Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.253

c6.253

Vātsyāyana also mentions V i d a r b h a or Berar twice in his work in connection with the abuses in the king's harem⁵, and the Commentary explains that the country to the south of Kālānjara was called Vidarbha⁶. Another people, the Vatsagulmas are also mentioned in the same connection as the Vaidarbhas and are to some extent characterised by similar abuses; among both these peoples, we are informed by Vātsyāyana, beautiful women were sent to the king's harem⁷. This agreement is not to be wondered at, in as much as we learn, from Rājaśekhara's *Kāvyamīmāṃsā* that Vatsagulma was a city in the Vidarbhas and that it was a favourite haunt of the god of love¹. The Commentator, Yaśodhara, says that in the Dakṣiṇāpatha there were two brothers called Vatsa and Gulma, and the country where they lived was designated Vatsagulma². Evidently he had no personal knowledge of the place and his information was gathered from some such work as Kṣemendra's *Bṛhatkathāmañjarī* where we are told that Somaśarmā, a Dākṣiṇātya Brahmin had two sons named Vatsa and Gulma³ whose nephew (sister's son) was Guṇāḍhya, the author of the *Bṛhatkathā*, the great storehouse of stories in Paiśācī Prakrit. The same story is told also in the *Kathāsaritsāgara*⁴, and the two brothers Vatsa and Gulma are also mentioned there; but in neither of these stories is there any record of the foundation of the city, which, as we learn from Rājaśekhara, was situated in Berar. By the time that Yaśodhara wrote his Commentary, the name Vatsagulma must have gone out of use.