Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.245

c6.245

Besides the general mention of the people of the Deccan, Vātsyāyana delineates some peculiarities in the character of the women of Draviḍa (*Draviḍyaḥ*)⁵ and V a n a v ā s i (*Vanavāsikyaḥ*)⁶. Yaśodhara, whose ignorance of the geography of the East, as we have seen, was quite lamentable, shows an accurate knowledge of the location of the countries of the South. Thus he says, the *Draviḍa Viṣaya* was to the south of the Karṇāṭa country⁷ (*Kanara* of modern days) and the *Vanavāsa-viṣaya*, he says, was to the east of the province of Koṅkaṇa⁸. In connection with this mention of *Vanavāsi* by Vātsyāyana, Mahāmahopādhyāya Haraprasad Sastri in his lectures on *Magadhan Literature* has expressed the opinion that the ancient name, Vaijayantī, "became Vanavāsī about the beginning of the Christian era", and thence he derives an argument in favour of his theory that Vātsyāyana is to be placed in the first century A. C. But we find from inscriptions that the name Vaijayantī continued for several centuries of the Christian era. Thus we find Viṇhukaḍa-Cuṭukulānanda Sātakaṇṇi calls himself V a i j a y a n t ī-p u r a-r ā j ā in an inscription on a pillar in front of the Kalleśvara temple at Malavalli in the Shikarpur Taluka of Mysore.² As Fleet observes, "This king of Vaijayantī, that is Banawāsi in the North Kanara district, Bombay, may be referred to any time in or about the first or second century A. D."³ In a later inscription on the same pillar the Kadamba king, Śivakhada-Vamma or Śivaskanda-varman calls himself the 'lord of Vaijayantī' and Rice has "marked its date as about 250 A. D."⁴