Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s6.t9: Female Ascetics
Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra c8.s6.t9
- Language
- English
Female Ascetics
c8.s6.t9.1
Some women also took the monastic vow like men and lived upon the charity of the people. Nuns of the three main religions of India at that time are referred to in the *Kāmasūtra*. We have the Buddhist nun *śramaṇā*, and her Jaina sister, *kṣapaṇā* or *kṣapaṇikā*; and associated with them we find the *tāpasī* whom I take to be the woman who belonging to the Brahmanic faith, has renounced the world. Besides, we read of women who had their heads shaven (*muṇḍāḥ*). All of them are generally spoken of as *pravrajitās* or *bhikṣukīs*, *i.e.*, female ascetics or mendicants. It appears, from what Vātsyāyana says, that these female mendicant orders did not enjoy a high reputation for morality: they are included among those who are declared to be company unfit for decent married ladies.¹ Some of the mendicant women were proficient in the arts and their help was often sought by the nāgaraka in affairs of love; the house of the bhikṣukī often formed the rendezvous for lovers; she was often employed to carry messages of love and was regarded as a go-between who could easily create confidence and succeed in her mission.² Vātsyāyana, however, positively asserts that the love of the female ascetic was never to be sought for by a nāgaraka, though a former teacher had expressed a contrary view.³ All this does not imply that female ascetics were in general considered as depraved but that some of them abused the confidence of the public and thus forfeited the respect with which they had previously been regarded, just like some of the male ascetics and mendicants who erred from the right path,⁴ and we learn from Kauṭilya that the respect which the parivrājikā or bhikṣukī commanded in society was made use of in order to fish out political secrets.⁵ In Bhavabhūti's Mālatīmādhava we find the parivrājikā, Kāmandakī, represented as a highly respectable lady who took great interest in the love affair between the hero and the heroine and worked hard for its fruition. This drama is an illustration, as it were, of the Kāmasūtra, and Bhavabhūti in this drama shows himself very well-versed in Vātsyāyana's writings.⁶
c8.s6.t9.2
¹ भिक्षुक्यश्चाप्यबलाटाकुशलाश्चयिोमूलकारिकाभिनं संसज्यत ।—Ibid, p. 225 (sūtra 9); सखीभिक्षुकीधपविकालापसीभवनेषु सुखोपायः (समागमः )--p. 274 (sūtra 42), etc.
c8.s6.t9.3
² Ibid, p. 57 (sūtra 48); p. 274 (sūtra 42); p. 364 (sūtra 15); p.285 (sūtra 25); and p. 280 (sūtra 62).
c8.s6.t9.4
³ Ibid, p. 65 (sūtra 23); p. 67 (sūtra 32).
c8.s6.t9.5
⁴ Bhikṣukāḥ, ibid, p. 300 (sūtra 9); liṅgin, p. 301 (sūtra 10), p. 351 (sūtra 28).
c8.s6.t9.6
⁵ Kauṭilya, Arthaśāstra, i, chaps. 11 and 12.
c8.s6.t9.7
⁶ Cf. बौद्धमयायोजितकामसूत्रम् ।—Mālatīmādhava, Prologue, Act i.
Linked texts (3)
- Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit
- Kāmasūtra — Vātsyāyana Mallanāga, Sanskrit
- Mālatīmādhava — Bhavabhūti, Sanskrit