Text 3] Devahiti’s Lamentation 903

TRANSLATION

O Vidura, Devahiti served her husband with intimacy and great respect,
with control of the senses, with love and with sweet words.

PURPORT

Here two words are very significant. Devahiti served her husband in
two ways, visrambhena and gauravena. These are two important pro-
cesses in serving the husband or the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
Visrambhena means with intimacy, and gauravena means with great rever-
ence. The husband is a very intimate friend; therefore, the wife must
render service just like an intimate friend, and at the same time she must
understand that the husband is superior in position, and thus she must
offer him all respect. A man’s psychology and woman’s psychology are
different. As constituted by bodily frame, a man always wants to be
superior to his wife, and a woman, as bodily constituted, is naturally
inferior to her husband. Thus the natural instinct is that the husband
wants to post himself as superior to the wife, and this must be observed.
Even if there is some wrong on the part of the husband, the wife must
tolerate it, and thus there will be no misunderstanding between husband
and wife. Visrambhena means with intimacy, but it must not be familiarity
that breeds contempt. According to the Vedic civilization, a wife cannot call
her husband by name. In the present civilization the wife calls her husband
by name, but in Hindu civilization she does not. Thus the inferiority and
superiority complexes are recognized. Damena ca: a wife has to learn to
control herself even if there is a misunderstanding. Sauhrdena vaca
madhurayd means always desiring good for the husband and speaking to
him with sweet words. A person becomes agitated by so many material
contacts in the outside world; therefore, in his home life he must be
treated by his wife with sweet words.

TEXT 3
frasa amd aa a 2g otra aay |
srr fred aaitarararad tt 3 1

visrjya kimam dambham ca
dvesarn lobham aghann madam

apramattodyaté nityam
tejiyadmsam atosayat
