Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c21.19

v2.c21.19

P. 76, n., l. 30. K., i, 238 ff. relates: Arjuna hears through Gada of the lovely and most excellent Subhadrā, falls in love, and goes as a Yati with three staves, a water-pitcher, a wreath of roses, etc. to her home, to see the fair one with his own eyes, and to sound Vāsudeva’s feelings in the matter. During the rainy season (or : a rain) he stays in a hollow tree, and thinks of Vāsudeva. V. is lying with Satyabhāmā in bed, through his divine knowledge is aware of all, and laughs. S. wants to know the reason, and Kṛiṣhṇa enlightens her. He goes to the Yogi Arjuna, and comes with him to the mountain Raivataka. It is now essentially the same as in B., 218.3 ff. But next morning Kṛiṣhṇa dismisses A. who is still disguised as a Yati. A. sits down on a stone outside the city in the forest, and thinks sorrowfully of Subhadrā. The Yādavas with Baladeva at their head see the holy man on their way back from the festival of Raivataka, and do him reverence. A conversation takes place; they welcome him as a stranger in the place (deçātithi), and bid him to stay during the four rainy months. Kṛṣṇa also comes up now; the guest is entrusted to him by Baladeva. It is Baladeva who first advises that the penitent be housed in the maidens’ abode; but the cunning Kṛṣṇa rejects this idea in the first moment, as being dangerous with so handsome and excellent a Yati. But he then quickly agrees to it. Subhadrā has already heard of Arjuna through Kṛṣṇa and others, and has long been in love with him on hearsay. The rest is then as in the note. But not only Kṛṣṇa, but the other kinsfolk, too, purposely give Arjuna free play with Subhadrā during that thirty-four days’ island festival. They have long known, indeed, about the matter. For Devakī, Rukmiṇī, and other women have been let into the secret, and have helped. Nay, even Subhadrā’s father himself, and the whole council of state have long ago discussed the matter, and resolved on a splendid wedding. The carrying off is therefore here no more than a romantic pretence. It is with the woman’s own consent that the carrying off is often brought about in Old India, too, and then it is thus a seduction. So iii, 224.1-4. And Rukmiṇī indeed was agreed that Kṛṣṇa should carry her off, although she was already betrothed to Çiçupāla. It is several times pointed out in the Epic that it is wrong to carry off an unwilling woman. Even the splendid Svayaṃvara sometimes appears only as a means whereby the girl may get him whom she secretly loves. So with Damayantī. Ambā, the daughter of the king of Kāçi has secretly betrothed herself to the king of the Çalvas, and this marriage is also after her father’s will (otherwise on p. 381). Together with her younger sisters she holds a choosing of a husband, but with the arrangement that she shall choose the Çalva (i, 103.61 f.). This plan is upset by Bhīshma. And Drupada, too, at the Svayaṃvara of his daughter is bent on thus getting Arjuna as a son-in-law (i, 185.8 ff.). It is true that possibly this is a later falsification, in spite of i, 193.12-20, where the same underlying thought may well be. Cp. 195.8 ff. But love marriages without some such embroidering seem, therefore, among the nobles not to have been quite “seemly”. Arjuna’s fight for Subhadrā is found also in B. According to iii, 80.28 he had first overcome all the Yādavas before he took his beloved with him; and iv, 49.6 even says that on this occasion he challenged Kṛṣṇa to fight.