[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915) › v2.c15 # Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c15: XIV. Woman in the House Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c15 - **Language:** English ### XIV. Woman in the House ### [v2.c15.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.1) NOR is the careful, busy housewife left altogether out of account in the Epic. While the brothers are living in banishment in the forest with Draupadī, the idea comes one day into the head of the divine holy man Durvāsas—who on the slightest grounds will break out into an anger full of mighty curses, and finds a cannibal-like joy in scratching others till they bleed¹—the idea comes into his head to lead the Pāṇḍavas and their wife into some very evil plight. With a huge crowd of disciples he comes to them as a guest just as their meal is over. Draupadī now does not know what to do. The wonderful cooking-pot (sthālī) given by the sun god bestows indeed every kind of food, but as Draupadī has eaten last, it will give out nothing more for this meal.² She, too, has now already eaten her meal. But the artist in curses and his following must be fed. In her difficulty she calls on Kṛiṣhṇa, who comes and gives the guests their fill in supernatural wise without their having eaten at all (iii, 263). ### [v2.c15.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.2) ¹ On the spiteful ill-nature of this "holy man with the purified soul" besides what has been already told and our passage see especially iii, 262.7-15; xiii, 159. In hotness of temper his no less pious brother-hermit Bhūti may be compared with him: in Bhūti's hermitage the wind therefore did not dare to blow strongly, the sun to shine hotly, the rain to cause any dirt; even the water he drew in his pitcher was afraid of him. Mārkaṇḍeyapur., xcix, 2 ff. Cp. MBh., iii, 110.9 ff. Durvāsas was, however, in our case put up to it by Duryodhana (iii, 262.16 ff.). ### [v2.c15.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.3) ² This wishing-pot is only one variety of the jewel of the sun god, the Syamantaka, which we are often told about in the Purāṇa literature. This Syamantaka bestows gold (eight loads every day), grants every blessing, keeps all evil away, etc. But in Kṛṣṇa's words it must be in the keeping of a wholly pure and always chaṣte man; then from the noble treasure there goes forth welfare for the whole land. But if it is entrusted to a bad man, then it kills him (etat sarvakālam çucinā brahmacaryeṇa ca dhriyamāṇam açeṣarāṣṭrasyopakāram, çl. 69). Viṣṇupur., amça 4, adhyāya 13. It is thus a Holy Grail in this also, that it makes such great demands on its warden. It is to be noticed that in Wolfram von Eschenbach the Holy Grail is not a vessel, but a ### [v2.c15.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.4) A kind of beatification of the housewife wrapped up in her cooking is given in ix, 48.33 ff. Arundhatī, the companion of one of the seven Ṛiṣhis, and so famous for her wifely faithfulness, likewise stood out by her asceticism. A twelve years’ drought came on them. Then Çiva, gladdened by Arundhatī’s piety, came there in Brahman’s shape, said he was hungry, and begged for alms. “The food is used up, O Brahman; eat these badara-fruit” (the fruit of the jujube-tree). “Cook them.” She now cooked and cooked the fruit for twelve years, and while she was so busied, and meanwhile listening to the heavenly discourse and tales of the guest, the drought went by : twelve years had gone by her without her marking it, and she had not ### [v2.c15.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.5) costly precious stone. Schroeder could without more ado have referred to our Purāṇa passage (cp. “Wurzeln d. Sage v. hl. Gral”, Wiener Sitzungsber., Bd. 166, pp. 4-5). The Christian stone thus probably comes from India. Mention must be here made also of the well-known breast-jewel of the sun god Viṣhṇu-Kṛiṣhṇa, the Kaustubha. This might probably likewise be set beside the Brisingamen, often identified by Schroeder with the sun. From the Epic much other matter could be adduced. Here we only mention those “ear-rings of precious stone” (akin to the ear-rings of the sun god) which for the wearer drive away hunger, thirst, danger from poison, fire, and from wild beasts, sweat (syand) gold, suck up by night the brightness of the stars, and so on. With them too care must be taken (xiv, 57.22 ff.). Truthfulness, honour, faithfulness, chastity, etc., are, indeed, very often demanded in the case of these fairy things, and in Old India also this was so well known a conception that the rule imagined for the “pearl of a leather pouch” in Apahāravarman’s adventures seemed quite in order (my Daçakumārac., p. 224). Is it the pure and purifying light of their mother, the sun, that ever shines on them, even on the chastity—and kindred beakers, as on the renowned beaker of Djemshid, which also was made of a jewel?—Schroeder, anyhow, has been more right than I in deriving the cooking-pot bestowed by the sun god on Yudhiṣhṭhira directly from the old conception of the sun as a pot (“Sage vom hl. Gral,” p. 16). In iii, 3.172, it is called a tāmra pīthara (copper pot). ### [v2.c15.