Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c5.s2.89

c5.s2.89

the lexicons. Two branches of the *Vatsa-gotra* to which our author belongs are mentioned by Āśvalāyana in his *Śrautasūtra*;² and in the history of Sanskrit literature, there are two great representatives, besides our author, of this family: one of them is the great poet Bāṇa, who in one of the introductory verses to his *Kādambarī* speaks of his grandfather as a scion of the Vātsyāyana family,³ and the other is the author of the *Nyāyabhāshya*. This latter has sometimes been identified with our author as in the verse from Hemacandra's *Abhidhānacintāmaṇi* quoted before⁴; but we have seen that Hemacandra in the same passage identifies our author also with Kauṭilya, Cāṇakya, or Vishnugupta who, we definitely know, preceded him by several centuries. The long period that separated these authors from Hemacandra has made him lose the historical perspective and his opinion in this connection does not deserve much consideration. Another argument based on internal evidence may be urged in favour of the identity of the two Vātsyāyanas. The *Kāmasūtra* defines *Kāma* or desire as the consciousness of the enjoyment of appropriate objects through the five organs of sense (and especially through the organ of touch) controlled and directed by the mind associated with the soul.⁵ Now, this is exactly the position held with regard to the method of direct perception or *pratyaksha* expounded in the *Nyāyasūtra* as well as in the *Bhāshya*. The *Bhāshyakāra* the reigning period of Chandragupta Vikramāditya in the early years of the fifth century A.C.. Varāhamihira who unquestionably lived in the sixth century A.C., has in his *Brhat-Samhitā* certain chapters, specially two, named *Kāndarpikam* and *Pumstrī-Samāyoga*,¹ in which he has dealt with matters falling within the sphere of the Kāma-śāstra and in them he seems clearly to have availed himself of Vātsyāyana's work, though he nowhere mentions his name.