Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c5.s1.20

c5.s1.20

It may be noted that Vātsyāyana speaks of having treated Bābhravya’s book like an āgama, a work of holy scripture, indicating that it was considerably ancient. A Bābhravya who is called Pāñcāla by Uvaṭa, the commentator, is mentioned in the Ṛk-prātiśākhya as the author of the Krama-pāṭha of the Ṛgveda and Professor Weber² holds that this Bābhravya Pāñcāla, and the Pāñcāla people through him, took a leading part in fixing and arranging the text of the Ṛgveda. The Mahābhārata also says that the author of the Kramapāṭha was a Pāñcāla of the Bābhravya gotra and that his proper name was Gālava.³ This connection of the Pāñcāla people with the Ṛgveda receives a confirmation from what Vātsyāyana tells us in connection with the sixty-four varieties of Samprayoga or connubial intercourse. He says that they belonged to the Pāñcāla country and were collectively called *Catuḥshaṣṭi*¹—"the sixty-four"—from analogy with the *Ṛgveda*. He avers that the *Ṛks* collected in ten *maṇḍalas* are called the *Catuḥshaṣṭi* (being divided into eight *Aṣṭakas* of eight chapters each) and the same principle holds in the case of the *Samprayogas* too (as they are divided into eight times eight varieties); and besides, because they are both connected with the Pañcāla country, therefore, the Bahvṛcas, the followers of the Ṛgveda, have out of respect given this appellation of *Catuḥshaṣṭi* to them.² It may be noted here that the followers of Bābhravya (Bābhravīyāḥ) are mentioned in the Mahābhāshya (on Pānini I. 1) but we cannot be certain whether a Vedic school or a Kāmaśāstra school is there meant. If Bābhravya, the author of the work on the *Kāmaśāstra*, is the same as the great author of the *Kramapāṭha*, then he has to be placed in a very early age indeed. But Bābhravya is merely a *gotra* or family name and it may be doubted whether the science of erotics could have been systematized so early; though it must be admitted that erotics and eugenics, the sciences that the Kāmasūtra embraces in its scope, had received particular attention from the *Ṛṣhis* at the time of composition of the hymns of the Atharvaveda, many of which deal with philtres and charms to secure love and drive away jealousy, with the means for obtaining good, healthy children and other allied matters.