Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c14.9

v2.c14.9

¹ Down to to-day in India, or at least here and there, the husband also is made unclean by the wife's child-bed, and thus exposed to magical influences (Billington, 4-5); and the Gopa ("herdsman") in Bengal is forty days unclean then, just as in case of a death (*Zeitschr. f. Ethnolog.*, Bd. 6, p. 372, after Dalton). The same belief is witnessed to for us by the old law books. As by the death of one of his kindred, so through the birth of a child the Brahman becomes unclean for ten days, the Kshattriya twelve, the Vaiçya fifteen, the Çūdra a month. Viṣṇu, xxii, 1-4; Parāçara, iii, 4. According to Vasiṣṭha, iv, 20-29 the dark ban lies on the Kshattriya even fifteen days, on the Vaiçya twenty days. Cp. Gautama, xiv, 14-16. Indeed, in the matter of the disputed question touched on here and by Vasiṣṭha there were, according to Baudhāyana, i, 5, 11.19-23, those who maintained that only the father, as the main originator, was made unclean through the child's birth. Cp. Bühler's note SBE, xiv, p. 180; Agnipur., 158.60 f.; Garuḍapur., Pretakalpa, 39.9, 11. But Baudh. decides like others : "both parents." See also Manu, v, 77, 79; Agnipur., p. 608; Schmidt, *Liebe u. Ehe in Indien*, p. 530 ff. (also 503 ff.; 509); Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 274-277. In the fact that the father is thus exposed to the evil-minded powers I see the most primitive and main cause of the Couvade, for which so many interpretations have been given. Max Müller's way out of it all is most extraordinary. It is in general explained as a survival from the times of mother-right; the husband wanted, it is said, to make known in a very evident way his claim on the child. So, too, Ploss-Bartels, Henne am Rhyn, Westermarck, Ed. Meyer, and others, to say nothing of those with a fad for the matriarchate. But even where mother-right actually prevails, the husband in many, but by no means in all, cases is deemed to be the natural owner of each child which his wife, that is, his property, brings forth, even when he himself and everyone else knows that he has nothing to do with it; and under father-right this is the universally held view. Among many Brazilian tribes that have the Couvade it is to the father only that the origination of the child is ascribed. Kunicke, *Zeitschr. f. Ethnol.*, vol. 43, p. 553. Cp. there 547-8. Now for the man there is nothing more dreadful than to be in any