Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c12.17

v2.c12.17

³ As against these passages (to which many could be added from Indian literature) there are many bitter attacks also to be found: such is the verse in an ascetic didactic discourse which calls wife and child leeches (xii, 301.70). Then in one of the many strophes of the MBh. preaching unlimited individualism, we find: “The wife is all-devouring wear and tear (jarā), the son but a seed, the brother a foe, the friend only something to give gifts to (klinnapāṇi, elsewhere also ārdrapāṇi in the Epic), only the self is the enjoyer of pleasure and pain (xii, 139.30). The evils that come towards the end of the world are also to be seen from the fact that men take their wives as friends (iii, 190.19, 20). They cannot find or value anything better, and women’s respect is gone.