Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c16.10

v2.c16.10

As furthermore the booty belongs to the conqueror (Gautama, x, 20), and the woman is moreover especially called the rightful property of the victor (Manu, xii, 96; cp. Richter, v, 30), it does not astonish us when at least the bird king Kandhara weds the wife of the Rākṣasa Vidyudrūpa, whom he has slain (Mārkaṇḍeyapur., ii, 28 ff.), and when Agnipur., 236.63 also utters the special reminder: The wives of conquered kings do not become the conqueror’s, but he must protect them carefully. But a love affair with a widow brings down punishment, and according to Parāçara, x, 25 a widow who becomes with child by her lover must be banished from the land. Even to-day Duryodhana declare : “I can just as little enjoy the earth whose precious stones are gone, and whose Kshattriya heroes are slain, as can a widowed woman” (ix, 31.45). A remarkable exception is here given us in the wife, who is drawn as very loving and as a pattern, of the ape prince Vālin. At first, when it is suggested to her that she must care for the dead prince’s son, she cries out : “What to me is the son or the kingdom? What to me is my own self? I will follow on the footprints of the slain.” But these are but the words of the first sorrow. She then bewails her widow’s lot : “A woman robbed of her husband may have sons and be rich in money and corn, but a widow she is called by the wise.” Most bitterly she wails by the body, will not let herself be parted or consoled, strives to wrench herself from the arms of those who are taking her away by force, and beseeches Rāma to kill her as well. “I will go to him, for without me he has no joy. Even in heaven without me he walks in sorrow and with a wan countenance, and has no wish to clasp the Apsarases. Think to thyself : ‘She is his own self,’ and so slay me ; it will be no woman-murder. According to the books of doctrine and the Vedas, the wife is one body with the husband; compared with the gift of a wife there is in the view of the wise no other gift in the world.” But Vālin is buried in the most magnificent way, and the new king Sugrīva, brother to the slain man, from whom Vālin has earlier taken away his own wife, makes the widow his wife, and loves her greatly. She seems to be most tenderly attached to her husband’s murderer ; anyhow, she takes on herself a difficult mission for him. Her son, at least, is not