Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c5.s1.34
Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra c5.s1.34
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Of the predecessors of Bābhravya mentioned by Vātsyāyana, the earlier ones appear to be mythical, but Śvetaketu, the son of Uddālaka, is better known He is mentioned in the Mahābhārata as having established a fixity in sexual relations which before him were entirely free and promiscuous like those of the lower animals, the institution of marriage having not yet come into existence.⁴ This refers to a primitive stage of society, and it is hardly possible, I am afraid, that this Śvetaketu Auddālaki could have been the author of the work in five hundred chapters referred to by Vātsyāyana. However, in the Chāndogyopanishad, and in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁵ in the portion called the Bṛhadāraṇyakopanishad, we meet with a Śvetaketu who may be connected with the tradition of the authorship of a work relating to the Kāmaśāstra. Here we find three generations of Vedic teachers, Brāhmaṇas of Kurupañcāla—Aruṇa, his son Uddālaka Āruṇi, and his grandson, Śvetaketu Auddālaki Āruṇeya.¹ A story is told in almost the same words in both the Chāndogya as well as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishads² how the young Śvetaketu, after finishing his education, went to the assembly (samiti or parishad) of the Pañcāla people and was there discomfited by some questions put to him by Pravāhaṇa Jaivali, a Kshattriya;
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he was mortified at thus being nonplussed by a mere Rājanya and complained to his father who also being unable to answer the questions, sought Pravāhaṇa Jaivali himself for being taught in the matters broached by him. Among the matters taught by this Kshattriya of Pañcāla we find a symbolic interpretation of the relations between the sexes.³ A few chapters later in the Bṛhadāraṇyakopanishad,⁴ we find the same thing related with further additions including rules for approaching a woman, for dealing with a lover of one's own wife and specially rules for obtaining good progeny, and Uddālaka Āruṇi is there referred to as one of the foremost teachers of this science⁵ which represents some of the earliest attempts made in India for the discovery of eugenic laws. These matters were afterwards more fully developed in the Gṛhyasūtras but the beginnings were made in the Upanishads, and, in fact, Āśvalāyana in his Gṛhyasūtra refers to the upanishad or the secret lore as the proper source in these things.⁶ It is significant that both Pravāhaṇa Jaivali and Uddālaka, of the Upanishad story, belonged to the Pañcāla country where, as we have seen before, the Kāmaśāstra was specially cultivated.
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From what we have said above, it is evident that Uddālaka considerably advanced the science the rudiments of which he had received from Pravāhaṇa Jaivali, and his son, Śvetaketu, must have carried it still farther as is evident from the body of tradition that has accumulated round his name as the first human founder of the Kāmaśāstra which appears to have been specially studied in his family. There can be no doubt that Śvetaketu and his father were historical personages and lived in a highly cultured age, an age of intense philosophical speculation, as we see from the many stories connected with them in the Brāhmaṇas and the Upanishads and it is not improbable that he had composed an Upanishad or secret work in which matters relating to marriage, love and the begetting of children were specially dealt with; at any rate, a body of eugenic rules of which a few fragments have been preserved in the Bṛhadāraṇyako-paniṣad, must have come down from him and his family.
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That Śvetaketu left behind him some such work may be gathered from the fact that a personal statement by him has been quoted by Āpastamba in his Dharmasūtra where Śvetaketu is represented as having said that even after his marriage he carried on Vedic studies at his teacher's house for two months every year and thus acquired a greater knowledge of the Śruti than before,¹ and we may note that this passage which seems to be a direct quotation from Śvetaketu, has not been traced as yet in any of the Vedic works where he is referred to. Āpastamba further states, in another chapter, that though Śvetaketu was a person belonging to a comparatively recent age, yet he had become a Ṛshi.¹ Coming back to Vātsyāyana we find that the opinions of Auddālaki are referred to by Vātsyāyana in three places² in his Kāmasūtra and in one of them he contrasts the opinions of Auddālaki and Bābhravya, thus proving the connection of Auddālaki with the Kāmaśāstra beyond any doubt. It does not, however, necessarily impiy that Vātsyāyana had access to Auddālaki's work in five hundred chapters, as in that case he would have made ampler use of it; certain opinions must have been current in Vātsyāyana's time among the teachers of the Kāmaśāstra (whom he frequently refers to as the Ācāryas), as having come down from the reputed human founder of the science; or, the legend of Auddālaki and his opinions might have been taken from the work of Bābhravya on whom Vātsyāyana mainly depends.