- Picnics.
- Other social diversions.
Festivals
On some particular auspicious day, an assembly of citizens should be convened in the temple of Saraswati.[1] There the skill of singers, and of others who may have come recently to the town, should be tested, and on the following day they should always be given some rewards. After that they may either be retained or dismissed, according as their performances are liked or not by the assembly. The members of the assembly should act in concert both in times of distress as well as in times of posterity, and it is also the duty of these citizens to show hospitality to strangers who may have come to the assembly. What is said above should be understood to apply to all the other festivals which may be held in honor of the different Deities according to the present rules.
Social Gatherings
When men of the same age, disposition and talents, fond of the same diversions, and with the same degree of education, sit together in company with public women,[2] or in an assembly of citizens, or at the abode of one among themselves, and engage in agreeable discourse with each other, such is called a sitting in company or a social gathering. The subjects of discourse are to be the completion of verses half composed by others, and the testing the knowledge of one another in the various arts. The woman who may be
- ↑ In the “Astatic Miscellany,” and in Sir W. Jones’s works, will be found a spirited hymn addressed to this goddess, who is adored as the patroness of the fine arts, especially of music and rhetoric, as the inventress of the Sanscrit language, etc., etc. She is the goddess of harmony, eloquence, and language. and is somewhat analogous to Minerva. For further information about her, see Edward Moor’s “Hindoo Pantheon.”
- ↑ The public women, or courtezans (Vesya), of the early Hindoos have often been compared with the Hetaerae of the Greeks. The subject is dealt with at some length in H. H. Wilson’s “Select Specimens of the Theatre of the Hindoos.” in two volumes, Trubner & Co., 1871. It may be fairly considered that the courtezan was one of the elements, and an important element too, of early Hindoo society, and that her education and intellect were both superior to that of the women of the household. Wilson says, “By the Vesya or courtezan, however, we are not to understand a female who has disregarded the obligation of law or the precepts of virtue, but a character reared by a state of manners unfriendly to the admission of wedded females into society, and opening it only at the expense or reputation to women who were trained for association with men by personal and mental acquirements to which the matron was a stranger.”
