Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c18.5

Language: English

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Strong-willed women are found, above all in the Mahābh., in great numbers. Indeed Eastern literature in general shows us, as has been already pointed out, the woman as being resolute, full of fire, passionate in comparison with the often so slack and sinewless man.² This characteristic comes out first of all in love. The fire of the senses is here also on the Indian doctrine far stronger in the woman, and it is not for nothing that the tender, timid sex so often takes the leadership in the Indian love tales, especially when it is a case of the fair one bringing about the tryst for the delights of sexual union that they desire as soon as possible, of keeping it successfully hidden, and of finding a safe way out when it is discovered.³ This characteristic is further shared by the tales of the other parts of the East, which for the most part come from India, or are inspired by it, and, most certainly not without a connection here, by the medieval, especially the French love tales.⁴ The woman is active, the man often quite passive ; he not only just lets himself be made happy by his beloved, but, in India, be also visited in the night.

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Juliet with her Romeo on the balcony is indeed to be found, but such things are by no means the custom of the land—not Leander, but Hero swims to the tryst in the Indian version of the well-known tale.¹ Even in the newer Russian literature—the latest of all I know too little about—the same Eastern strength and firmness of will in the woman is to be seen alongside the wavering, useless weakness of the man. So it is above all in Turgeniev, and in Pushkin and others. Now as the Mahābh. has much more unspoiled naturalness and undistorted reality, as it is far truer to life than the Rāmāyaṇa, which is much more strongly under priestly influences in its very foundations, so too the woman, as she is represented here in the narrative, is probably drawn far truer to the actual conditions of earlier times than in the companion Epic.² Then the pictures drawn of women in the minded, it is true, set before our eyes in his *Rajasthan* the tende and manly respect which the Rājputs show towards woman (i, 74, 295), and the truly noble romantic feelings they are capable of. Here belongs the custom of the “Gift of the Bracelet”: a lady in distress sends her bracelet to a knight often quite unknown to her; he becomes thereby her “bracelet brother”, who hastens into the fray for her sake, looks after her interests, and never sees her, though he is in a near relation to her (*Rajasthan*, i, 332, 614).

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Tod rightly points out that the European knight, or *cavaliere servente* of the Middle Ages is far less high-minded (see for this J. J. Meyer, *Isoldes Gotteseurteil*, pp. 1–74). Akin to this is the fine relation between the sister and brother by election among the South Slavs (Krauss, *Sitte u. Brauch*, etc., p. 638 ff.). Mention may also be made of the rape of the Rājput princess, who calls on Rāj Sing for help, and promises him her hand (*Rajasthan*, p. 401). Now in the veins of at least a part of these very Rājputs there flows the purest Aryan blood. Fuller, *Studies*, etc., p. 47; Crooke, *The North-Western Provinces*, pp. 62; 201. And although Crooke in a later study: “Rājputs and Mahrattas,” *Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Inst.*, vol. xl, p. 39 ff. shows that many originally Scythian, and especially Hunnish elements have been taken into the Rājputs, he still supports the view there expressed in *Tribes and Castes of Bengal*, ii, 184, that the higher classes can claim to be sprung from the Kshattriyas. The Agāriah of to-day in Bengal also claim to be sprung from the Kshattriyas, and among them likewise the women have an honoured standing. See *Ztschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 6, p. 377 f. (according to Dalton). Mention should be made, too, of the ruthless revenge which the Gurkha in Nepal, who claims at least to be descended from the Rājputs, takes on the offender who dares touch his wife. Wright, *Hist. of Nepal*, p. 32.

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Clear traces of a higher value being set on the woman have often shown themselves to us in the narrative parts of the Epic, and elsewhere. Like the Rājputs, the heroes of the Epic feel themselves most deeply dishonoured if another man touches their wives, or even only their kinsmen’s (e.g. iii, 243.5; 244.17–18; 248.8). And undoubtedly the glories of the old lyric poetry, whose gold still gleams out here and there from under all kinds of rubbish and dirt, have in this respect likewise had to suffer heavily from loss and distortion. Ideal men and women, and ideal conditions we must not, indeed, think of restoring in our dreams even there. But in spite of all, the woman of the warrior nobility stands proud, strong, and honoured wherever Brahman hands and later influences have not smirched her. It would, of course, be a hopeless undertaking to try to carry through in the present MBh.—and that is all we have—a clear-cut separation between old and new, between what belongs to the epic poetry of the warriors, and what Mahābhārata have, too, very often an immediate and natural power of conviction which has an irresistible effect on the unprejudiced reader. Lastly it is highly instructive, often comic beyond words, to see how the revisers of this Epic not seldom tried to patch up, and in the most unskilful, nay, craziest way, the stark contradiction between what is actually said of the woman, and the ideal, or anyhow the ideal which was held later.

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Draupadī in particular has cost them much toil. This personage, who in the original poem was evidently highly natural, with strong feelings and will, and blessed with a clear understanding, will not let herself be put at all as she is priestly botchery. The Kshattriyas were, of course, Hindus too, and the Brahman certainly from early times had won an influence on the life and poetry of the noble class too, here more, there less. Moreover in Brahmanic literature there often can be found a higher view of woman; and the not seldom lofty moral doctrine which in Brahmanic circles along with all kinds of irritating trash was partly built up in independence, partly, however, taken over from outside, in very many aspects was to woman's advantage also. In the old Upanishad there is found instruction how to beget a learned daughter; and in the same place Yājñavalkya initiates his wife, who longs after instruction, into the deepest secrets of philosophy. Here Gārgī takes part, a woman, in a philosophical congress, and of a truth is not dumb. How unspeakably ridiculous such a thing would have seemed to men like Plato or Aristotle, or to a Council of Fathers of the Church, which would rather take up the question whether women had souls at all! In the Brāhmaṇa literature the women speculate and argue with the men just as Draupadī does in the Epic. Of course, very much of this in the Brāhmaṇa may go back to the Kshattriya influence, which elsewhere, too, comes out so clearly.