Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s2.5

c8.s2.5

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.