Page:Love in Hindu Literature.djvu/84

70 VI. THE DIGNITY OF SEX. of the human system, apart from its social, economic, moral or political values. And those values also have not been ignored in art or in life.

The Hindu has never believed in the atrophy of any sense or sense-organ. He has therefore idealized and deified every human passion and every phase of human beauty. Sex with all its functions has thus its own apotheosis in the Hindu system of life and thought; and Kama-shastra or erotics is one of the oldest Indian sciences. The joys and griefs of amorous life are, therefore, as sacred as the joys and griefs of life in other spheres. Vidyapati as the poet of sex-desire and physical beauty does not require any apology. He is the apostle of traditional Hindu humanism. And this Indian message has been presented to the larger world not a moment too soon in Coomaraswamy's Bangiya Padabali.

And here it is necessary to point out that Vidya- pati's message, or the Hindu conception of the dignity of sex, must not be taken as equivalent to one or other of the many formulas that have become current in recent years through the movement of Feminism or " Woman's Rights," which has followed Socialism as one of the by-products of " Industrial Revolution." .By- dignity of sex are not to be meant the theories about female genius, male women, womanish men, sexual equality, co-education, subjection of women, or superiority of the female brain. By dignity of sex is not to be under- stood the prominence attached to such problems as " free love," polygamy, chastity, celibacy, divorce; " love- children," bastardism, romantic marriages, the choos-