Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c19.65

v2.c19.65

Still oftener is stress laid on the sinfulness of killing a woman. The maxim: avadhyā (na hantavyā) strī, “the woman must not be slain,” is often found (e.g. i, 158.31; 217.4; iii, 206.46; v, 36.66; vii, 143.67; xii, 135.13, 14; Rām., ii, 78.21; vi, 81.28).³ He who kills a woman stands on a level with the slayer of a Brahman, or of a cow, with the ungrateful man, with him that desecrates his teacher’s marriage-bed, and with the man who does not honour the guest (xiii, 126.26 ff.). The murder of a woman, together with unfaithfulness towards a friend, ingratitude, and the slaying of the teacher, makes up a set of four crimes for which there is no atoning (niṣkṛti) (xii, 108.32; cp. xvii, 3.16). Cp. Manu, xi, 191; Yājñav., iii, 299; Viṣṇu, liv, 32; also MBh., v, 36.66. Dreadful, therefore, after death is also the punishment for such a hideous deed: “The fool that has taken a woman’s life will have to go through many tortures in Yama’s realm, and twenty incarnations (saṃsāra); then in an existence he is born a worm. When he has been a worm for twenty years he comes into the world as a human being” (xiii, 111.117, 118).¹ To crown all, to kill an ātreyī, that is, a