Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c11.156

v2.c11.156

¹ Countless Indian passages teach the same thing. Here we give only a few: Kuṭṭanīmatam, 801; Kathākautukam, i, 30; 67; 70-71 (love is the highest thing); Mārk.-Pur., lxv, 33 ff. (the world is made up of kāma). Therefore, too, the full enjoyment of love and the world of sense is a right of mankind. King Yayāti is cursed by Çukra to grow old at once, for having acted so ill by Devayānī. But he has not yet tasted kāma and youth to the full, and therefore begs his sons in turn to take on themselves his old age for a thousand years, and lend him their youth for such time, but each finds old age too ugly and joyless; only the youngest, Pūru, is ready at once. Yayāti delights himself for a thousand years with his beloved wife Çarmishṭhā, and enjoys the objects of sense also, but in virtuous wise. At the end of the thousand years he gives his son youth, takes over old age, and acknowledges that kāma is never stilled by kāma (i, 83 ff. Cp. Rām., vii, 58, 59, where the same tale is found again somewhat different; elsewhere, too, it is found with differences again; cp. Wilson’s Select Works, ed. Rost, vol. iii, p. 36 f.). Sexual union is (together with sleep and food) the law and the right of the body (dehadharma, Rām., iv, 35.1).