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.6) eaten a bite but only cooked and listened. Then the god showed himself in his own shape, and spoke to the seven Rishis: "The tapas (asceticism, ascetic merit) that ye have heaped up on the ridge of the Himālaya is in my belief not so great as the tapas of this woman. For this poor woman (or: woman rich in tapas) has practised a tapas hard indeed to carry out: fasting and cooking, she has spent twelve years."—Earlier the same chapter gives another form of the same legendary account, which was thought out to explain the badarapācana (badara-cooking) of Tīrthanamen. Çrutavatī, the virginal and peerlessly lovely daughter of the holy man Bharadvāja, undergoes a strict penance to win Indra for a husband. In the shape of the Brahman Vasistha he at last visits her hermitage, and is hospitably welcomed by her; but she cannot give him her hand to take, because she is wholly dedicated to Indra in worship and love. The disguised god smiles, and offers her five badara-fruit with the bidding to cook them. The whole day long she cooks them, but the heavenly one has made the fruit impossible to cook so as to make trial of the pious woman. The day comes to its end, and her supply of wood is used up. But she is bent on faithfully carrying out her cooking duties, puts her feet in the fire, and keeps on pushing them further in when a bit is burnt off. Not a muscle does she move, there is no dejection in her soul, in her heart abides only the guest's bidding, although the fruit will not get cooked. Mightily rejoiced, Indra now reveals himself in his glory to the maid; she lays aside the shell of the body, and goes with him to dwell as his wife in heaven. To the glorification of this housewifely self-denial the bathing-place where it happened is still world-renowned to-day; to bathe there wipes out all sins, nay, whoever spends but one night there and carries out his washing attains to heavenly worlds hard to attain to. ### [v2.c15.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.7) The housewife must also see to strict order, see to it that spade, sickle, basket, brass vessels, etc., do not lie about (xii, 228.60). "Where earthenware is strewn about or there are broken utensils or seats, in such a house, ruined by sinful dirt, the women perish (hanyante). The gods and forefathers go back again hopeless on festivals and holy days from the house of sinful dirt (because they cannot accept anything there). ### [v2.c15.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.8) Broken utensils and bedsteads, cock and dog, and a tree growing by the house—these are all things bringing misfortune. In broken vessels dwells strife, the saying is, in the bedstead decay of wealth, in the presence of the cock and the dog the gods eat not the sacrificial food, in the root of the tree dwells assuredly a goblin; therefore the tree shall not be planted” (xiii, 127.6, 7, 15, 16). Women that are not troubled by implements and crockery being left about are shunned by the goddess of happiness and beauty; on the other hand, she dwells in and with those that in this and other things live up to the pattern for the woman (xiii, 11.10 ff.).¹ ### [v2.c15.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.9) ¹ Cp. Mārk.-Pur., l, 86: Where utensils are strewn about the house there dwell ill-boding powers; Viṣṇusmṛti, xxv, 4 ff., and Yājñav., i, 83: Women must keep the pots and pans and the household things in good order. If they do this, and are otherwise virtuous and have sons, then the goddess of happiness dwells ever with and in them (Viṣṇusmṛti, xcix, 21 ff.). “Indian houses are kept beautifully clean,” Fuller, \*Studies of Indian Life\*, etc., p. 151. ### [v2.c15.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.10) Carefully to administer the household is thus the task of the wife. But does she rule, too, in the household circle? “Be mistress over thy father-in-law, be mistress over thy mother-in-law” the bride, indeed, is told in the wedding hymn (Rigveda, x, 85.46), and the same thing is elsewhere also held out to her in prospect. But to a woman and at a wedding one may lie, the Mahābh. says more than once. Whatever of truth may at some time have lain in those anyhow noteworthy verses of the Veda, in the Epic we find it to be the duty of the young housewife, who under Indian conditions usually lives under one roof with her parents-in-law, to be subject to these persons, who even for her husband are worshipful and authoritative. The daughter-in-law is to fear the father-in-law, and a dignified gravity must be the rule between the two (v, 37.5). Her bearing towards him shall be kindly and friendly (v, 30.35). “Since thou art the guru (dignitary) of my guru (that is, of my husband), so art thou to me the god of gods, the over-god of the gods,” says a pious daughter-in-law to the father-in-law (xiv, 90.76). The daughter-in-law, therefore, must not give orders to the servants in the presence of the mother-in-law and the father-in-law (xii, 228.76). Evil-speaking against her mother-in-law is a shameful sin for the wife (xiii, 93.131; 94.38), and she must appear before her only in modest, seemly clothing (xi, 10.14). ### [v2.c15.