Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s7.t3.1

c8.s7.t3.1

Sculpture flourished as much as painting in the age of Vātsyāyana as is fully borne out by the numerous sculptural records that have come down to our time from that period. Vātsyāyana himself bears ample testimony to it: *takṣaṇa*, carving on wood or stone was one of the sixty-four arts and every *nāgaraka* had in his house implements for working at it; similarly in every house there was a lathe and other arrangements for turning which, likewise, had its place among the sixty-four *kalās*. Vātsyāyana does not expressly mention an image of a god, but from what he says of the household temple where the gods were worshipped, of the worship offered and the gifts made to the deity to whom one was particularly devoted,¹ it is apparent that such images were familiar objects in his days. The *Lalitavistara* speaks of the numerous images of the gods that came down from their pedestals to do obeisance to the child Buddha when he made his appearance in the *Devakula*, the quarter of the palace occupied by the gods.² Besides these images for worship, representations in wood and stone of human beings, both male and female, *puruṣapratimā* and *strīpratimā*—were used by the class for whom Vātsyāyana wrote, for decoration and as appertenances of love. Stands for placing images, or *piṇḍolikās*, are mentioned by Vātsyāyana, and life-size statues in wood or stone evidently stood on them in every *nāgaraka's* house, as Vātsyāyana speaks of very familiar uses made of them by lovers who often gave an indication of their passion for a lady by slyly kissing or embracing a statue in her sight. Similar other uses of portrait-statues in the harems of kings have been indicated by Vātsyāyana.³ In Bhāsa's *Pratimā nāṭaka* (Act III) we read of the life-like representations of past kings ranged round a room as in a museum.