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Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s1: Growth of Cities in Ancient India

Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra c8.s1

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Growth of Cities in Ancient India

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This strong desire for the gay life of the city shows that there must have been a pretty large number of cities at the time when Vātsyāyana's work was written. Cities had grown up in India from very ancient times. The village and its headman,—the grāma and the grāmaṇi—are no doubt often met with in the *Ṛgveda*,¹ but the grāma sometimes grew into a *mahāgrāma* and people naturally crowded round the settlement of a powerful chieftain, round his *pur* or fortified habitation.² In later Vedic literature, cities were very well known; the *Mānava Gṛhyasūtra* mentions the grāma, the *nagara* and the *nigama*.³ The cities were very well known to the compilers of the *Dharmasūtras*, Baudhāyana going so far as to warn people desirous of spiritual growth against residence in cities: he declares that it is hardly possible for a man who resides in a town—“whose body, whose face and eyes are defiled by the impure dust of a city”—to obtain success in his spiritual quest.⁴ Pāṇini in the seventh century B.C. knew many towns, as we see from his *sūtras* and some of his *gaṇas*; even the *nāgaraka*, the special product of city-life as we have pointed out, was known to him. Kauṭilya and Megasthenes show that there were some very big cities with elaborate arrangements for civic government and that municipal organisation of the city had developed wonderfully.⁵ In the *Jātakas* and the Buddhist Pali texts we find the description of large and prosperous cities which were seats of government and where trade flourished, where the *gahapati* was a prominent citizen and the *sreṣṭhi* took a leading part.⁶ The *Milinda Pañho* gives a splendid description of the town of Sākala,¹ and nearer Vātsyāyana’s time, we find beautiful descriptions of splendid and prosperous towns given in the *Buddhacarita* and *Lalitavistara*.² In Vātsyāyana’s time all over India there must have been a large number of cities, great and small, for India was then broken up into innumerable principalities and each prince had his own fortified capital. Besides, cities had grown up at places of pilgrimage—Brahmanic, Buddhist and Jaina—or had sprung up as centres of the growing trade of the country. It was for the dwellers of these cities, where wealth accumulated and where the virtues and vices that wealth brings in its train specially developed, that Vātsyāyana wrote his great work.

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¹ *ṚV.*, i. 44. 10. etc. ; see also Macdonell and Keith, *Vedic Index*, vol. i, p. 244. ² *Ibid*, pp. 245 and 538 ; *Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa*, iii. 13. 4. ³ अथ ऊर्द्धं ग्रामचतुष्पथे नगरचतुष्पथे निगमचतुष्पथे वा...बलिमुपहरति ।... *Mānava Gṛhyasūtra*. (ed. by Dr. Fr. Knauer), ii. 14. 2. 8 (p. 56). ⁴ पुरेरेयाकुयित-शरीरस्तत्परिपूर्णानेत्रवदनश्च । नगरे वसन् संयतात्मा सिद्धिम-वाप्नोतीति न तदस्ति ।—*Baudhāyana Dharmasūtra*, ii. 3. 58. ⁵ Vincent A. Smith, *Early History of India* (3rd ed.), pp. 120-29. ⁶ Rhys Davids, *Buddhist India*, pp. 34-41.

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¹ *The Questions of King Milinda*, S. B. E., xxxv, pp. 2-3.

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² *Buddhacarita*, chaps. i and x; *Lalitavistara*, chap. iii.

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