Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.235

c6.235

Dakṣiṇāpatha is mentioned by Vātsyāyana in connection with the custom of marriage with the daughter of the maternal uncle in that region² and the Dākṣiṇātyas are referred to four times. One peculiar custom of the South is referred to by him as consisting of something like circumcision³. Vātsyāyana refers to the peculiar way in which the Dākṣiṇātyas dress their finger-nails as distinguished from the Gauḍas, while the Mahārāṣṭrakas, he assures us, follow a middle course⁴. The Dākṣiṇātyas, says Vātsyāyana, are also characterised by a fondness for delivering artistic strokes at ladies in their amorous sports as an expression of strong passion⁵. This was a local custom with them and Vātsyāyana gives several examples from the court life of the South. The women of the South, says he, bear on their bodies marks of these strokes⁶ which sometimes were so violent as to deprive them of their lives. It was by just such a stroke—the *K a r t a r i* imparted on the head—that Kuntala Sātakarṇi Sātavāhana killed his chief queen, Malayavatī,¹ the Chola king killed the courtesan, Citrasenā, by a similar stroke on the chest, called *K i l ā* in the technical language of the *Kāmasutra*², and a stroke, the *V i d d h ā*, aimed at the forehead of a dancing girl by Naradeva, who, as the Commentary informs us, was Chief of the Pāṇḍya king's forces, made her lose an eye.³ Besides, he refers to an evil practice of the Dākṣiṇātyas⁴.