Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.16

c6.16

Of the various peoples mentioned in the above passage from the Kāmasūtra, the Ahicchatrikas and the Saurasenas were natives of the Madhyadesa and the Nāgarakas also belonged probably to that region for reasons that will be shown below. Of these, Ahicchatra, identified with modern Ramnagar in the Bareilly district,⁴ was the capital of the northern division of the Pañcala country according to the Mahābhārata which states that as the result of the defeat which Droṇācārya inflicted on Drupadā, the Pañcāla king, the country was partitioned into two, and that the Brahmin teacher of the Kurus established his capital at Ahicchatra to the north of the Ganges,¹ and that up to this place the Kaurava battalions reached when the forces of the opposing armies assembled for the Great War.² It is a significant fact that we find a Brahmin family ruling at Ahicchatra in the second century B.C. and that it had marital relations with the great Brahmin imperial family of the Śuṅgas. The names of this family of Kings of *Adhichatra* which is apparently the same as Ahicchatra are given in two inscriptions in a cave at Pabhosā (the classical hill of Prabhāsa) 3 miles to the north-west of Kosam, the ancient Kauśāmbī. The inscription inside the cave records that it was "caused to be made by Āsādhasena, son of the Vaihidarī (i.e., Vaihidara-princess, and) son of King Bhāgavata, son of the Tevanī (i.e., Traivarṇa-princess), and son of King Vangapala, son of Śonakayana (Śaunakāyana) of Adhichatra."[³] Another inscription on the rock outside