In order to get the correct idea of the attitude of dharma writers in this matter I must draw attention to some more of their remarks. In order to condemn attempts toward adultery our writer has defined adulterous acts, and includes therein actions like addressing other men's wives in lonely places, offering them presents, romping with them, touching their ornaments and dress, sitting with them, touching them improperly, or allowing women to touch them thus. All such acts done with mutual consent are adulterous acts. And then in the next verse he says that for these adulterous acts a man who is not a Brāhmana ought to suffer death, for the wives of all the four varnas must be carefully guarded (viii, 356–9).
Narration of these vagaries would make one thing certain that the punishment for adultery depended more or less on the whim of the king, Dharma allowed him the widest possible margin. The actual punishment for the offense must have been much more moderate.
Now we should find out whether the magnitude of this offense became great or small in proportion to the high or low caste of the man who committed the offense. We find that in the treatment of this question in many cases our text is very vague. It contrasts cases that cannot strictly be compared, e. g.: "He who violates an unwilling maiden deserves death at once, but a man
had simply an educative value. We often find very extravagant punishments mentioned in the Scriptures of different peoples, and they cannot be real punishments. In the Scriptures of the Parsis eight hundred stripes are prescribed for involuntary emission of the seed, and the sin of the voluntary emission of the seed was so grave that it could not be atoned at all (Vendidad, Fargand, VIII, v).
