Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c7.58

c7.58

A similar person is the N ā g a r a, the officer in charge of a city, that is, the Superintendent of the city police who in his rounds in the town at night meets wandering women going to meet their lovers and has power over them, in as much as he comes to be in possession of the secrets of their movements.⁴ In the villages also the government officer, Â y u k t a k a, in charge of a village, when he is a young man and the son of a leading husbandman himself, has easy access to the village-women who can be won over simply for the asking and who are called Carṣaṇīs.¹ With them he gets into contact on various accounts such as in works which they have to render without wages (viṣṭi), in storing and taking out things from the store-house, in cleaning the house, in work on the fields, in receiving cotton and wool and the fibrous skin of flax and hemp, in accepting yarn spun by them, and in sale, purchase and exchange of various articles.²