Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.308

c6.308

On the evidence offered by the Aparānta coins; however, General Cunningham shows Aparānta to extend farther north and also to include territories considerably inland. Thus Cunningham observes, "Aparāntika is placed by Varāhamihira in the western division of India along with Sindhu-Sauvīra and Pañcanada, or Sindh and the Punjab.”¹ He further argues, “The coins of the Aparāntikas, bearing the inscription *Aparatasa Mahārājasa*, were found chiefly in Rajputana about Nimach and Ajmer, by Colonel Stacy, while my own specimens have been obtained in north Rajputana and Mathurā. For these reasons I conclude that the country known as Aparāntika or “West Land,” was actually in the west of India, and that it did not extend geographically to the south of the Narbadā. Politically Sopārā and other places to the south of that river may have been included.” But this is not the view of Kālidāsa as we have shown above. Yet, at the same time, it has to be admitted that Cunningham’s argument has much force. Fleet also points out that “One of the Asoka edicts classes the Yavanas, Kāmbojas and Gandhāras as Aparānta,” and thinks that Aparānta includes “the Konkan, with also Northern Gujrat, Kathiawad, Cutch and Sindh.”² But as we have shown above, Kālidāsa takes it further south and includes the whole of the Malabar coast in it. It is difficult to say what region exactly is meant by Vātsyāyana but we can form a guess from the context in which it occurs. In the group of *sūtras* where Aparānta occurs, Vātsyāyana is illustrating a local custom (*Deśapravṛtti*), and all the people that he mentions belong to south-western India : thus they occur in the order—*Andhras* (whose dominions had before the days of Vātsyāyana extended to the western coast and Mālava), the *Vatsagulmas* and the *Vidarbhas*, (both of whom belong to Berar), the *Aparāntas* and lastly the *Saurāṣṭrakas*. Aparānta of Vātsyāyana appears therefore to be the western coast including the Konkan and extending to the south of Kathiawar. It did not include Saurāṣṭra, nor Sindh in as much as the Saindhavas are mentioned separately.