Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c9.26.3

v1.c9.26.3

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.