Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c6.80

c6.80

In the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa ⁶ we find mention of Bahlika-Prātipīya who is called a Kauravya King (Kauravyo rājā), and the same king apparently is the Mahārāja Bāhlīka Pratipīya⁷ of the Great Epic. We are told in the Udyogaparva that of the three sons of Pratīpa, the eldest Devāpi being rejected by the representatives of the people—the Paurajānapada—went to the forest and became an ascetic and the second Bālhīka, obtaind the very rich kingdom of his maternal uncle and abdicated the paternal throne in favour of the youngest Śāntanu.¹ He fought with his Bāhlīkas on the side of Duryodhana. This explains how a Kaurava prince came to rule over the Bāhlīka people in the distant north and shows that in ancient times the Kurus were connected by matrimonial bonds with ruling families in the North-west, even beyond the mountain-barriers; Pāṇḍu’s marriage with Mādrī and that of Dhṛtarāṣṭra with Gāndhārī shows the intimacy of the relations between the Kurus and the Kṣatriya tribes in the North-west. In fact the Great Epic shows that the kingdoms on the North-west frontier and beyond—Madra, Gandhāra, Kāmboja, Bāhlīka—were looked upon as Indian provinces and Vātsyāyana shows that this feeling continued so late as the third century A.C when the Kamasutra was written.