Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.277

c6.277

A western division with general characteristics is not mentioned by Vātsyāyana and it appears that there was no uniformity of character and habits in Western India as in the Prācya country and the Dākṣiṇatya. We have already referred to the land of the five rivers with the Indus as the sixth, i.e., the Punjab in the north-west in connection with the U d i c y a division and only the countries in the South-West now remain to be dealt with. Vātsyāyana mentions the ladies of Mālava and A v a n t i⁴, the former being properly the Eastern or P ū r v a-M ā l a v a with its capital at Vidiśā, and the latter, Western or A p a r a-M ā l a v a with its capital at Ujjayinī as the Commentary correctly points out⁵. Avanti and Mālava are also separately mentioned in Bharata’s *Nāṭyaśāstra* where we are told that the people of Avanti, Sorāṣṭra, Mālava etc. have the same style as Avanti⁶. Another name for eastern Malava was Ā k a r a as we find from *Bṛhat-Saṃhitā* which mentions Ākara among the countries in the South West as also from several inscriptions of the Sātavāhanas where we find Ākara and Avanti mentioned side by side¹. These inscriptions and also coins go to show that the two Mālavas were by the first century A.D. included in the empire of the Sātavāhanas², but with the disruption of that empire, they must have again become independent, as their separate treatment by Vātsyāyana shows.