Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.28

c6.28

The Saurasenas occupied the country about the city of Mathurā, their capital. They are located by the commentary to the south of the river Kauśāmbī⁵ which is apparently the stream flowing by the celebrated city of the same name. From the character that Vātsyāyana gives them they appear to have fallen off from the pure and ideal conduct that characterised them in ancient times according to Manu who says, "The plain of the Kurus, the (country of the) Matsyas, Pañcālas, and Sūrasenakas, these (form) indeed, the country of the Brahmarsis (Brahmanical sages, which ranks) immediately after Brahmāvarta. From a Brāhmaṇa born in that country let all men on earth learn their several usages".¹ Evidently the Śaurasenas had fallen off from this high standard of purity under foreign domination. Mathurā had been occupied by the Greeks in the early years of the second century B.C. as pointed out by Kern on the authority of the Gārgi-Saṃhitā which says, "Then the viciously valiant Greeks, after reducing Sāketa, Pañcāla country and Mathurā will reach or take Kusumadhvaja (Palibothra)".² The Gārgi-Saṃhitā further adds that sometime after the Greeks, the country was occupied by the Śakas or Scythians.³ This is fully corroborated by coins and inscriptions unearthed in Mathurā itself and the country in its neighbourhood showing that about the first century before Christ the Śaka satraps Hagamana, Hagamasha, Rañjubula, Soḍāsa etc. were ruling at Mathurā.⁴ Henceforth this city was under the domination of the Kushan monarchs for several centuries, so that in the third century after Christ when, according to our determination, Vātsyāyana wrote his work, the Śaurasenas had got much degraded by intercourse with foreigners of immensely inferior culture and had lost the ancient purity in their manners and customs that made Manu characterise them as an ideal people from whom all other peoples on earth were to imbibe good and decent behaviour.