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Saturday, August 15, 2009

Lord Vishnu's Definition

A brahmana once asked Lord Vishnu: "Which woman is chaste and what are the characteristics of a chaste woman? Kindly teach me in such a way so that I may thoroughly understand it."

Lord Visnu replied:  "A chaste woman is she who
  • renders adoration to her husband with a hundred times more love than what she has for her son;
  • fears him like a king
  • and treats him like God embodied.
  • Who acts like a maid while attending to domestic chores;
  • like a prostitute at the time of cohabitation,
  • like a mother at the time of feeding, and
  • like a minister at the time of crisis by giving good advice.

"A woman may be taken as Pativrata who
  • never disobeys her husband
  • either mentally,
  • verbally,
  • bodily
  • or even through gestures
  • and takes food only after feeding her husband.

"Such a lady is Pativrata who
  • adores her husband on whatever beds he sleeps;
  • who never nurtures any sense of jealousy for him;
  • nor does she ever behave miserly
  • nor is ever displeased irrespective of how her husband treats her - respectfully or otherwise;
  • who treats both honor or dishonor as equal.

"The chaste lady who considers any other man, however handsome, as her brother, father or son, is a Pativrata."

--from the Padma Purana