Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.154

v2.c11.154

And why should mankind at all times and among all peoples not try every possible means to win the love of one desired? Love and the joys of love are often deemed to be the highest of all earthly blessings, and, indeed, not only among the Indians. Often these latter ponder the question: Which of the three ends of life: dharma (duty, religion, virtue), artha (worldly advantage, wealth, high position, etc.), kāma (desire, enjoyment, love) is the highest? Thus, too, the five sons of Pāṇḍu discuss this hard riddle (xii, 167). Each one gives his opinion. Bhīma speaks: "Without kāma a man has no wish for worldly profit, without kāma a man does not strive after the Good (dharma), without kāma a man does not love; therefore kāma stands above the others. For the sake of kāma the Ṛishis even give themselves up to asceticism, eating the leaves of trees, fruits, and roots, living on the air, and wholly bridling their senses, and others bend all their zeal to the Vedas and lesser Vedas, making their way through the whole of the holy study, as also to ancestral offerings, and sacrificial acts, to alms-giving and alms-taking. Traders, husbandmen, herdsmen, craftsmen, as also artists, and those that carry out actions consecrated to the gods, give themselves up to their works because of kāma. Others, again, take to the sea filled with kāma; for kāma has the most varied forms: everything is steeped in kāma. No being ever was, or is, or will be, higher than the being that is filled with kāma. It is the innermost core (of the world), O king of righteousness; on it is founded dharma and artha. As butter from sour milk, so kāma comes forth from artha and dharma.¹ For oil is better than the squeezed oil-cake, and better melted butter than butter-milk. Better is the flower and the fruit than the wood, kāma is more excellent than artha and dharma. As honey is the sweet juice from the flower, so kāma is from these two, according to the teaching of tradition. Kāma is the womb of dharma and artha, and kāma makes up their essence. Without kāma the manifold workings of the world would not be thinkable.