[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915) › v2.c19.36 # Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c19.36 Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c19.36 - **Language:** English ### [v2.c19.36](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c19.36) then, and then alone begins the happy female joy.” “Milton,” p. 32, ll. 17 ff. Cp. the dithyrambs: “I cry: Love! Love!” etc. in his “Vision of the Daughters of Albion”, p. 7 (both in Ellis's edit.). See there especially the verses: “But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothon \[the wife\] spread And catch for thee girls of mild silver, or of furious gold . . . Oothon shall view his dear delight, nor e'er will jealous cloud Come in the heaven of generous love, nor selfish blightings bring.” The pair of women rivals in the Mṛcchakaṭikā is well known, who outbid one another in “nobility of mind”; and in Kālidāsa's Mālavikā and Agnimitra the thoughtful queen; as also, at the end, the praise of the wife who even finds new ladies for her lord's heart, because, she says, the river carries hundreds of streamlets with it to the sea. See, too, my Daçakumāracaritam, p. 305. But despite these and other like cases there is found, so far as I know, in India no historically vouched for example of the kind told us of his own wife by an Arab historian, according to Lane, Arabian Soc. in the Middle Ages, p. 246: She bought handsome girls for her husband, and hoped to be rewarded in heaven for her friendliness towards her husband. Cp. the Turkish examples in Osman Bey, 136 ff.; 143 ff.; as also the Chinese wife whose husband falls in love with another woman, and who uses every means for him to get her (Dunlop-Liebrecht, 523b). There are other such cases. He that knows will understand too. Of the Thongas in South Africa we are even told: “So indifferent are the women to their husband's morals that they will play the go-between for them in their overtures to other girls.” Hartland, Primit. Patern., ii, 207. - [Previous: v2.c19.35](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c19.35) - [Next: v2.c19.37](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c19.37) - [Up: v2.c19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c19) ## Linked texts (2) - [Mṛcchakaṭika](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.plays.prakarana.mrcchakatika) — Śūdraka, Sanskrit - [Mālavikāgnimitra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.plays.udayana.malavikagnimitra) — Kālidāsa, Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c19.36](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v2.c19.36) · Pramāṇa