Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c18.5.5

v2.c18.5.5

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.