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Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s2: Economic Prosperity of India in the Age of Vātsyāyana

Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra c8.s2

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English

Economic Prosperity of India in the Age of Vātsyāyana

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At the time that Vātsyāyana wrote, India was carrying on an abundant trade, by land and by sea with China on the one hand and the Roman orient on the other. According to a Chinese book *Funantu-suh-tokuan* written in the third century A.C., Kuntien or Kaundinya founded an Indian Colony in Indo-China about B.C. 58, and it soon grew up into a great centre of foreign trade in that quarter. By way of this Brahmanic colony planted in Indo-China, the Indians carried on an ever-increasing maritime trade with China in the approved Chinese method of sending so-called embassies and making an exchange of presents. We read again and again in the Chinese annals of numerous Indian envoys who presented tribute by way of Jihnan (modern Annam and Tonquin).³ With Asia Minor and the near West, India had been intimately connected for a long time as we see from Aśoka's inscriptions; and the settlement of the Kuṣāṇas as a great Indian ruling power in the north-western marches of the country, led to the opening out of trade-routes to the east and the west, and it placed India in a position of vantage with regard to the trade with the civilised world, with the dominions of the "Son of Heaven" on the one hand and the empire of the Caesars on the other. When in the second century A.C., not very long before Vātsyāyana, a great Kuṣāṇa emperor adopted the magnificent title of *Mahārāja-Rājātirāja-Devaputra-Kaisara Kaniṣka*—"The great King, the King of Kings the Son of Heaven, the Caesar Kaniṣka", we see that in him there was a fusion of the three great civilisations of the time—the Indian, the Chinese and the Roman.¹ The currency of the Kuṣāṇas shows an equally international character and seems to be designed to facilitate the trade of these dominions with the rest of the world; the coins show a strange and wonderful combination of Greek, Zoroastrian and Indian designs and icons; some of them have Jupiter on one side and Buddha on the other; they have legends in Greek, Iranian or Indian vernaculars and in varied scripts, Greek, Brāhmī or Kharoṣṭhī. There cannot be any doubt that these coins were intended for currency inside as well as outside and they afforded facility of exchange to the Indian merchants trading with the near West. Vātsyāyana also knew coins of copper, silver and gold. He speaks of a *kārṣāpaṇa* of small value and of the *niṣka* or coin of gold; besides, he refers to the art of examining *rūpyas* or coins as one of the sixty-four *kalās*. Moreover, he uses the word *hiraṇya* to mean money in general including perhaps, gold and silver coins.¹

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³ T. de Lacouperie, *Western Origin of the Chinese Civilisation*, pp. 240-42; see also the *Dawn Magazine*, 1910, Part i. p. 98 and 1911, Part i, pp. 22-28.

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¹ *Epigraphia Indica*, xiv, p. 143.

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¹ See R. D. Banerji, *Prācīna-mudrā*, pp. 81-101, for an account of the Kushan coins. For Vātsyāyana's mention of coins cf. वरं सांघ्यिकाच्चिष्काद्वसांघ्यिकः कार्षापणः — *Kāmasūtra*, p. 19 (sūtra 30); रत्नरत्नपरीक्षा...p. 32; and सर्वकार्याणां तन्मूलत्वाद्धिरण्यद इति वात्स्यायनः ।...p. 387 (sūtra 5); *Jayamangalā* explains, हिरण्यमत्र लोकप्रतीत्या कर्पकाः.

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Pliny in the first century A.C. and Ptolemy in the second, testify to the great trade that India had with the Roman empire.² In the third century when Vātsyāyana lived, this trade must have gone on increasing and we shall not be far mistaken to conjecture that the Brahminic colonies, that Fa Hien visited in Java, went out about this period. The prosperity that this extensive commerce with the civilised world conferred on India, is fully reflected in the life of the *nāgaraka*, everything about whom, house and furniture, dress and ornaments, sports and pastimes, charity and liberality, bespeak an unstinted expenditure of wealth.

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² V. A. Smith, *Early History of India* (3rd ed.), pp. 138-44.

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The literature of the period to which Vātsyāyana belongs, amply corroborates the description that he gives of society. But we shall have room only to quote an occasional passage here and there from the works of Bhāsa and from the *Lalitavistara* both of which are supposed to belong to the third century A.C. and, therefore, to have been written about the same time as the *Kāmasūtra*; we may also draw some illustrations from the works of Aśvaghoṣa who flourished about a century earlier and belongs virtually to the same epoch.³

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³ For the date of the *Lalitavistara* see Winternitz, *Geschichte der indischen Litteratur*, ii, p. 199. For Bhāsa, see D. R. Bhandarkar, *Lectures on the Ancient History of India* (1918), p. 59.

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