Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.23

c6.23

the cave records the further fact that this Āṣāḍhasena was the maternal uncle of King Bahasatimitra, the son of Gopālī.¹ This King Bahasatimitra has been identified with the Śuṅga Emperor, Puṣyamitra by Mr. K. P. Jayaswal² who holds that "the Ahichatra family of Āṣāḍhasena was either gubernatorial or feudatory to the Magadha throne." He further points out that "the Ahichatra family were Brahmans like the Śuṅgas, an ancestor of Āṣāḍhasena being called Śaunakāyana." In the neighbourhood of Ahicchatra have been picked up the so-called Mitra coins and among them those of a King Agnimitra who is considered to be the same as the second emperor of the Śuṅga dynasty,³ and a dedicatory inscription at Budh Gayā assigned to the earlier part of the first century B.C., records the gift of a queen of King Indramitra of Ahicchatra.⁴ We know very little of the subsequent history of Ahicchatra but by the time that Vātsyāyana wrote his book, in the third century B.C., this city must have passed like the whole of the province to which it belongs through the hands of the Kuṣan monarchs. It is significant that while Vātsyāyana speaks of the people of Ahicchatra, he has nothing to record of the king or the king's harem as he does in other cases.