Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.37

c6.37

It is noteworthy that though Vātsyāyana refers to some of the practices of the Ahicchatrikas or the people of Ahicchatra, the ancient capital of northern Pañcāla, of the Pancala people as such he has got nothing to say. He speaks of the Pañcāla country no doubt but it will be observed from the way in which he does so that it was an ancient province to the achievements of which in the past he is referring, and he does nowhere in his work make any mention of any of the living practices of the Pañcāla people at the time that he lived. Thus he refers to the great Bābhravya Pancala of old from whom he drew his materials but whose work was very little studied in his times;¹ he further points out the connection of the Pañcāla country with the division of the Ṛgveda into sixty-four chapters and draws an analogy between this fact and the invention of the sixty-four Pañcāla kalās or arts² described by Bābhravya. But he notes no peculiarity in the conduct of the Pañcālas of his day nor does he mention any contemporary practices in the relations between the sexes as he does of the other peoples of India. Evidently the Pañcāla people who occupied a prominent position among the Vedic Aryans in the period of the Brāhmaṇas and whose country made up one of the sixteen Mahājanapadas when the early works of the Theravāda school of the Buddhists were written, had lost their individuality as a separate people; at Ahicchatra, their ancient capital, the people must have been strongly influenced by foreign occupation—as at Mathurā.