Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s4.12

c8.s4.12

After attending to his business in the morning, the nāgaraka takes his bath; this he does every day but there are other attendant circumstances that are repeated at varying intervals. Every other day he gets his limbs massaged and shampooed (utsādana); every third day he cleanses his person with soap-like substances that yield a lather with water (phenaka). This last was considered an indispensable article for one who aspired to decent life in those days, as we see that even when a man became too poor to maintain himself as a nāgaraka and became a pīthamarda, his phenaka or soap marked him out from ordinary men. As regards shaving, the nāgaraka was behind the modern man of fashion; he got his chin and lips cleaned every fourth day and this was probably considered conducive to long life (āyuṣyam) and a more thorough tonsorial operation was performed every fifth or every tenth day. This completes the bath.² Though he was thus not so fastidious as our modern dandies as regards the hair on his face, he was certainly more careful about his finger nails. They were specially dressed, particularly those of the left hand; the points of the nails should always be fine and sometimes they were cut into three or more teeth like a saw. The nails must be well-set, smooth, bright, scrupulously clean, not broken, and soft and glossy in appearance. The people of Gauḍa (modern Bengal) had very fine and long nails that imparted a grace to their hands and were very attractive to women, and the southerners (the Dākṣiṇātyāḥ) had small nails which were good for work but of which they made very great artistic use, and the people of Mahārāṣṭra were midway between the two. The use of the nails was a great art which the nāgaraka took great pains in acquiring; with them, he skilfully and without causing pain, affixed on his beloved, marks that might be straight, curved, circular, semicircular like the crescent moon, or which might resemble the tiger's claw, the peacock's foot, the leap of a hare or the leaf of a blue lotus.¹ Similar care was taken of the teeth and artistic use made of them, because, Vātsyāyana says, no other art increases love so much as the clever use of the nails and teeth.² Besides attending to the daily ablution and the other things noted above, for keeping his person clean, the nāgaraka must always carry a handkerchief (karpaṭa) with himself for removing perspiration.³