Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.12

c6.12

their purity, their conduct, their practices, their confidences, or their speech. They are not, however, on this account to be abandoned, because religious law, on the authority of which they are reckoned pure, lays down that the udder of a cow is clean at the time of milking. Again a dog is clean when he seizes a deer in hunting. A bird is clean when it causes a fruit to fall from a tree by pecking at it. And the mouth of a woman is clean for kissing and such like things."¹ Vātsyāyana finally sums up by saying that in all these matters connected with love, one should be guided by the custom of one's own country and one's own personal inclination in as much as while on the one hand, the holy texts (*Smṛti*) allowed some latitude in such things, on the other hand, they were against the practice of the śiṣṭas (*śiṣṭa-vipratipatteḥ*)"² Here the commentary explains that the śiṣṭas spoken of in this passage are the Prācyas, the Ahicchatrikas and the Nāgarakas,³ and the context shows that he is right.