Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c5.s3.9

c5.s3.9

Vātsyāyana mentions the *Abhīras* and the Andhras as ruling side by side at the same time in the South-West of India. He speaks of an *Abhīra* Kottarāja,¹ a king of Koṭṭa in Gujarat, who was killed by a washerman employed by his brother. Then, again, in his chapter on the conduct of women confined in harems, Vātsyāyana describes the sexual abuses practised in the seraglio of the *Abhīra* kings among others. Now, King Īśvarasena, son of the *Abhīra* Śivadatta, is mentioned as a ruling sovereign in one of the Nasik inscriptions and is thought to have reigned in the third century A.D.³ Besides, Mahākshatrapa Īśvaradatta is considered on very reasonable grounds to have been an *Abhīra*, and his coins show that he reigned some time between *circa* 236 and 239 A.D.⁴ About a century later, in the early years of the fourth century A.D. (*circa* 336 A.D.), the *Abhīras* were met by Samudragupta.⁵ The period when the *Abhīras* most flourished, therefore, was the third century A.D. on epigraphic and numismatic grounds. The Andhra rulers are also referred to by Vātsyāyana but certainly as mere local kings. In his chapter on *Īśvarakāmita*, or "The Lust of Rulers," Vātsyāyana describes various forms of sexual abuse practised by kings and it is significant that all the rulers here mentioned are referred to by the names of the people they ruled over and belong to the South Western India, *viz.*, the Kings of the Aparāntakas, the Vaidarbhas, the Saurāṣṭrakas, the Vātsagulmakas and the Andhras.¹ The Andhra monarchs here referred to evidently ruled over the Andhra people proper, and the social customs and practices of the Andhra people are described in various other parts of the book also.² There is no reference in the Kāmasūtra to the position of the Andhras as sovereigns exercising suzerain sway. The time, therefore, described by Vātsyāyana is that when the line of the great Andhra emperors had come to an end and the country was split up into a number of small kingdoms, among which the most considerable were those ruled over by the *Andhra-bhṛtyas*, or dynasties sprung up from the officers of the imperial Andhras. Among them the Purāṇas mention the Ābhīras, the Gardabhinas, the Śakas and also some Andhras³ who evidently ruled over a limited territory at the time referred to. The time when Vātsyāyana flourished is therefore the period when these later Andhra kings and the Ābhīras ruled simultaneously over different parts of Western India, that is, subsequent to *circa* 225 A.C.,⁴ when the line of the great Andhras disappeared and before the beginning of the fourth century A.C.,