Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c5.s2.45

c5.s2.45

Besides the above, there are many references to narrative literature in Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasūtra. In one passage,² he says that when a girl shows some signs of listening favourably to the proposals of a lover, she should be propitiated by reciting to her such stories as those of Ahalya, *Avimāraka* and *Śakuntalā*. The story of Ahalya is given in the Rāmāyaṇa about the date of which, however, there is much controversy; but Ahalya is also alluded to by Aśvaghosha in *Buddhacarita*.³ Avimāraka’s story forms the subject matter of one of the dramas of Bhāsa whom some scholars have placed about the middle of the first century B. C. while others would assign him to the third century A. C.¹ In any case there could not have been much distance in time between Bhāsa and Vātsyāyana because we find pictured in the works of the dramatist a state of society very closely resembling that depicted in the Kāmasūtra. We cannot be sure, however, that Vātsyāyana derived the story of Avimāraka from the drama because Bhāsa’s treatment of it seems to indicate that it was a well-known story like that of Udayana; and, besides, the commentary, Jayamaṅgalā, gives some particulars that are wanting in the drama.