Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.316

c6.316

The question now remains for us to determine the position of Nagara referred to in Vātsyāyana's Nāgarikyaḥ and Nāgarakāḥ. The Commentary is certainly right in holding that they are proper names referring to a particular place and are not used in the literal sense of 'the women or men of a city' in general, and this will be evident from the context in which they occur. In neither of the cases is there any contrast between the town and the village. Both the words are used in connection with other proper names, the former in the order—Andhryaḥ, Mahārāṣṭrikyaḥ, Nāgarikyaḥ, Drāvidyaḥ, Vānavāsikyaḥ etc., and the latter in the order Āhicchatrikāḥ, Sāketāḥ, Nāgarakāḥ.³ In the second case it is found that the names are those of well-known towns, Ahicchatra, the capital of the North Pañcāla and Sāketa or Ayodhyā, and the conclusion becomes irresistible that Nagara is also the name of a particular town, and as we have seen that Vātsyāyana is more familiar with Western India than with the other parts of the country, we are led to expect Nagara in this region. We find here 'the great ancient city of Nagara'⁴ the ruins of which now lie scattered over an area of nearly four square miles in extent in the territory of the Mahārāja of Jeypore, 25 miles to the south-south-east of Tonk and 45 miles to the north-north-east of Bundi¹ Mr. Carlleyle who made an archaeological survey of the place, picked up here several thousands of very ancient types of coins, many of the punch-marked variety and many bearing the legend *Jaya Mālavāna* in Brāhmī characters.² The city is not very far from Malwa and we think the democratic coin-legend speaking of the "Triumph of the Mālava people" refers to the celebrated Mālava-gaṇa who are known to have instituted the era now called the Samvat³ There is another ancient city *Nagara* or *Tambabati Nagari* (about eleven miles north of Chitore) which has been identified with the *Madhya-mikā* of Patañjali⁴; this city might also claim identity with Vātsyāyana's Nagara, but I think the former is the more probable one, as the latter was evidently called *Majhamikā* or *Madhyamikā*⁵ about the beginning of the Christian era, and probably also a few centuries later. Pāṇini appears to have known *Nagara* as the name of a particular city as it appears in the *Gaṇa* or group *kaṭryādi* referred to in one of his Sūtras⁶. The *Kāśikā* commentary enumerates fifteen names as belonging to this class. That the word *Nagara* in this list is older than the *Kāśikā* and is a proper name, appears from what the Kāśikā says in connection with another sūtra of Pāṇini (IV. 2, 128); it states that Nagara is read in the Kaṭryādi group as the designation of a particular city as it occurs in company with other such names there.¹ From a city called Nagara also the Nāgarī alphabet might have derived its name. The existence of a city called Nagara therefore cannot be questioned. There is, however, no justification for holding that the Nagara we have referred to was the city where Vātsyāyana composed his work, it being only one of the many places that he has mentioned in illustrating his sūtras; the utmost that we can say is that from the uncompromising and straightforward manner in which he has exposed the evils practised by the king's officials and queens, he must have belonged to a Gaṇa-rājya or a democratic government like the city of the Mālavas described above. This is also apparent from the importance he attaches to the assembly of citizens (nāgarikasamavāya) alluded to before.