Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c20.13.1

v2.c20.13.1

Women for the temporary use of the guest, or as a definitive gift to him, have been already alluded to (allusion to Kṛishṇa in v, 85.13, 14; 86.8). Yudhishṭhira keeps hundreds of thousands of young girls (dāsī), wearing shell bracelets and most splendid ornaments, sprinkled with sandal, skilled in the sixty-four arts, and in dancing and singing songs, that they may hospitably wait on the Brahmans (snātaka), ministers, and kings, and he then stakes this valuable property at the game (ii, 61.8 ff.). To give fitting pleasure to the newcomer, even with a man’s own daughter or wife, is, as is well known, a thing that is demanded by good manners, and therefore by morality, in very many places in the world.² But beyond any doubt this “virtue” has nowhere found a greater glorification than in the Mahābh. For here we find the following tale of the man that overcame death (xiii, 2.34 ff.). Agni who as a Brahman sought the hand of Sudarçanā, the king’s daughter, and was given her after some difficulties, had by her a splendid son, Sudarçana, who in very childhood “took for his own the whole of the most high and everlasting word of God”. Now there was a prince, by name Oghavant, the grandfather of Nṛiga. He had a girl Oghavatī and a son Ogharatha. This daughter Oghavatī, her with the godlike stature, Oghavant gave of his own will to this wise Sudarçana to wife. In union with this Oghavatī Sudarçana dwelt in Kurukshetra, devoting himself gladly to a life as father of the house.