b-45a, if she has promised herself to a man, and then goes to another, then she must restore to the injured one double the amount he has put down, and furthermore also pay a fine to the royal treasury. Kauṭilya under certain circumstances even condemns her to an eightfold restitution. See 195.8-14.

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If a dispute arises between public women and their lovers, then the head hetæræ and the lovers shall settle it between them. Bṛhaspati (SBE, vol. xxxiii, p. 266). Very instructive information is also to be found in ZDMG (= Zeitschr. d. deutsch. morgenländ. Gesellsch.), Bd. 60, p. 282 f.; and especially in Kauṭilya; see index under "Lustdirne". In it the public "fair lady" comes off far better than in the Dharma writings. As a matter of course, and as is well known, woman and piety go readily hand in hand, and in this even the public kind of both these is no exception. Thus the holy bathing-places (tīrtha) are often known not only as places for all kinds of love-making, but also as places where light women ply their trade; and in the Tantra literature at a Devacakra, one kind of cycle connected with the worship of a god (or Tantric-mystic), the leading part is played, as Çakti or embodiments of the active power of the divinity, by those five well-known kinds of harlots: rājaveçyā (the harlot of rulers), nāgarī (the city harlot), guptaveçyā (the secret harlot, that is, the woman of good family who secretly follows this calling or these joys), devaveçyā (the harlot of the gods, or temple-dancer), and brahmaveçyā, that is, the tīrthagā (the harlot of the bathing-places). See Mahānirvāṇatantra transl. by M. N. Dutt, 1900, p. xxvii f.

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END OF VOLUME I

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