A History of Sanskrit Literature c32.2

c32.2

THE third of the aims of man is Kāma, love, and this subject is taken quite as seriously by Indian writers as Dharma or Artha. As the Arthaçāstra is intended for kings and ministers, so the Kāmaçāstra is to be studied by men of taste, Nāgarakas, who desire to practice refinement and profit to the most by their knowledge of all that is meant by love; women may study it also if they are such as come into contact with gentlemen, that is, courtesans, princesses, and the daughters of high officers. It is not surprising that in the *Kāmasūtra*¹ of Vātsyāyana Mallanāga, our first great treatise on the topic, we should find a close imitation of the *Arthaçāstra*; as in that text we are introduced into the importance of the three ends of man; there is a section on the sciences as they existed at the author’s time, and the book ends with a secret chapter as in the *Arthaçāstra*. Moreover, the author solemnly assures us that the study of the Çāstra will be to induce him who practises love to remember during it the claims of the other sides of man's activity, Dharma and Artha, so that he will observe due moderation. Moreover, the morality of the work is that of the *Arthaçāstra*; on the principle that ‘all's fair in love and war,’ the author complacently gives instruction in modes of deceiving maidens and of seducing the wives of others with as much *sang-froid* as the *Arthaçāstra* in inculcating the benefits of defeating an opponent by guile. The pious Madhusūdana Sarasvatī,² who assigns the Kāmaçāstra to the general head of medicine, assures us that the *Kāmasūtra* in five sections—a discrepancy from our text—teaches that nothing but sorrow results even from all the refinements taught in the text; but that is certainly not the impression left by the *Kāmasūtra*. Even in style the resemblance to the *Arthaçāstra* is quite marked. The work is written in a dry didactic style which is in a sense midway between Sūtras and a Bhāṣya, and the sections are finished off by verses in the manner of the *Arthaçāstra*.¹