Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c8.40

c8.40

At the time of which we are speaking the Curtain, as the seclusion of women in the East is called, was falling fast over social happiness in India. Love, denied its rightful freedom, went into strange aberrations. It was permitted to a lover to use witchcraft to rouse a response in the heart of the relentless fair. A husband might try what witchcraft could do, when more rational means failed, to regain the lost affections of an indifferent wife. But here Kautalya cried a halt. Carried further, witchcraft brought the middle amercement. To pervert it to incestuous purposes was to invite mutilation and death. The extreme penalty was inflicted on a woman