Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.64

c6.64

The earliest mention of Bahlika in Indian literature viz., in the *Atharva-Veda* shows that it was far away in the north even beyond the Mujavants. "O fever," says a hymn of this Veda "Go to the Mūjavants or to the Bahlīkas, further off." If Mūjavant is the name of a hill in or about Kaśmīr, the Bahlika country must have been farther in the north and evidently the same region where we find it in later Indian literature, though Zimmer and the authors of the *Vedic Index* are inclined to doubt it. The points raised by Zimmer have been answered by Weber and we think, satisfactorily. We however, differ from Roth and Weber who thought that an Iranian tribe was here referred to. The Bahlikas are apparently an Indian tribe, or at least an Indo-Iranian tribe that had been under the Indian influence from very early times.