Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s5.t6: Sports of Girls
Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra c8.s5.t6
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Sports of Girls
c8.s5.t6.1
Some of the sports of girls have been described by Vātsyāyana, as well as some of their playthings. The girls took delight in making garlands of flowers, building small houses of earth, of wood, playing with dolls, or in cooking imaginary food with such materials as earth etc. They sometimes played games of chance with dice or cards, or other games like "odd and even," the game of "close fists" and so on; or they might play the game of finding out the middle finger or the sport with six pebbles; sometimes a number of girls played together at games involving some exercise of the limbs (*Kṣveḍitakāni*) such as hide and seek, spinning round holding each other's out-stretched arms, blindman's buff, games with salt or heaps of wheat.¹ We see from this list that many of these sports and games are much the same as those in vogue at the present day among Indian girls and boys.
c8.s5.t6.2
¹ *Kāmasūtra*, p. 201 (*sūtras* 5-7).
c8.s5.t6.3
The games and festivities of the *nāgaraka* are, as we see from the description given above, the diversions of a seeker after pleasure and amusement—of one that had plenty of leisure to enjoy and an ample fortune to provide the means of enjoyment. Among manly sports, wrestling matches were known to Vātsyāyana, but the *nāgaraka* appears to have been rather a spectator at these games than one who took an active part in them; the *Kāmasūtra* also speaks of hunting as a pastime that becomes a source of pleasure by practice, when one has acquired some skill in it and this seems to be the one manly sport that the *nāgaraka* knows of.²
c8.s5.t6.4
² मल्लयुद्धं — Ibid, p. 84 (*sūtra* 57) ; भीतिः साम्वासिकी च या मृगयादिषु कर्मसु ।— Ibid, p. 90 (*sūtra* 2).
Linked texts (1)
- Kāmasūtra — Vātsyāyana Mallanāga, Sanskrit