Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c17.21

v2.c17.21

all the splendour is lost : she is sunk in a sea of sorrow in the midst of the loathsome man-eating monsters. In the night comes the ruler of this hostile world, surrounded by his bands of wives, and the splendour of his court. She is not completely dressed. “When the princess of Videha saw Rāvaṇa, the prince of the Rākshasas, she trembled like a banana-tree in the wind. With the thighs did the great-eyed lovely one cover her belly, and with the arms her breasts, and crouched down on the bare earth. To the tiger among kings, to Rāma, she was hastening on the chariot of her wishes harnessed to her thoughts. With one long braid of hair she stood out easily, like the earth when the rainy time is over stands out with a dark belt of forest.” Rāvaṇa in eloquent words offers her all his splendour, the position of chief wife, and his glowing love ; she is not to let her precious youth thus go by in misery. What does she want then with the strengthless penitent Rāma, who after all is dead and gone ? But she lays grass between herself and the polluting stranger, and upbraids him for his unseemly words. Great misfortune, she tells him, comes on all that lust after the wives of others. Rāma will come, she says, and destroy Laṅkā, slay them that carried her off, and set her free. Before him will Rāvaṇa as little be able to stand his ground, as the dog before the tiger. But he threatens her : “I give thee another two months, then either thou comest onto my bed, or my cooks will cut thee up into pieces for my breakfast.” The divine and Gandharva maidens that have been carried off by the woman-lover hearten Sītā by gestures with lips and eyes, and now she flings angry, confident words at him. He goes off, filled with rage, and bids the giantesses make her compliant by friendly means or by chastisement. The Rākshasī women now beset her ; bathing her broad breasts with tears, quivering like a gazelle lost from the herd, or torn by wolves, but firm and strong, she proclaims her will to be faithful to her husband, as Çacī to Indra, as Lopamudrā to Agastya, as Rohiṇī to the moon, as Sāvitrī to Satyavant. “Cut me up, tear me to pieces, make shreds of me, burn me in the glowing fire—I will not come to Rāvaṇa. Why will ye speak so long ?” She cannot understand wherefore Rāma does not come and set her free. Perhaps he does not know where she is. Perhaps his foes have