Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c18.5.4

v2.c18.5.4

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.