Y uses grammatical terms such as noun and verb, subject and object, and glosses a grammatical sentence as an example, quoting the great Sanskrit grammarian Panini. 2.1.28 Devadatta is the ancient Sanskrit equivalent of John Doe, and the sentence about the rice is the standard sample sentence in Sanskrit, as ‘See Dick and Jane run’ used to be in English. See O’Flaherty, Women, Androgynes.Ģ.1.27 ‘Species’ (or ‘form’, akriti) is replaced, in 2.1.30, by ‘genus’, jati, a word, cognate with ‘genus’, that also, significantly, means ‘caste’, in contrast with ‘class’ (varna, as in 1.2.25 and 1.5.1). 2.1.24 The example chosen seemingly at random, the mating of a man and a mare, is actually attested in a number of Hindu myths.

Y’s comment in 2.1.35 indicates his belief that both the man and the woman might wish to stop, but V in 2.1.36 tells us that the man runs out of fluid first, from which we might conclude that he is the one intended here too.

The ‘wish to stop’ is similarly gender-neutral. There is an ambiguity here: whose fluids are used up, his or hers? The phrase could refer to the semen of either the man or the woman, or to the man’s semen and the woman’s lubricating juices, or to the man’s semen and the woman’s menstrual blood, or to both components of any of these options.

For the story of the two queens, in the Padma Purana, see O’Flaherty, Textual Sources for the tale of Bhringin, see O’Flaherty, Siva for menstrual blood and semen, see O’Flaherty, Women, Androgynes.Ģ.1.21 (and 2.1.35). In focusing upon the issue of women’s pleasure, and not only upon their ability to conceive, V differs dramatically from the medical and legal texts, all of which deal obsessively with the issue of conception. V does not comment on this assumption but seems to share Babhravya’s belief that women do have orgasms and not to share his belief that they have them continually. Babhravya’s assumption (in contrast with Auddalaki’s) is that a woman, like a man, emits semen during orgasm and that her seed, like his, is necessary for conception.

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