woman is a thing possessed, and her immorality consists simply in disposing freely of herself.
As regards prostitution, Brahmanic India is scarcely more scrupulous than Japan, and there again we find religious prostitution practised in the temples, analogous to that which in ancient Greece was practised at Cyprus, Corinth, Miletus, Tenedos, Lesbos, Abydos, etc.[1]
According to the legend, the Buddha himself, Sakyamouni, when visiting the famous Indian town of Vesali, was received there by the great mistress of the courtesans.[2]
But the Brahmins have not been more strict in what concerns prostitution than the founder of the great Buddhist religion. On this point the accounts of travellers and missionaries supplement the silence of the Code of Manu. The writers of Lettres édifiantes found religious prostitution openly practised in the Brahmanic temples. "The people have put," writes one of them, "the idol named Coppal in a neighbouring house; there she is served by priests and by Devadachi, or slaves of the gods. These are prostitute girls, whose employment is to dance and to ring little bells in cadence while singing infamous songs, either in the pagoda, or in the streets when the idol is carried out in state."[3] In this case it was a matter of actual commerce, of trading for the profit of the priests, and the latter had recourse without any shame to what we call today the advertisement to attract the customers. "I heard," relates the same missionary, "published with the blowing of a trumpet, that there was danger in frequenting the Devadachi who dwelt in the town; but that one could safely visit those who served in the temple of Coppal."[4] An old traveller, Sonnerat, confirms the testimony of the missionaries of the seventeenth century. He affirms that, like all the other Hindoos, the Brahmins are much addicted to libertinage, and that, in their practical morality, it is not considered a fault to have commerce with a courtesan; that they have licentious books in which
