Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c19.35

v2.c19.35

self has not, and so forth. Here Mark Twain has seen the truth very clearly in the delightful 15th chapter, vol. i, of *Roughing It*. Cp. e.g. Hertel, *Indische Märchen*, p. 131 f. When culture becomes higher, envy does not grow less, and true jealousy is found more and more; and in spite of all the men and women defenders who have come forward among us on behalf of the Oriental harem, and in spite of the apparent exaggeration in many cases of what has been written of the unhappiness of women in the harem, it still remains true that we see there picture after picture of hatred and darkness. Here we give only one or two examples from Old India. “What is the greatest sorrow of the woman?” the king of Benares asks his wife. She answers: “Anger at her rival” (Jāt., No. 489). Cp. e.g. Shib Chunder Bose, *The Hindoos as They Are*, 38 ff.; 229 ff.; espec. 40; Bulloram Mullick, *Home Life in Bengal* (1885), pp. 26-28; Chavannes, *Cinq cents contes*, ii, 120. If a woman cannot have her revenge in this life, then she will probably at her own wish become a Yakkhinī after death, and eat the hated woman’s children away (Jāt., Nos. 510, 513; cp. vol. v, p. 39 f.). “Of enmities, that between a head wife and a secondary one is the worst” (Schiefner, *Bull. d. St. Petersburger Akad.*, Bd. 24, col. 503; cp. Bd. 23, col. 558). One or two drastic happenings in a household of this kind are given in the passage from the Petavatthu which I have given in note 2 to p. 305 of the Daçakum. Here the fifty daughters of Māndhātār in the tale of the holy man Saubhari are worthy of remark; it is told by the Purāṇas as an example of life in the house constantly increasing the wishes. These princesses are all married to this Ṛishi, who uses his wonderful powers among other things to split himself up into fifty husbands full of love, and each of the wives complains now to her father of one thing only: that the husband is always with her only, and neglects the other forty-nine. So Wilson’s *Vishnupur.*, vol. iii, p. 273 ff. See also my *Hindu Tales*, p. 60, note 1. But a still greater self-denial is shown by the faithful wife of a Brahman in Mārkaṇḍeyapur., xvi, 14 ff.: She has a leper husband, and treats him most lovingly in spite of all his hideousness and spiteful outbursts of anger. He now wants her to introduce him to a beautiful hetæra, and she cheerfully sets about doing so. She acts therefore according to the commandment: “Let the wife show every kindness to the woman with whom her husband is in love” (MBh., K, xiii, 250.13); and according to the ideal put forward in Kāmasūtra, ed. Durgaprasad 2, pp. 242-246 and 250 (the two last sūtras). A picture such as this of deep yearning is painted in glowing colours by the great English painter and poet, William Blake: “She shall begin to give her maidens to her husband, delighting in his delight; And All the splendour of the court must then usually have but little lightened the pain in the soul even of the ruler's wife, perhaps sometimes have strengthened it still more, even when she saw herself still outwardly honourably treated as before by her husband. This harem life, anyhow, is luxurious enough, as the Epic paints it for us in glowing colours. So, for instance, that of Rāvaṇa (Rām., v, 9 ff.). Even the captive Sītā is housed in a fairy-like aṣoka-grove, which ravishes the senses with endless scented lotus-ponds, all kinds of trees, birds, and beasts, splendid palaces, and a thousand other glories (Rām., v, 15.1–15; 18.6–9). The dwelling of the favourite Kaikeyī is thus described in Rām., ii, 10.11 ff.: Parrots, peacocks, plovers, and swans were to be seen there; musical instruments resounded; hunch-backed and dwarf women ran here and there; arbours of climbing plants, and painted houses met