Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.49

c6.49

It is important to determine the geographical position of the country of Bahlīka. The city of Balkh in Bactria which makes the closest approach to its name seems to indicate its ancient location though some scholars are inclined to doubt it and to suggest that it was somewhere near the Kuru land.² But that ancient India extended beyond the present north-western frontier seems indisputable from many considerations. The Chinese travellers, for example, found Balkh Indian to all intents and purposes. Yuan Chwang to reach the country which he calls Fo-ho-lo (I-tsing names it Fo-ko-lo),³ travelled some hundreds of *li* from Tokhāra, crossed the Oxus and passed through some territories of small extent. He found Indian culture and civilisation predominating here, there being above hundred Buddhist monasteries with more than three thousand⁴ brethren, all adherents of the "Small Vehicle" or the Hīnayāna system. He says that it reached on the north to the Oxus, the Wakhesh of Arab geographers and the Vakṣu or Vankṣu of Kālidāsa. As we have shown before, Kālidāsa makes Raghu meet the Hūṇas on the banks of the Oxus.⁵ Kālidāsa says that Raghu's horses relieved the fatigue of their long journey by rolling about on the banks of Vankṣu and shook their shoulders to which were attached filaments