Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c21.28

v2.c21.28

P. 111, mid. K. inserts between the adhyāyas corresponding to B., 196-7 two others (212-13). They tell the tale of Indrasenā (Mahendrasenā) Nālayani (Nārāyaṇī, B., iv, 21.10 ff.), whom L. v. Schroeder has awakened again to so full a life (*Mysterium u. Mimus im Rigveda*, p. 346 ff.): Indrasenā is the wife of the old penitent Maudgalya. This hloy man not only has a spiteful and covetous disposition, but is also a leper, nothing but skin and bones, full of wrinkles, bald-headed, and "reeking with a smell that is very different from a perfume". But the young wife serves him with the greatest faithfulness. One day the leper's thumb falls off, and right into her food. She calmly picks this out this nasty addition, and goes on eating. This so pleases him that he tells her he is not really so bad or so old. He tells her to choose herself a favour. She answers: "Do me the pleasure of dividing thyself into five." He does so, and now leads a life of delight by her side, climbing with her in his various shapes into the sun, to the heavenly Gaṅgā, into the moon, to the gods, and so on, turning into a tree which she winds round as a creeper, and doing other things of this kind. Thus for her with the five-fold husband did years go by like a moment. Then the holy man turned away from the delights of the senses, and left her. The sorrowing woman fell senseless to earth, and made lament that she was not yet sated with joys. Because of her unseemly words he laid the curse on her of becoming in her future life Drupada's daughter, and having five husbands. Then she practised the sternest penance. The rejoicing Ҫiva came; and now follows the well-known and here very needless tale of the words five times spoken: "Give me a husband." As Ҫiva keeps to his decision, she utters the wish that in her union with each of the five she may at least keep her maidenhead.