Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c16.26

v2.c16.26

robbed of her husband, O knower of the highest law, that lives without her husband, she does not truly live, the sorrow-burdened one. Death is better for a wife without her husband, O warrior hero. I will go whither thou art; be gracious to me, and lead me thither. Parted from thee, I cannot even live an instant. Show me favour, O king; take me quickly hence. On smooth paths, and on rough I will follow after, O tiger king, that goest but comest not again. Following thee like thy shadow, O king, ever subject to thee, I shall everlastingly find my delight in thy welfare, O tiger among men. Henceforward, O king, pitiable, heart-withered agonies of soul will come upon me, that am without thee, thou lotus-eyed one. It must be that I, a wretched one, have (in an earlier existence) sundered some that were mated; therefore it is that this parting from thee has befallen me. But even if a woman, parted from her husband, live but a moment only, yet this wicked one can hardly be said to live at all, like one that is in hell, O ruler of the earth. I have in a former body torn asunder those that were intimately bound together; hence, O king, has this sorrow taken me in its grasp, springing from my separation from thee, and heaped up in earlier bodies through evil deeds. From now on, O king, I shall lie on a bed of kuça-grass, bathed in sorrow, filled only with the yearning to see thee again. Show thyself to me, O tiger among men, counsel me, who have ever an aching heart within me, wretched and piteously mourning thee, O ruler of men.' As she thus in manifold words kept ever bewailing, and clasped the dead man, the voice of one hidden ¹ spoke :—