Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c20.104

v2.c20.104

(II) As the king has the supernatural power of making the rain fall in his kingdom at the proper time, the Brahmans naturally had to credit themselves with the same magic power. It is, indeed, the primitive inheritance of the shaman, and in India, too, may have fallen to the ruler in a secondary way only. Cp. MBh., iii, 110.44; i, 78.40; K, iii, 130; Nirukta, ii, 10. The Brahman as a rain-maker is treated by Oldenberg, *Relig. d. Veda*, 420 ff. As an altogether extraordinary heroic deed of Vasistha, the devarāj, it is told that during a drought he bestowed life on all beings (xii, 234.27; xiii, 137.13). But here the rain-making is not expressly mentioned. Cp. Rām., ii, 117.9. So now we have had the tale of this Brahmanic counterpart to the king, Ṛśyaśṛṅga, rich in asceticism and wholly chaste, whose mere presence brought the rain down in streams, and who during the drought in Aṅga-land made a brilliant show of his wonderful powers. Perhaps use was now made of the merry tale of the innocent youth, already to hand. That this delightful and suggestive tale in its original form gave us the blunt humour of the Jātakagāthās is not at all certain, although the Jātaka does indeed show that such a form already arose at an early time. In the MBh. (as to all seeming in the Padmapur. and the Rām. also) Ṛśy. keeps his body chaste until he comes into Aṅga-land, as is needful for the Brahmanic account, while Lüders’s account would lead us to suppose otherwise. For quite needlessly the MBh. (110.24) also expressly says that he brought rain through the power of his asceticism. Any man that lives in unbroken chastity can do this. Āpastamba, ii, 9, 23.7. In his sexual purity, therefore, there lies magic power; this is a widespread belief, indeed, in the world, and still alive to-day even among cultured European mankind. In an older form this may well have been the leading thought, and the partisan purpose of glorifying the priests have been wholly lacking.