Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c13.41

v2.c13.41

Very important, however, is now the question : How are boys begotten and how are girls? The matter has already been touched on at the beginning of this book. Nil. in discussing i, 90.14 repeats the Indian theory: If there is an over-measure of male seed, then it will be a boy, if an over-measure of menstrual blood, a girl; if the two are equal, an hermaphrodite; if the seed splits, twins. There would then be no deliberate determination of sex, about which popular belief elsewhere believes it knows so much. For the Mahābhārata itself takes its place with the many examples which are to be found in this matter in Indian literature since the days of the Brāhmaṇas, and assures us in xiii, 87.10, 11 that if the forefathers are worshipped with Ҫraddhas on the second day in the half of the month with waning moon, then there will be girls; if they are worshipped on the fifth day, then many sons will be begotten (cp. Āpast., ii, 7, 16.8, 12; Viṣṇu, lxxviii, 37, 40). xiii, 104.151 sounds more reasonable, and not unlike a view often found among ourselves: “Let the wise man go in the night to his wife, when she has bathed on the fourth day (after the start of her period); on the fifth day it will be a girl, on the sixth a boy.” However we may here have only the well-known Indian belief: On even nights it will be a son, odd nights a girl (Carakas., iv, 8.6; Garuḍapur., Pretakalpa, xxxii, 12; Abegg, Pretakalpa, xv, 10; Agnipur., 153.2; Manu, iii, 48; Bṛhatsaṃh., 78.23; etc.). Another view which is often held in later times would seem to show itself already in Yājñavalkya, i, 80: The man must on an even night, etc., approach once his emaciated wife (kṣāmā), then he will be a son. But perhaps the reference is only to the wasting effect, anyhow presumed, of the woman’s period. There is probably an inkling of the truth in Bṛhatsaṃh., 68.14-16 (almost wholly = Garuḍapur., 65.19b-22a): the matter depends on the nature of the man’s seed. In the marks, too, that show the sex of the child in the mother’s womb India finds itself on the same ground as the West. The beautiful, blooming complexion, that is to say, of the mother, is spoiled by a female fruit in the womb, probably from envy; while the complexion keeps its freshness and beauty when a boy is on the way. This is too the teaching of the Old Indian physicians. The Hindus are in agreement also with the Greeks, Romans, Jews, older Germans, Slavs, etc., in naturally allotting the preferred side, the right, to the male sex. So we find in Divyāvadāna, pp. 2, 98 and in other places in this collection of Buddhist legends: “Five particular characteristics has a wise woman: (1) she knows whether a man loves her, she knows whether he does not love her; (2) she knows the time, she knows the period; (3) she knows if she has conceived a child; (4) she knows by whom she has become with child; (5) she knows whether it is a boy, she knows whether it is a girl—if it is a boy, then it stays curled up on the right side of the belly, if it is a girl, then on the left side. So too in the Avadānaśataka; see Feer, Ann. Musée Guimet, vol. xvii, p. 5, and in Schiefner’s Indische