Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c17.38

v2.c17.38

Beauty of soul and of body go hand in hand; where the one is, there is the other, too: Yatrākṛitis tatra guṇā iti loke pi gīyate, says Hemacandra in Pariṣiṣṭap., ii, 233 (cp. Bṛihatsaṃh., 70.23; Garuḍapur., 65.121; Agnipur., 244.6); and in the Uttararāmacaritam (iii, 21) we find the exclamation: Bhidyate vā sadr̥ittam īdr̥içasya nirmāṇasya! (cp. my Daçakumārac., p. 301, where many more illustrations from popular sayings, poetry, and even the philosophical literature of the world could be given). Here we will make only a few particular remarks as to the Indian ideal of womanly beauty, which is fairly generally known. Much is to be gathered already from the descriptions of the various heroines of whom we have already spoken. Draupadī has black curling hair, long eyes like the leaf of the autumn lotus, a scent like the autumn lotus; her face is like the lotus-flower, like the jasmine-flower, when it is covered with sweat; slender is her waist, her hair is long, her mouth is red. She is neither too tall nor too short; she has beautiful hips; she is not thin, not too red, and not too hairy (ii, 65.33 ff.; cp. 67.157 ff.). At the sacrifice she comes forth from the middle of the altar as a wondrous-lovely maid: dark, with black and long eyes, red, high-arched nails, beautiful brows, lovely swelling breasts, and so forth; a scent as of the blue lotus is wafted from her a kroça’s distance (i, 167.44 ff.; cp. 168.6; 183.7-10).² She is of course without compare on earth for beauty, like a maiden of the gods, like a wonderful apparition; whoever sees her folds his hands reverently before his forehead; and more of the same kind. Even as she goes along as a poor chambermaid wearing dirty clothes, men and women run up to where she is seen. Queen Sudeshṇā sees her from her palace, and, wondering greatly, describes her