Notes from the Naladiyar

A chaste wife is:

• faithful to her husband
• hospitable
• respected
• pleasing to the eye
• submissive and respectful toward her husband
• modest
• prudent in love quarrels and
• mild speaking

Here is the excerpt from The Naladiyar, chapter 39, translated from Tamil, (40-800 AD?):

"Though women be high in reputation and equal to the goddess Ayrani in conjugal fidelity, they must carefully avoid those who love them, and follow them in hopes of gratification, for such caution is the safeguard of the virtue of matrons with perfumed foreheads.

"If in time of distress, when the meal of the whole family is cooked by the water of a small pot, if a host of relatives sufficient to consume the water of the sea should come all at once, the softly-speaking woman, who shows herself as bounteous as the ocean, is the glory of her house.

"Though her house be open on the four quarters, though it be exceedingly small, and though the rain pour in on every side, a chaste and virtuous woman will be honoured in the place where she resides, and her habitation respected.

"She who is pleasing to the eye, who in all things gratifies her husband according to his desire, and at all times stands in awe of him, whose modesty is so conspicuous as to shame her sex, and in all her love-quarrels with him acts with such prudence that reconciliation affords him increased delight, this mildly-speaking matron is truly a woman."