Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c20.23

v2.c20.23

¹ The tale belongs to the great cycle, well represented especially in the MBh., of the temptation of the good man, which I hope to treat separately some time. One or two knights of the same kind as this overcomer of Death may here be mentioned. In Yule’s *Marco Polo* ³, vol. I, p. 210, we find it said of the dwellers in Kambul in China: “If a foreigner comes to the house of one of these people to lodge, the host is delighted, and desires his wife to put herself entirely at the guest’s disposal, whilst he himself gets out of the way, and comes back no more until the stranger shall have taken his departure.” And the Venetian reports of the province of Caindu: “When they fall in with any stranger in want of a lodging they are all eager to take him in. And as soon as he has taken up his quarters the master of the house goes forth, telling him to consider everything at his disposal, and after saying so he proceeds to his vineyards or his fields, and comes back no more till the stranger has departed.” The guest then has his pleasure of the women in the house that please him, and hangs his hat, or some other mark, on the door, that the master may know how long to stay away (ii, 54). Both peoples saw in this custom, handed down from of old, the necessary condition for the gods being well-disposed to them. On the other hand the purest good-fellowship is what seems to inspire the Namaqua Hottentots: “If a husband has been out hunting and on his return finds his place occupied, he sits down at the