Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c17.13.2

v2.c17.13.2

Whoever in spite of this gives way to this weakness must cleanse himself by bathing. Viṣṇu, xxii, 61 f.; Parāçara, xii, 28. The basis here again is a superstition directed towards the precious self: tears along with seed, sweat, nail-cuttings, etc., belong to the “unclean”, that is, magically baneful products of the human body, which leave one accessible to the evil powers. Manu, v, 135; Viṣṇu, xxii, 81; xxiii, 1. They are calamitous (açiva MBh., iii, 28.18), and an evil omen (Rāvaṇavaha, xi, 124; xv, 43), a conception also found in Germanic lands and among the In the Rāmāyaṇa it is naturally above all the luckless heroine Sītā herself in whose mouth the poet puts affectingly beautiful words of grief. Worthy of especial mention, perhaps, is her sorrow, when Rāma has at length come to set her free, and she, as the result of a magical trick played on her, believes that Rāma is dead, and has to conclude that he has been murdered in his sleep. “Why dost thou not look at me, O king? Why dost thou not answer me, whom thou, the childishly youthful one, didst win as a childishly youthful wife, as a life-comrade? Think of what thou didst promise, when thou didst clasp my hand: ‘Now will I live my life with thee,’ and take me away, who am stricken by sorrow. Up, Rāvaṇa! Kill me, too, swiftly, the wife together with the husband;