Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.328

c6.328

Now, we observe that though Vātsyāyana possesses more or less knowledge of all parts of India, yet he appears to have been acquainted more thoroughly with South-Western India than with the other portions. Of the country from Rajputana to the south up to the Konkan coast, he speaks of almost all the various provinces and peoples. For example, he speaks of Avanti and Mālava (i.e. Eastern and Western Mālava), Aparānta, Lāṭa, Saurāṣṭra, Vidarbha, Mahārāṣṭra, etc., he mentions twice the Vatsagulmakas of Berar and the Andhras and the Ābhīras are mentioned again and again, and he treats them with a wealth of detail which is not observed in his delineation of the peoples in other parts of India. Of the countries to the North-West he speaks of the people of Sindh and the Punjab and of some customs of the Bāhlīka country or Bactria. The people in the South he knows only as the Dākṣiṇātyas and their country as Dakṣiṇāpatha and he once mentions the Drāviḍas and only incidentally a Coḷarāja. The people in the East he speaks of as the Prācyas, "the Eastern people," though he seems to know the Gauḍas and makes a collective mention of Vangāngakalinga in one passage. He does not, as we have seen, even once speak of Magadha, nor does he notice any characteristics of the people of its capital, and of the entire country from Magadha to Rajputana he has very little to say. Once only he speaks of the Madhyadeśa and once each of the Saurasenas, Sāketa and Ahicchatra.