Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.326

c6.326

It is hopeless to attempt to decide definitely which part of India Vātsyāyana belonged to. Some scholars (including Mahāmahopādhyāya Haraprasād Śāstrī) hold that Vātsyāyana wrote his Kāmasūtra at the city of Pāṭaliputra, but there is hardly any justification for this belief in the book itself. It depends mainly upon the Commentator's identification of Vātsyāyana's Nagara with Pāṭaliputra which, as we have seen, is absolutely without any founda tion. It is remarkable that Vātsyāyana has got nothing to say of the people of Magadha. In his days, Magadha was still a great country and not extinct like Pañcāla, and its capital was still the greatest city in India. There is, therefore, no reason why Vātsyāyana should not mention the characteristics of the people of Magadha, as he has done with regard to those of other parts of India. It is argued by some (who favour the theory of Vātsyāyana being a man of Pāṭaliputra himself), that he did not like to calumniate his own people by expatiating on their sexual abuses. But this argument cannot hold, inasmuch as our author has not everywhere enumerated mere defects or abuses, but has not unoften delineated simple and faultless customs and habits without the least suggestion of any evil in them. It was open to him to bring out the good points in their character, as he has done in the case of the men and women of Gauḍa. We cannt think of any other reason than personal ignorance of the country of Magadha and its people for this omission on the part of Vātsyāyana. MM Haraprasād Śāstrī has pointed out that in the introduction to the Harṣacarita, Bāṇa who belonged to the Vātsyāyana-gotra says that his ancestors dwelt at some place in Magadha and hence he has argued that all the Vātsyāyanas in literature must have belonged to the same country¹. This is a large generalisation which it is hard to accede to. There are Brahmins of the Śāṇḍilya-gotra now in Bengal; it would hardly be a sane conclusion to derive from this fact that all the Śāṇḍilyas that lived at any time in India were Bengalees, that the author of the Śāṇḍilya-sūtras, for example, hailed from Bengal. Our Vātsyāyana was separated from Bāṇabhaṭṭa by about four centuries, and according to the findings of the Mahāmahopādhyāya himself, by not less than six. Is it not rather rash to imagine that they belonged to the same family located in the same spot for these many hundreds of years?