Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c7.4

c7.4

As in the *Dharmasastras* and the other sacred literature of India, we find, in Vātsyāyana’s work, Indian society founded upon the fourfold classification of the entire people into *varna*s or castes, and the fourfold division of the life of each individual into *āsrama*s or stages. Vātsyāyana himself declares that the very existence of the social structure is effected by the observance of the rules rendered obligatory for the maintenance of the institutions of *varna* and *āsrama*;¹ and though the subject Vātsyāyana has to deal with, does not offer many occasions for expatiating upon these matters, yet it is amply clear from casual references in the work that it was a society controlled by the *varnāsrama* system that Vātsyāyana was depicting. Thus when referring to the various ways in which Vātsyāyana’s *beau ideal*, the Nāgaraka, was to acquire the wealth necessary for leading his life in ease and comfort, Vātsyāyana enumerates four methods of earning money, viz., acceptance of gifts (*p r a t i g r a h a*), conquest (*j a y a*), trade (*k r a y a*) and wages (*n i r v e s a*).² Of these, as the Commentary points out, *pratigraha* or acceptance of gifts is the standard means of subsistence for a Brahmin³; of the six kinds of work which according to Manu a Brahmin may partake in, three enable him to earn a living, as Manu points out himself, viz., sacrificing for others (*yājana*), teaching (*adhyāpana*) and the acceptance of gifts from pure men (*pratigraha*)¹ and of these three again, if looked at closely, the last viz., *pratigraha*, is evidently the actual means of earning money in the case of sacrificing and teaching also, as the remuneration offered in most cases was voluntary. Vātsyāyana who was trying to condense these matters into as few words as possible in his pithy paradigms, has spoken of p r a t i-g r a h a only as the means of acquiring a fortune in the case of Brahmins, that being essentially the only method for the purpose.