Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.292

c6.292

The people of A p a r ā n t a fare referred to several times; in one passage the Aparānta ladies are said to resemble those of Lāṭa⁴, and another refers to an immoral custom prevalent among the Aparānta people that they sent their own handsome wives to kings and high officers in order to win their favours⁵. A third passage states that in Aparānta, the king’s harem was not so strictly guarded as in other parts of India⁶. As regards the location of the province, the Commentary says that the Aparānta country was situated near the Western Sea. It is now generally considered to be “Northern Konkan with a capital at Śūrpāraka (now Sopārā)”⁷ but very often the name appears to have been applied to designate a much wider region from Malabar to Sindh. Kālidāsa, for example, appears to have used the word in its literal sense of “the land on the western boundary line” or the “western marches” including the entire-coast line from Malabar to Sindh. He makes Raghu cross the Sahya range or the Western Ghats between the two peaks Malaya and Dardura¹ which are no doubt Dodabetta in the Nilgiri District and the Anaimalai hills of which the highest is the Anaimudi peak; here is in fact the well-known Palghat gap which forms the only wide opening through the Western Ghats in these regions and through which the Railway line crosses the Ghats. Next, we are told that Raghu's immense army, bent upon conquering the Aparānta country, filled up, as it were, the narrow strip of land between the Ghats and the Sea, and the very next verse takes us to Kerala characterised by its noble palms² and extending, in its widest signification, as far north as Kangarote river near Goa in North Kanara³. Immediately after this, the poet speaks of the date palms⁴ which flourish most in the north, especially in the dry, arid regions of Sindh and in the verse following, he again speaks of the sea paying tribute to Raghu through the kings of Aparānta⁵. Apparently therefore the whole western coast from Kerala up to