Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s7.1

c8.s7.1

The age of Vātsyāyana being characterised by very refined tastes and aesthetic perceptions, as we have seen above, there was joy and consequently beauty in life, and it was necessarily an age when the arts flourished and the crafts prospered. Vātsyāyana's *nāgaraka* is a man of varied culture and from the picture that we have obtained of his life and surrounding, of his home and friends, and of his sports and amusements, there can be no doubt that he was a great patron of the arts; in fact, it is evident that every one who aspired to be a member of cultured society, had to acquire some proficiency in poetry and music, painting and sculpture and to possess some knowledge of a host of minor arts, the twice sixty-four *kalās*¹ enumerated by our author. This knowledge of the arts was evidently an essential part of his education and without this modicum of practical acquaintance with them he would not be respected, as Vātsyāyana says, in the assemblies of the cultured and educated people.² The ideal *nāgaraka*, according to Vātsyāyana, was he who possessed, in addition to a healthy physique, good birth and independent means of livelihood, a knowledge of the various arts, who was learned and eloquent and was moreover, a poet, well skilled in telling stories, who was fond of all the literary and artistic competitions and festivities including *gosthīs* and dramatic performances and above all, a person whose character was marked by largeness of heart and liberality, by affection and love. Skill in the sixty-four arts subsidiary to the *Kāmasūtra* as well as a knowledge of the *Sūtras* themselves was an essential part of the qualification of every cultured man and woman.¹ To win a girl in marriage called for an exercise of many of the arts. A maiden had to be propitiated by rare and curious objects of art, by nicely recited romances and by sweet songs; if she showed a partiality for feats of "magic," her favour was to be won by performing various tricks of legerdemain; if she manifested a curiosity for the arts (*kalās*), her lover must demonstrate before her his skill in them; the art of gathering flowers in bouquets, or weaving them into chaplets and garlands was specially to be cultivated.² Tournaments in which a charming and rarely accomplished girl like Gopā was the prize of the victor (*jaya-patākā*),³ appear to have been held in cities ruled by a semi-republican government like that of the Sākyakula. If a man was uncultured and ignorant of the arts it would be a source of great sorrow to his wife who, Vātsyāyana suggests, might herself be more proficient in them than he.⁴ In the *Lalitavistara* we find that unless Siddhārtha showed his skill in some of the arts (*śilpas*), Daṇḍapāṇi Śākya refused to give his girl in marriage to him, prince though he was.⁵ It may easily be imagined that art in all its forms was likely to develop and prosper in a society where men and women were inspired by such ideals, and that at the same time the sciences that analysed and ministered to the manifold forms of artistic expression of this highly intellectual and cultured community also grew and were assiduously pursued. Not only erotics, to which Vātsyāyana devoted himself, but also the sciences of aesthetics and poetics received a great impetus during this period. Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra appears to be a product of this age of aesthetic culture which reached its culmination in the great Kālidāsa, the most careful student of Bharata and Vātsyāyana.