Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c19.93

v2.c19.93

Yudhishṭhira spoke : “ I would fain hear of women’s character, O best of the Bharatas, for women are the root of evils ; for they are held to be light-minded.” Bhīshma now, as so often, tells an old legend. The divine wise man Nārada would like to be thoroughly instructed on the character of woman, and therefore betakes himself to the proper source, a woman, for she, indeed, best knows her sex.⁴ She whom he asks, Pañcacūḍā, the lovely, but like all her heavenly sisters very profligate Apsaras, at first will not do as he wishes: “As a woman, I cannot rebuke women. Thou knowest full well what women are like.” He will not be put off, however, and she begins: “Women that are of good family, beautiful, and well married do not stay within the moral bounds; this is the failing in women, O Nārada. Of a truth there is nought worse than women; for women are the root of evils; that thou, too, knowest. If women have found husbands who are acknowledged as rich and are worthy of them, and ever ready to do their will, even so they cannot abide them, so soon as they get another opportunity. But this is the evil nature of us women, that we, putting shame behind us, throw ourselves into the arms of bad men.¹ For he that runs after women, comes near them, and courts them a little—it is he whom they wish for. Women know no moral bars, and if they stay faithful to their law of morality and their husband, this is only because men do not woo them,² or because they are afraid of their serving-women. For them there is not a man they would not go to; they do not let themselves be decided by any age; be a man ugly or handsome, ‘He is a man,’ they think to themselves, and enjoy him.³ It is neither from fear, nor from pity, nor from any regard to what is profitable, nor for the sake of the bonds of kinship or family that women keep true to their husband. Seemly women envy those fair ones who are in glorious youth, and wandering about free in sex,