Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c20.6.2

v2.c20.6.2

Thus, too, lovely maidens, splendid women, and slave-girls are particularly advised as gifts to the Brahmans at the çrāddha or festivals of the dead, and are bestowed even by the hundred thousand (xv, 14.4 ; 39.20 ; xvii, 1.14 ; xviii, 6.12-13). It is, however, to the Brahmans that such sweet things must in general be dealt out most plentifully, and the king that does not do so is an accursed ruler (rājakali, xii, 12.30 f.). King Sagara makes over to the Brahmans a palace all of gold, filled with lotus-eyed women and with beds (xii, 29.133). King Vainya gives a thousand lovely slave-girls to Atri, who has sung his praises (iii, 185.34). So the holy Cyavana lets women be bestowed on him (xiii, 63.39 ff.). They are the natural gift for Brahmans (iii, 315.2, 6). Cp. iii, 233.43 ; iv, 18.21 ; xiii, 102.11 ; 103.10-12 ; etc. Even a young widow is made over to the pious Çabara ; he keeps her as his wife (xii, 168.33 ; 171.5 ; 173.16 ff.). A penance is given in xiii, 136.6-7, for when a Brahman has let a woman be bestowed on himself: he is to murmur a prayer, and hold bare iron in his hand.¹ Judging by the context, however, a woman is meant whom he has received from a bestower who is unclean for him. Whoever shows his piety through open-handedness of this kind is naturally magnificently rewarded with lavish joys in heaven (with Apsarases, etc.). So e.g. xiii, 145.2 ff. And the man must make the woman helpful in every way to his own profit *here on earth*.