3. Works on Kāmasāhitya (a): Kuṭṭanīmata

Kuṭṭanīmata is a poem in more than thousand verses in Āryā metre which come under the genre of nītikāvyas in Sanskrit literature. The authorship of the poem is attributed to Dāmodaragupta who was the minister of King Jayāpīḍa of Kashmir.

By validating the references from the poem and allied historical records, Ajaya Mitra Shastri places Dāmodaragupta between the latter half of 8^th century and the beginning of 9^th century CE. (Ajay Mitra Shastri, 1995: 16).

“Kuṭṭanīmata is an instructive poem in Kāvya style in which a prostitute named Mālatī is instructed by a procuress as to how she should feign true love for a rich young man and employ all the arts of erotic without giving him the least hint that all these are done only for extracting wealth from him. The various cunning arts for ruining feeble-minded and innocent young men are described in a realistic way and the social sense of the poet indeed deserves unreserved praise. The story of Samarabhaṭa and Mañjarī contains descriptions of love-sports by which the dancing girl ruins him. The Kuṭṭanīmata may therefore be described as a sort of manual for the guidance of the hetaerae” (Narendranath Bhattacharyya, 1975: 98).

Kuṭṭanīmata boldly divulges drab realities of Indian society, especially of the life of courtesans. The author’s deep knowledge in Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasūtra reflects throughout in Kuṭṭanīmata, particularly in employing technical terms used in Kāmasūtra. The entire framework of Kuṭṭanīmata is more or less adopted in the light of Vaiśika [vaiśikam]—the sixth chapter of Kāmasūtra which is about the conduct of courtesans. Most of the technical terms quoted in Kuṭṭanīmata were from Vātsyayana’s text.