Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.125

c6.125

Another country in the north-west of India which Vātsyāyana refers to, is that through which flow the six rivers including the Sindhu or the Indus.¹ The people living in this region, says Vātsyāyana, were fond of the filthy practice of Aupariṣṭaka; that they were sexually very corrupt is borne out by the character given them by Karṇa in the *Mahābhārata*² which also describes the country almost in the very same words as Vātsyāyana³ and designates the people as Bāhikas. This Bāhika country is condemned in the strongest terms in the *Mahābhārata* and is declared as unfit for habitation by Āryas⁴ showing apparently that at the time of the Great Epic itself, the people of the Punjab were at a far lower stage of culture than that of the Vedic Indo-Aryans.