I am sorry the diacritics I use for vedic accents and the hácek (inverted circumflex) never show in my emails. This is beyond my control. My apologies for the inconvenience.

 

I was also reminded that the thread is „sexual harrassment“, not „rape“ in the strict sense. This is correct. Might I, with your permission, then add the innocent question why public sexual harrassment in India is widely known as „Eve teasing“?

The vast majority of victims are Indian girls. So, why an English – but not an Indian – forename to designate a crime committed by male Indian youth gangs against Indian women?

I have never quite understood the background of this bizarre denomination. I am afraid in this particular case attempts at linking it to the premodern past of India are bound to fail. Are there any explanations on offer?

 

Yours, cluelessly,

WS



2016-10-17 22:25 GMT+02:00 Artur Karp <karp@uw.edu.pl>:
> Iva Fiser

Let's please retain Prof. Ivo Fišer's Czech family name.

Artur K.  

2016-10-17 22:17 GMT+02:00 farkhondeh iran via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>:
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---------- Wiadomość przekazana dalej ----------
From: farkhondeh iran <iran_farkhondeh@yahoo.fr>
To: Walter Slaje <slaje@kabelmail.de>
Cc: Nityanand Misra <nmisra@gmail.com>, indology <indology@list.indology.info>
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2016 22:16:11 +0200
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Sexual Harassment

If I may again, I agree with Prof. Slaje on the danger of anachronism and the need to go back to the Sanskrit words. The word kanyā-dūṣaṇa does not occur in KSS XII, 2, 105 cd but the Sanskrit is crystal-clear: it is a case of abuse as the girl is not willing and as the vidyādhara has undertaken to abduct her by force. 

upetya tām anicchantīm haṭhād dhartum pravṛttavān, KSS XII, 2, 105, cd

I. Farkhondeh

Le 17 oct. 2016 à 21:54, Walter Slaje <slaje@kabelmail.de> a écrit :

Before rashly jumping to a discussion of “rape” by tacitly presupposing a 21st century Western understanding of its concept and performance also for ancient India, a clarification is required of the concept(s) of “rape” prevailing in premodern Indian thought. What unambiguous words and matching notions have so far been recorded that would correspond to "rape" in accordance with modern Western standards? What normative boundaries of, e.g., “legal” types of marriage such as rākṣasa and piśāca – clear cases of “rape” in Western terms I suppose – needed to be transgressed that facts of rape would have been considered as fulfilled in premodern India? Was kanyā-dūṣaṇa the same as “rape” in our understanding, or simply the spoiling of a virgin so that she could no longer be married off and became a serious damage to her parents?

In what way can the absolute power a husband would have exercised over his wife (or wives) be categorised in contexts of "rape"?

Is there any connecting factor of the past that could be related to the extraordinarily high number of filed gang rape cases in present-day India as continuously reported by the Indian media? In this latter regard, a good starting point could perhaps be Gyula Wojtilla's "Women at Work and Their Enemies. A Reappraisal of the Kāmasūtra V, 5, 5 – 10" (I lack the bibliographic citation of his paper at the moment).


In a more general sense, BĀU (M) VI 4,7 could also be revealing, if just ati-√kram is not understood in line with Śaṅkara’s unconvincing attempts at downplaying the matter, but in accordance with Iva Fiser's „overcome her forcibly“ (Indian Erotics of the Oldest Period, Praha 1966: 116, a book not without its merits).


Regards,

WS


-----------------------------
Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
Hermann-Löns-Str. 1
D-99425 Weimar
Deutschland
 

2016-10-17 20:08 GMT+02:00 Nityanand Misra <nmisra@gmail.com>:

On 17 October 2016 at 22:48, Artur Karp <karp@uw.edu.pl> wrote:
Dear All, 

Should I understand that there are no traces, no mentions of sexual harrasment in the entire - vast - corpus of ancient/medieval Indian literature?



A search for rape as the Text Word in the Puranic Encylopedia under http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/PEScan/2014/web/webtc2/index.php shows up the following:

Rape of Rambhā by Rāvaṇa (VR, UK).
Rape [sic] of Vedavatī by Rāvaṇa (VR, UK). In the VR, it is harassment but not rape. Probably the rape is described in some other R.
Rape of Madanamañjarī by Rāvaṇa (source?)
Rape of Cañcalākṣī by Rāvaṇa (KambaR)
Rape of Arā, daughter of Śukra, by Daṇḍa (VR UK)
Rape of Ugrasena's wife by the Gandharva Dramila (SB, 10th Canto)
Attempt to rape Vinayavatī by Raṅgamālī (Kathāsaritsāgara)
Attempt to rape Pramati by Nala, friend of Sudeva (Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa)
 

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