Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c19.67

v2.c19.67

¹ The slayer of a woman arouses horror even in the criminal (Rām., vi, 81.22). He has to look forward, like the child-slayer, to the existence of a worm, as we find e.g. in Mārk.-Pur., xv, 19; and according to Agnipur., 203.7, the woman- and the child-murderer is tortured in the hell Raurava during the time of existence of fourteen successive Indras. Nārada, i, 225, casts these two into the worlds of worst torment together with the murderer of a Brahman, the ungrateful man, and the false witness. The killing of one’s own wife is, according to Manu, xi, 89, to be atoned for in the same way as that most awful of all crimes, the murder of a Brahman. In the atonement laid down the slaying of a Brāhmaṇī is in Vasiṣṭha, xx, 37 ff., the same as that of a Kṣattriya man, of a Kṣattriyā woman the same as of a Vaiçya man; for a Çūdrā woman the Brahman-murderer’s dreadful vow of mortification (which for him lasts twelve years) must be carried out for a year. On the other hand Baudhāyana, i, 10, 19.2-3 (= i, 10.23) makes Çūdra-killing and woman-killing in general equal to one another (ten cows and a bull are the money-penance here; no vow is here expressly mentioned). Āpast., i, 9, 24.5 seems to demand for all castes except the priestly one, as atonement for the murder of the woman, the same gifts of cattle as for that of the man. So, too, perhaps, Gautama, xxii, 17 (but evam will probably refer to the foregoing Sūtra, and demand the one year’s purification for Brahman-murder besides ten cows and a bull. Baudh. would seem to point to this). Cp. Meyer, Altind. Rechtsschr., 56-60. He that kills a chaste woman (apraduṣṭā) must according to Yājñav., iii, 268 f., like the