Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c4: Foreword

Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra c4

Language: English

Foreword

c4.1

The social life in ancient India has not yet received the same attention as the other aspects of ancient Indian history and culture. Only caste has been studied with some care, and from the legal point of view, some other aspects of social life also. But what Zimmer in his *Altindisches Leben* has done for the early Vedic period, still remains to be done for the subsequent ages of Indian civilisation and culture. However, before a synthetic history embracing the long period, through which Indian society has grown aud developed, is attempted, an intensive study has to be made of the different ages through which it has come. It was with this object that I took up the study of Vātsyāyana’s K ā m a s ū t r a which gives a beautifully vivid picture of Indian society in the early centuries of the Christian era. It wonderfully supplements the account we receive from the sacred literatures, Brahmanical, Buddhistic and Jain. Dealing with an avowedly secular matter as it does, it depicts society from an independent point of view, and gives details, especially of the darker features of social life, with a fulness that we naturally miss in the sacred texts.

c4.2

An indispensable preliminary was an accurate determination of the time when Vātsyāyana wrote his book, especially as in the history of Indian literature there are very few definite dates. I have therefore first of all discussed this question at some length from internal and external evidence. My paper on the date of the Kāmasūtra was first published in the *Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society* in 1919, and again, after a thorough revision, in the *Journal of the Department of Letters* (Vol. IV) of the University of Calcutta. The conclusions arrived at by me have been confirmed by the discussions that my paper has raised, both in India and in Europe, and I have reviewed them towards the end of Chapter I. Prof. A. B. Keith in his recently published *History of Sanskrit Literature*, shows himself inclined to bring down my date by about two centuries, but he has not fully set forth his reasons for thingking so.

c4.3

Vātsyāyana delineates many local customs—d e ś y o p a c ā r ā ḥ—as he calls them, characterizing the various peoples of India inhabiting the different parts of its wide area. I have, therefore, thought it necessary, while passing in review the customs peculiar to each province or people to fix the location of the countries about which there have been controversies among scholars ; this matter has therefore been treated, with some fulness, in Chapter II of this book. It first appeared in the *Annals of the Bhandarkar Institute* (Vols. VII and VIII).

c4.4

The rest of my book attempts to give as complete an account as possible of the social life of India as depicted by Vātsyāyana, and I have shown how he sometimes corroborates, and very often supplements, the account derived from other sources, specially from works written about his own time, so as to present a fairly accurate idea of the state of Indian society in the period to which Vātsyāyana belongs. Much of the matter contained in Chapters V and VI appeared in the *Sir Asutosh Mookerjee Silver Jubilee Volumes* (Vol. III, Part I) under the caption *Sidelights on social life in Ancient India : Studies in Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasūtra*.

c4.5

The only contributions on the social life of the age of Vātsyāyana that appeared before my studies, are two papers by Prof. P. Peterson referred to in Chapter VI (P. 172). These are mainly translations with short notes of two out of the sixty-four sections of the Kāmasūtra and cover only a very small part of the ground traversed by me.

c4.6

H. C. C.

c4.7

the Lacedaemonians, who had been waiting for the signal, now attacked the city. The Plataeans, seeing the enemy already inside and their own men falling, and knowing nothing of the plot, were seized with panic and, thinking that the Thebans were far more numerous than they really were, surrendered at discretion. But when they discovered that the Thebans were few, they took heart and, resolving to attack them, closed the gates and fell upon them.

c4.8

The Thebans, finding themselves in a trap, began to defend themselves. Twice or thrice they repelled the attacks of the Plataeans, but when the women and slaves began to shout and throw tiles and stones from the houses, and a heavy rain began to fall, the Thebans, confused and blinded, broke and fled through the city. Most of them, not knowing the way in the darkness and rain, fell into the drains or were killed by the Plataeans, who knew the streets. The gate through which they had entered had been shut by a Plataean who had found a javelin-head and used it as a bolt, so that there was no way out. Pursued through the city, some climbed the wall and jumped down, most of them perishing; others reached the gate and, finding it shut, were cut down by the women and slaves. A small party, seeing a large building with an open door, rushed in, thinking it was a gate, and were captured.

c4.9

Meanwhile, the main body of the Thebans, who were to have arrived at daybreak to support the first party, had been delayed by the rain and the swollen river Asopus. When they heard of the disaster, they hurried to the city, intending to seize any Plataeans who might be outside the walls. The Plataeans, suspecting their intention, sent a herald to them, warning them not to harm the prisoners they had taken, and threatening to kill them if they did not withdraw from their territory. The Thebans, upon this, retired.

c4.10

The Plataeans, having thus cleared the city, collected their dead and the prisoners. The prisoners, numbering about one hundred and eighty, were executed the next day, despite a message from the Thebans claiming that they had surrendered on terms. The Plataeans denied this, asserting that they had promised to spare them only if they did not commit further acts of violence.

c4.11

Thus ended the attempt of the Thebans upon Plataea, an event which was the immediate cause of the war between Athens and the Peloponnesians. The Plataeans, having secured their city, sent a messenger to Athens with the news, and the Athenians, fearing for the safety of the Plataeans, sent a garrison to their aid and removed the women and children to Athens.

c4.12

CHAPTER I

c4.13

DATE OF THE KĀMASŪTRA

c4.14

Vātsyāyana stands pre-eminent in early Indian literature as an author who brought the analytical power of a keen logician to bear on the science of erotics which, in our modern days, has only lately begun to be studied with the care that it deserves. The science had attracted the serious attention of the Indian savants very early, as far back, perhaps, as the time when the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa was being compiled, and in the centuries that elapsed before Vātsyāyana made his appearance, the various sections of the science were being studied separately and individually. But it was Vātsyāyana who synthesised the whole science and revived the popular interest in this branch of knowledge. Apart from its interest as a work on the science of love, Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasūtra, at the present day, is of immense importance to us as throwing a flood of light on the manners and customs of his contemporary Indian society. To appreciate the full value, for the social history of India, of the picture that Vātsyāyana presents, we must, in the first place, try to ascertain, as closely as possible, the time when he flourished and for this purpose it will be necessary to trace the history of his science, to ascertain his relation to other departments of Indian literature, and also to analyse critically the few references that may be gleaned from his work, to the political history of India.

Linked texts (2)

Kāmasūtra — Vātsyāyana Mallanāga, Sanskrit
Śatapathabrāhmaṇa — Yājñavalkya & Śāṇḍilya (Vedic teacher), Sanskrit