Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c19.38

v2.c19.38

Needless to say, there is no wish to find these soft delights lacking in war and in the armed camp. Yudhishṭhira’s morning goes on, as it is described in vii, 82, quite as at court: the court singers and congratulators sing and recite, other singers are heard, the dancers dance, all kinds of musical instruments resound. Thus the prince awakes,¹ then goes into his bathing apartment; there, having put on his thin bathrobe, and seated himself on a splendid seat, he has sandal-water, consecrated with prayers, poured over him from gold vessels by a hundred and eight white-clad bath-servants, is rubbed with ointment (kashāya = sarvaushadhyādikalksa), and sprinkled with scented water; he carries out his sacrifices, bestows gifts on the flocks of Brahmans in his usual crazed way, and so forth. All this after so many days of murderous fighting.—And the Kauravas take counsel comfortably stretched out like the deathless gods on the most splendid couches spread with costly rugs (viii, 10.7). Even at the time of the final blood-bath carried out by Aṣvatthāman he finds Dhṛṣṭadyumna lying on a “great linen-white bed, spread with costly rugs, decked with the most splendid wreaths, perfumed with incense and sweet-smelling powder” (x, 8.12 ff.). Cp. ix, 29.70-72. The women could accompany their husbands into the camp. So, too, Draupadī took many women and serving-girls with her into banishment in the penitential forest (iv, 4.4, and elsewhere), a description due, of course, to later revisers, and one that does not tally at all with many other statements in the Epic. (Cp. e.g. Dubois-Beauchamp 3, p. 678 f.)