ABSTRACT
This image is classical in two senses. First, it draws upon a political insight already documented in an ancient BoomaJ.l8 text about the horse-sacrifice, which speaks of a male who 'thrusts the penis into the slit, and the vulva swallows it up', and glosses this statement: 'The slit is the people, and the penis is the royal power, which presses against the people, and so the one who has royal power is hurtful to the people. '46 Second, Sikhm;tc;lin himself was, in his previous life as Ambli, un-raped, as it were - sexually rejected - at both ends: by BhI~ma and by her betrothed lover. A very apt image indeed, but transformed, like Sikhm;tc;lin himself, from the image of a woman to that of a man. To make the metaphor powerful and meaningful the authors of the Banarsi cartoon had to transform the double-raped Ambli into Sikhm;tc;lin - a man who, in the Epic, is not raped at all, but, rather, takes revenge, and hence is more raping than raped.
