Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s9.3

c8.s9.3

It must not be imagined, however, that the age in which Vātsyāyana lived was as a whole an age of gross materialism or that the whole of Indian society at the time bore this character; it will be a mistake to suppose that the *nāgaraka's* easy morality was even a main feature of the character of the majority of the people. In the first place, Vātsyāyana paints in his *nāgaraka* the picture of a particular and limited section of the dwellers in cities. A *nāgaraka* is a wealthy person who has received a liberal education in youth and has already earned a competence by inheritance or by personal endeavour, so that he can afford to lead the life of comfort and pleasure in a city. The class which he represents has lived in all ages and in all countries wherever economic prosperity has enabled a section of the people to command and enjoy the good things of the earth. His counterpart is not wanting in our modern days in countries which are rich in material wealth and where the people "enjoy life." He can be traced with but few changes, and these only in details, in the salons of Paris and Vienna, of London and Berlin. In India itself, his successors though not absolutely extinct, are but few, for the good reason that the abundance of material riches and the consequent joys of life out of which the *nāgaraka* could grow, have departed from this country.