Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c5.s2.108

c5.s2.108

in his comment on Nyāyasūtras I. 1. 4 and 9, and I. 2, 20-27 makes it sufficiently clear that it is the *ātman* or soul that receives perception with the help of the mind acting through the senses upon objects.¹ This identity of view of the two Vātsyāyanas with regard to experience or perception is no doubt true, but it will be observed that this view is held also by other schools, for example, the earlier Vedānta. The *Kathopanishad* lays down in unmistakable terms that it is the soul that enjoys things acting through the mind and the senses, and the *Bhagavadgītā* upholds the same doctrine.² *Brahmasūtra*, II. 3. 18 (or 19 according to Rāmānuja) also appears to support the Upanishad view as shown by almost all the commentators.³ It is only Śaṅkara who in his comment on *Brahmasūtra*, II. 3. 29⁴ attempts to prove that pleasure and pain are the qualities of *buddhi* or intellect; but with regard to the *Vyavahārika* or *Saṃsāra* stage with which we are concerned in the Kāmasūtra, there is not much ground of difference even with Śaṅkara. It will be observed, therefore, that the doctrine of perception adumbrated by the Kāmasūtra, does not particularly belong to the *Nyāyabhāshya* but was very generally held among the philosophical schools at the time that our *Sūtra* was written, and this identity of view does not necessarily imply an identity of authors. Then again, the two Vātsyāyanas appear to have been separated by more than a century. Prof. Jacobi has shown that the *Nyāyasūtras* were composed between 200 and 450 A. D. and that the *Nyāyabhāshya* was also written during the same period, ¹ of course, towards the end of it. Mahāmahopādhyāya Dr. Satischandra Vidyābhushana has proved by a more detailed analysis that the author of the *Nyāyabhāshya* "flourished at about A. D. 400, when Chandragupta II called Vikramāditya was King of Magadha." ² By this time the author of the Kāmasūtra was, as we have already seen, an authority on erotics and, as we shall show more definitely below, at least a century had passed since he produced his work. Moreover, the styles of composition of the two authors are quite distinct. Then again, the author of the Kāmasūtra belongs most probably, as we shall show hereafter, to Western India while Dr. Vidyābhūshana assigns the writer of the *Nyāyabhāshya* to the Draviḍa country. ³ From all these considerations, we see that at present there is no valid reason for thinking that the two authors are one and the same.