Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c16.17

v2.c16.17

Mahābhārata poetry. Furthermore, the Mahābh. is also so much longer, and thus offers more room for widow-burnings. Finally, the difference of place between the two must not be left out of account either. Assertions that it is the duty and nature of a good wife to follow her lord in death can be found often enough in both poems, although, as is natural, oftener in the Mahābh., but they yield no proof, since they all might be referred to later revision. In isolated cases, or locally, moreover, such a death by self-sacrifice of the woman undoubtedly happened from early times in Aryan India, too, and the Kshattriyas in particular, the forefathers of the Rājputs, who are endowed with the strongest feeling for private property in regard to their wives, may have known it.¹ Yet even the cases actually told of widow-burning in the Mahābh., where, furthermore, so many husbands meet death, and only very few widows “die afterwards”,¹ do not all show the true satī (suttee). We have spoken of the contest between Pāṇḍu’s two wives, how each wished to let herself be burned with the husband’s body. But of this there is no trace in the account itself. Kuntī’s offer to “follow” her husband is hardly the first outbreak even of womanly overwrought feelings, as, say, in Tārā, Vālin’s wife, but sounds exactly as if all was happening only for the sake of the sad widow’s good appearances. And Mādrī, who is in real earnest, has not the reasons for an Indian satī. She says: “I have not yet enjoyed love to the full. And in the midst of pleasure’s union he went away from love in death.² How might I now cut off his longing in the abode of Yama?” The warrior that falls by the weapon comes into paradise, where with heavenly companions in pleasure he gives himself up to the intoxication of the senses. On this Pāṇḍu, who was killed by the sexual union, has no claim, and therefore must starve in the other world. Yet even if this view should not come into the case, it is natural that Mādrī in this peculiar case, should see herself driven to take her step from the feeling of guilt (i, 125.23 ff.). That in itself this manifestation of wifely faithfulness by Mādrī is looked on as something unusual and peculiar is shown by the words addressed to his slayer by the penitent when he is pairing as a gazelle with his wife, and is so slain by Pāṇḍu: “The loved one with whom thou art lying at the time of thy death will follow after thee out of loving regard, when thou hast reached the city of the king of the dead, whereunto all cross only with reluctance” (i, 118.31, 32).³