Dear Colleagues,

I am searching for textual evidence of a little-known Nyāya.

In an article by Soutik Biswas “Why India's sanitation crisis kills women” (BBC News India, 30 May 2014), it was claimed that “Several studies have shown that women without toilets at home are vulnerable to sexual violence when travelling to and from public facilities or open fields. [...]“. One mother told researchers, “We have had one-on-one fights with thugs in order to save our daughters from getting raped. It then becomes a fight that either you [the thug] kill me to get to my daughter, or you back off.”

This courageous behaviour of mothers fighting for her girls at the risk of their own lives reminds one of the śaśī-sarpa-nyāya (“the bunny and the snake”), known to some by hearsay only, but not (yet) traceable. The generalization here lies certainly in the fact that a (physically weaker) female (śaśī) effectively fights a (physically stronger) male (sarpa). The latter would be the aggressor(s), the victim(s) the (female) bunny and/or her young.

The rare feminine formation śaśī causes no real trouble, as occurrences of the word are anyway testified in the Mokṣopāya (VI.34.103) and in Ratnākaraśānti’s Vidagdhavismāpana (175) [written communication by Roland Steiner].

In connection of the very idea behind this nyāya, I should also like to add that Gandhi could indeed have been aware of a similar popular maxim, as he refers explicitly to “the violence of the mouse against the cat“, writing that

“A girl who attacks her assailant with her nails, if she has grown them, or with her teeth, if she has them [? W.S.], is almost non-violent (...). Her violence is the violence of the mouse against the cat.“ (Harijan, 08-09-1940).

On the other hand, Gandhi had

„(...) always held that it is physically impossible to violate a woman against her will. (…) If she cannot meet the assailant’s physical might, her purity will give her the strength to die before he succeeds in violating her. (…) I know that women are capable of throwing away their lives for a much lesser purpose.” (Harijan, 25-08-1940).

The statement in the last paragraph, only cited for its somewhat conflicting character with the first one, would, if further pursued, however lead into an entirely different matter, better not to be touched.

I would be fully satisfied if someone among this learned community could contribute to the mysterious śaśīsarpanyāya, on- or off-list.

 

Thanking you,

WS