Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c9.1

v1.c9.1

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