Volume 1

Sexual life in ancient India : a study in the comparative history of Indian culture / by Johann Jakob Meyer.

  • Meyer, Johann Jakob, 1870-1939.
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Sexual life in ancient India : a study in the comparative history of Indian culture / by Johann Jakob Meyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and this according to xii, 34.26, is done by a fire-offering. Seed and the shedding of seed is, indeed, magically dangerous. It also belongs to full chastity, as already mentioned, that a man should not know a woman (prajanati, i, 64.117) before she has reached puberty (apraptayauvana). Perhaps the heights of considerate chaftity are reached by Nakula, the hero beautiful, “ moft worthy of gaze in all the world,” who goes off into banishment plastered with duff all over his body, as he does not wish to turn the women’s heads on the way (ii, 80.6.18). It is in the light, then, of the passages given on the importance of offspring that the ordinance in xii, 35.27 muft he understood, which seems to be at variance with the commandments of chaftity : “ If a man is begged for it (bhikshite) as for a pious alms, lying with the wife of another does not put a Stain on law and virtue.” The commentator says : If a man is begged by a woman for the dharma’s sake : “ Pour in the seed ! ” And as this half verse Stands in a didadtic discourse highly tinged with Brahman views, Nil. is undoubtedly right, and we hardly need have in thought a generous chivalry on the man's, namely the warrior’s, side, such as comes into the myth of Qarmishtha and Yayati.1 to a woman (avakirnin), then according to MBh., xii, 24 he muSt be clad for six months in an ox-skin and carry out the penance of the Brahman-murderer, and also in xii, 34.1 ff. his name is given along with the slayer of a man of the prieStly class and other wicked evil-doers, and prayapcitta (atonement) is imposed on him. Cp. v, 38.4. According to the law writings he gets cleansed again by sacrificing in the night at a cross-ways to Nirriti (goddess of corruption) a (one-eyed) ass. The sinner muff put on the ass’s skin with the hair outside, and (with a red begging-bowl) beg at seven houses, making known his deed. (He muff eat only once a day, and bathe in the morning, at midday, and in the evening.) Besides this other offerings and atonement rites are also given. Baudhayana, ii, 1.29-34 ; iii, 4 ; iv, 2.10 f.; Apaff., i, 9, 26.8 ; Vasishtha, xxiii, 1-3 ; Manu, xi, 119-124 ; Yajnav., iii, 280; Vishnu, xxviii, 48 ff. ; Gautama, xxiii, 17-19; xxv, 1-5; Parask.-Grihyas., iii, 12.1 ff. ; Agnipur., 169.15b— 18a (essentially = Manu, xi, 119 ff.). Any other self-polluter comes off lightly (bathing, Vishnu, liii, 4, etc.; to say the Gayatri a thousand times, and three times to hold the breath [pranayama] in Par^ara, xii, 63 ; and so on). Cp. Baudh., iii, 7.1-7 ; iv, 2.13 ; ApasT, i, 9, 26.7 ; Manu, xi, 174 ; Vishnu, liii, 4 ; Gaut., xxv, 7. 1 Cp. too the words of this king in i, 83.32-34.