Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c5.s1.49

c5.s1.49

Rājaśekhara in his *Kāvyamīmāmsā*² refers to Suvarṇanābha as the author of a treatise on a branch of poetics, viz., *Rītinirṇaya* and speaks of Kucamāra as having dealt with the *Aupanishadika* section. The latter is evidently the same as Vātsyāyana’s Kucamāra, the author of a monograph on the *Aupanishadika* portion of the Kāmaśāstra, and most probably one and the same work has been referred to by the two authors, there being nothing extraordinary in the fact that the sections dealing with the secrets and mysteries (*upanishad*) of both poetics and erotics should coalesce.³ Kauṭilya in the *Arthaśāstra* has quoted⁴ *Dīrgha Cārāyaṇa* and *Ghoṭamukha* who, as Professor Jacobi holds,⁵ are probably the same persons as the Cārāyaṇa and Ghoṭamukha of Vātsyāyana; they would therefore have lived prior to the fourth century B. C. and Dattaka and Bābhravya who preceded them must be thrown back to a much earlier date. Dattaka, of course, could not have lived earlier than the fifth century B.C. when Pāṭaliputra became the capital of Magadha. Goṇikāputra is mentioned by Patañjali in the *Mahābhāshya* as a former grammarian⁶ and Professor Jacobi is inclined to believe that he is the same person as the Goṇikāputra of Vātsyāyana. But in his case, as also in that of Gonardīya, the identification is rather doubtful as grammar and erotics are not very allied subjects. The works of Bābhravya and Goṇiputraka, who must be the same as our Goṇikāputra, as well as that of Vātsyāyana, appear to have been used by Jyotirīśvara Ṭhakkura while composing his *Pañcasāyaka*,¹ a work on erotics which was written in Mithilā by the end of the thirteenth century, the author being considered to be the great-grand-father of the celebrated poet, Vidyāpati who flourished in the middle of the fourteenth century A.C.