Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c14.1

v2.c14.1

LIKE Ambā in the tale we have just given, the Hindu says : The woman that is excluded from marriage must be looked on as an unhappy hermaphrodite. In marriage and in love, however, as the Epic again shows, the man seeks pleasure, but the woman seeks the child. And the half-pitying, half-proud smile of the stronger sex at the child-bed stories of women is hardly called for. The heroes, indeed, of the Mahābhārata in their converse tell one another of their victories and fights. Should the woman, then, not speak of her own, and of her “dwelling with death”? The woman in child-bed, indeed, has by the Hindu also, from ages past been held to be an important, even if at the same time unclean, being. One that is unclean in any sense gives the evil powers that are ever lurking about mankind a dangerous opening. Thus, too, swarms of monsters are on the watch to do hurt to the mother and new-born child. A number of them, and also such as are dangerous to women with child are given in iii, 230.24-45 : they carry off children, eat them, for ten nights they are ever to be found in the lying-in room ; a female snake-demon penetrates into the mother’s womb, and there devours the fruit, the woman then brings forth a snake¹ ; the mother of the Apsarases takes the fœtus away, and people then say : “She has lost her child.” So, too, in iii, 228.1 ff., we are told of evil spirits who carry off children after birth or even in the womb.² 8, 14, 21-22, 64-65, 77-80); they carry off the new-born child (ibid., li, 105-107). Cp. further Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 264 f.; Thurston, *Omens and Superstitions*, etc., 246; Chavannes, *Cinq cents contes*, iii, 42; 115; Jātaka, Nos. 510, 513, 540; etc. A long list of supernatural beings that also do harm to children is given in Agnipur., xxxi, 29-31 (Dutt, p. 125), so too in ccxcix, such as especially lie in wait for the young child, and this until the seventeenth year of life. The Bhūtas, Pretas, Piçācas, and Vetālas are foes of conception (cp. Mārk.-Pur., li, 46, 114 ff.) and dangerous to the fœtus (Mahānirvāṇatantra, ix, 124). Mārkaṇḍeyapur., lxxvi, 6-19 is worthy of remark here: Jātaharīṇī (a female robber of new-born children) always first steals two children, and exchanges them with one another, then she steals a third, and eats it. When doing this she takes the shape of a cat, and so awaits near the child her opportunity. Among the Urau (in Bengal) the evil spirit Chordeva, turning into a cat, creeps into the house, and during the birth and for fifteen days after seeks to harm the mother. Therefore the husband must keep watch, and a fire always be kept up. *Zeitschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 6, p. 343 (after Dalton). Cp. Crooke, loc. cit., p. 271; Elsie Clews Parsons, *The Old-Fashioned Woman*, p. 57; etc. In the West, too, this witch-beast is dangerous to the woman lying-in. See Zachariae, *Zeitschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, Bd. 22, p. 235 f. But on the other hand Shashṭhī also, the friendly goddess of the sixth night after the birth, rides on the back of this witching beast (Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, ii, 241); and in general this tailed creature of magic is in near relation with the sexual life of woman. Cp. also Thurston, *Omens and Superst.* of Southern India, p. 77. Like the witches and goblins, the old German wood-spirits also are fond of turning into cats (Mannhardt, *Wald- u. Feldkulte*, i, 89, 112, 146; E. H. Meyer, *Mythol. d. Germanen*, 140); and to the Indians also they are magical beings or witch-beasts (Stokes, *Indian Fairy Tales*, 15, 18, 19, 255).