Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s6.t7.7

c8.s6.t7.7

About the question of marriage in general, Vātsyāyana gives it as his considered opinion that for a man of any of the four *varṇas* or castes, *kāma* or desire should be provided its scope in the acceptance, according to the prescriptions of the holy writ, of a maiden who belongs to the same caste as himself and who had no contact with any one before, and this, he says, leads to progeny and to fame and is also sanctioned by popular usage; and again, he affirms, in another connection, that when a maiden of the same caste, not given to any one before, is married in accordance with the prescriptions of the holy writ, then one secures *dharma* and *artha*, offspring, high connection, an increase of friends and partisans, and also genuine, untarnished love. He further adds definitely that the contrary procedure of marrying girls of higher castes or of those who had previously been accepted by others, was absolutely prohibited, but that public opinion was indifferent with regard to connection with women of the lower castes (if not actually outside the pale of Aryan society), as also with widows and courtesans, for such relations were not considered as amounting to marriage at all, but entered into merely for pleasure for its own sake.¹