Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c19.26

v2.c19.26

But that one wife should be preferred is so natural, that we often hear of it elsewhere, too, in the Epic; and there the lot of the wife passed over is often a most touching one. So in Kauçalyā’s case: beside his favourite wife Kaikeyī she is as nothing to her lord and husband Daçaratha, in spite of all her charms; she then comforts herself with the thought that her son Rāma will bring her happiness and joy, but when he is to be consecrated as heir to the throne, her rival at the last moment snatches this stay away from her also: Rāma has to leave his mother, go into fourteen years’ banishment, and hand over the kingdom to Bharata. “Like the slender shaft of the çala-tree that is felled by the axe in the forest, the queen suddenly fell to the ground.” She makes her plaint before her son: “The barren woman has one anguish of soul, but no other. ‘Neither happiness nor joy have I ever had of my husband’s manhood; may I see them in my son,’ so, my Rāma, I lived in hope. I shall have to hear many unlovely words from my fellow-wives that stand below me, words that stab the heart, I that am the highest, too. What could there be more painful for the wife than my grief and endless wail! Even thou wast still here, I was the hurt rejected wife; how much the more will it be so when thou art gone! Death for me is a certainty. Never held in love or honour by my husband, I was oppressed by Kaikeyī’s waiting-women, although I am equal to her, nay better. Seventeen years are gone since thou wast born, and I have been longing for my care to pass. That it still lives, this I, who am so harshly treated, cannot long bear, nor the slights from my rivals, if I am no more to behold thy moon-like countenance. By fasting and magic