Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c16.21

v2.c16.21

Kṛṣṇa’s wives, burn themselves, not with the soulless body of their lord, but only later on, after a very bad experience. Satyabhāmā and other highly-revered life-comrades of the Crœsus in wives go off, on the other hand, into the forest, and become penitents, just like the wives of Akrūra, whom likewise it is wished to hold back from doing so (xvi, 7.72 ff.).¹ As against this it is related in xviii, 5.25, 26 as follows : The 16,000 women, the wives of Vāsudeva, plunged at the proper time into the Sarasvatī. There they laid aside their bodies, and mounted up to heaven, and they became Apsarases, and went to Vāsudeva. A like anumaraṇa is also described in xv, 33.17 ff. : The miraculously strong Vyāsa makes the mourning wives of the heroes fallen in the battle—all that wish to do so—plunge into the Gaṅgā, and so come into the world of their husbands ; rid of the human body, shining in divine shape, decked with the adornment of heaven, freed from sorrow, and in joyful delight, they unite in the heavens with their beloved lords.