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.11) But of the well-known tabu relation between father-in-law and daughter-in-law, to which Buddhist writings also allude, the Epic knows nothing.¹ On the other hand it has already been mentioned as a custom of the daughter-in-law to seat herself on the right thigh of her father-in-law, just like his own children (i, 97.9). And, in fact, the Epic shows us the most beautiful relations between the parents-in-law and the daughter-in-law. Especially with her husband's mother the younger woman has affectionate, and even intimate relations. The Epic poetry often touches on this subject, and there is never heard one note of that song of the mother-in-law that we know so well. Whether the then Indian daughter-in-law was really so much better off than is often her later sister cannot, of course, be quite definitively decided. But if we bear ### [v2.c15.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.12) ¹ Cp. Majjhimanik., i, 190; WZKM, xvi, 100 ff.; xxvii, 474 ff.; Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1899), i, 100; Ploss-Bartels 4, ii, 244; Rich. Andree, Ethnogr. Parallelen, i, 159 ff.; Schrader, Die Indogermanen, p. 108. While the champions of woman-capture look on this institution as a survival from the time of that method of getting wives (e.g. Dargun, Mutterrecht u. Raubehe, etc., 90 ff., 108 f.), Max Müller, Mantegazza (Geschlechtsverhältnisse, 276 ff.), Henne am Rhyn (p. 20) see the grounds, probably more rightly, in jealousy. But is this enough, particularly as the more primitive peoples often show so little of that "passion"? Since the tabu relation is indeed found between father-in-law and daughter-in-law, but still more between mother-in-law and son-in-law, where yet the danger of sexual intercourse is smaller, a derivation from mother-right would seem much more likely; the mother, either as the actual owner of her daughter, or as representative of the clan would have the most reason to look with hostile eyes on the man taking this property away. Among many Vishnuitic sects the daughter-in-law must never speak to her mother-in-law. Dubois-Beauchamp, p. 349. This, indeed, is easier to understand. But this tabu institution is otherwise still very much in the dark. But what is seen clearly seems to be this, that powerful superstitious ideas must form the main background. The explanation also which K. Th. Preuss gives in Die geistige Kultur der Naturvölker 2, p. 73 does not seem to satisfy. ### [v2.c15.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.13) in mind how often, in the Epic, strife between the various wives of a polygamous husband comes to be spoken of, we feel inclined from the silence on the one hand, and the very clear indications the other way to draw here very favourable conclusions at least for the old conditions among the Kshattriyas. Kuntī's love for Draupadī may be taken as giving the characteristic. She says : “ Dearer to me than all sons is Draupadī ” (v, 90.43) ; and her particular disgust and sorrow is aroused by the fact that it is Draupadī that has been so badly treated by her enemies, has suffered so much misery, and goes on ever suffering (v, 90.43 ff., 85 ; xv, 17.9 ff.). She acknowledges that she no longer had any love whatever for her sons, when Draupadī was dragged into the hall, and all looked on without stirring (v, 90.49) ; and she reminds Arjuna and Bhīma through Kṛṣṇa what a shame lies on both, that Duḥṣāsana, Karṇa, and Duryodhana should have done this to the poor woman (v, 90.80–82). This love comes out in special beauty when Draupadī has to go off with her husband into the forest of banishment (ii, 79), and she mourns very deeply when her mother-in-law has gone off into the penitential forest (xv, 22.14–17). Gāndhārī, all of whose sons have been slain, does not bewail this so much as the sorrow of her widowed daughters-in-law (xi, 18.2 ; cp. 17.24 ; 18.6 ; 22.15 ; 24.6 ff.). On the tender regard between Sītā and her mother-in-law some light will be thrown by and by in another connection. ### [v2.c15.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15.14) XV ## Linked texts (7) - [Mahābhārata](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.mahabharata.vyasa.3.263) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Mārkaṇḍeyapurāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.purana.markandeya.50.86) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Vaiṣṇava Dharmaśāstra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.dharma.visnu.25.4) — Viṣṇu, Sanskrit - [Yājñavalkyasmṛti](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.dharma.yajnavalkya.1.83) — Yājñavalkya, Sanskrit - [Majjhimanikāya](https://indike.org/pramana/in.bauddha.theravada.sp.majjhima.1.190) — Pāli - [Ṛgvedasaṃhitā](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.samhita.rg.10.85.46) — Sanskrit - [Viṣṇupurāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.purana.visnu.4.13) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c15) · Pramāṇa