Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c18.1

v2.c18.1

A SOFT, swelling fulness of the limbs is thus looked on as a matter of course in the pattern woman. It corresponds to the softness and fulness of her feelings, of the life of her soul. But we should be much mistaken, if we thought that the women who are actually shown us in action and speech by the Indian poets are all made after this pattern, or act always in harmony with it. No, the Epic particularly, in spite of much that is cast in a fixed mould, has in it a very long series of varying kinds of womanly figures. In this the Mahābh. especially stands out. But in the Rāmāyaṇa also we have two so utterly different representatives of the sex as Sītā and Kaikeyī. Hard and ruthless is Kaikeyī, the spoiled favourite of the king and of fortune, when once her fear and her ambition have been aroused, as is described in cantos ii, 9–39, in numerous passages. Even the gentle Sītā is quite capable of blazing anger and harsh words. How hot she is against Lakshmaṇa, when he, faithful to Rāma’s bidding, wishes to stay by her, and not to go off to his brother who seems to be calling for help; she even hints, certainly not without womanly vanity, that Lakshmaṇa wants her husband to die that he may himself get her for his wife (iii, 278.25–29; Rām., iii, 45).¹ As a true Kshattriyā she is, too, so soon as she has seen the wondrous phantom gazelle when picking flowers, ruthlessly determined to acquire at least its skin, if Rāma cannot take it alive. She wants to sit on it, far too much. “Such a headstrong whim is held, indeed, to be a dreadful thing and unbecoming to women.