Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.127

v2.c11.127

Now everything on earth is limited; so, too, the supply of beautiful women for each man, and no less so his strength for enjoying them. In heaven it is otherwise. Times beyond count the Epic emphatically says that the doughty man is rewarded in the world beyond with boundless joys of love, and hosts of wonderful women. In particular the Apsarases are often mentioned as a kind of Indian valkyries, or rather, houris of paradise, and the welcome is painted which they give the hero fallen in the fight.² As an ever-present spur in the fiery speeches of the battle-leaders, and in the thoughts of the warriors, we find the glorious prospect of this unmeasured bliss. But all other good deeds as well, and all the virtues are rewarded in this way: asceticism, fasting, alms-giving, gifts to the Brahmans, and so forth; and the member of the priestly caste must naturally in this not be left behind others, although the warrior, indeed, in these, anyhow mainly, warlike poems comes before us as the chief candidate for those very willing ladies of heaven. Here we only mention a few passages: xiii, 96.18, 19; 82.85, 86, 88; 64.17, 30; 106.53 ff.; 107.6 ff.; iii, 186.7; viii, 49.76-78; xii, 98.46; 99.4; Rām., iv, 20.13; 24.34; Holtzmann, ZDMG, 33, p. 642.