Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c9.24

v1.c9.24

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