Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 1388

III. MEANING OF KHVÊTÜK-DAS.
407
the house of her father and mother, the husband is dragged to the judges, and they shall form a district assembly (shatrô angêzo) about it. And lest he should speak thus: “I will release her from wifehood with me?," vice and fraud of many kinds and the misery of deformity are the faults which are also secretly attributed to him.
'A wife of those three classes? is to be provided, since they would not do even one of these things : ; on which account, even through advantageousness, virtuous living, precious abundance, dignity, and innocence, mutual labour is manifestly mighty and strong.
"And if it be said that,“ with all this which you explain, there is also, afterwards, a depravity (darvakh) which is hideous," it should be understood in the mind that hideousness and beauteousness are specially those things which do not exist in themselves, but through some one's habit of taking up an opinion and belief. The hideous children of many are in the ideas of procreation exceedingly handsome, and the handsome forms of many are in the ideas of a housekeeper (khânopano) exceedingly ugly. We consider him also as one of our enemies when any one walks naked in the country, which you consider hideous; but the naked skins of
1 That is, lest he should pronounce her divorce.
. The three nearest degrees of relationship must be meant, as the sequel admits the possibility of the union being considered objectionable ; otherwise, the three kinds of first cousins might be understood.
• As a special pleader for marriage between near relations the apologist feels himself bound to argue that all bad wives must have been strangers to the family before marriage.
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