9. Kāmaśāstra: An Alternative Vision of Life

Ancient India witnessed a lofty vision of material life as well as sharp insights about physical body and mind. Kāmaśāstra proclaimed to celebrate the life and enjoy the tumult beauty of delightful material life. A calling for enjoying all the resources which are to be materially utilizable in their extreme intensity can also be seen in the Kāmaśāstra culture. For the fulfilment of such a thought, some possibilities of delight like arts, literature, entertainments, adornments etc. and many other uncountable ways of material gains are putting forwarded by Kāmaśāstra.

It cannot limit the Indian thought on sexuality in a single word “Kāma”. This topic was handled according to circumstances as well as personal interests by the seers or the ancient Indian “moralists”. They strictly orders to stand away from sexual feelings at the time period of education or Brahmacarya. Vātsyāyana also directs that one should celibate during the period of study for the acquiring of knowledge^[1].At the same time the learning curriculum for the students are scheduled with examples of sharp sexual flavored verses.

Linguistic approach also to the word Kāma feels wonder. While using dharmiṣṭha, dhanapati-dhanāḍhya, mumukṣu-brahmajñānī etc., Kāma is spelled as kāmātura, kāmārta, kāmabhrānta and so forth. Desire or love is considered as a syndrome which needs sufficient treatment for its cure other than its fulfillment. This may looks simple at first sight, but while going through the entire Sanskrit writings one can find such terminologies of moral-shadow. The approach towards the eighth canto of Kumārasambhava of Kālidāsa itself we can understand the Indian outlook towards sexuality.

Here it is very relevant to quote the reputed Keralite critic K. Kuttikrishnamarar on the eighth canto issue.

“What in fact all the religious cultures, which are originated to remodel all the absolute physical life into spiritual life, have done is only recreating a new spiritual life over and above the physical life. The general situation is that people follow spiritual way of life and think that they predominate others; while the others immerge in physical life and assume as incompetent in comparison. This might have been the stats of people in during the period of Kālidāsa. It is perceived by some philosophers that as long as these two estates exist as separated and remain as one above the other, there will not be any progress to mankind; it may be the basement of Varṇa and Āśrama system. Whatever it may be, the ultimate fact is that physical life, while intently getting embraced, is despised also by everybody. It is following this way that literature also had its growth. It is even emerged that to censure physical life and to praise spiritual life is one of the virtue and responsibility of literature. What Kumārasambhava shows is that it is not at all censurable if an ascetic becomes a house-holder and also that it is equally honourable to the becoming of a house-holder as an ascetic” (1996: 105-113)

Another example may point here from the Abhijñānaśākuntala of Kālidāsa itself. Where, the striking words said by Kāśyapa otherwise the famous four verses in the fourth act on the occasion of Śakuntalā’s voyage to the palace of Duṣyanta^[2]. Through these verses, the author (Kālidāsa) asserts his vision about the importance of material life wrapped by spirituality through the words of a hermit (Kāśyapa). First verse describes about the hurting moment of households when their daughter will leave to her husband’s house. Here, Kāśyapa says that: his own inner pain is indescribable while Śakuntalā is leaving, even also being a hermit. Then how a householder will control his feelings is a remarkable question. Here, Kāśyapa or Kālidāsa has done an oblique narration that the materiality is upper than spirituality and also all the spiritual as well as supernatural feelings are lesser than material life. The third verse in this series is very much important while reading in connection with the terminologies of Kāmasūtra. Here, Kāśyapa has given some advices to Śakuntalā and those are said as the five steps to become a housewife. The duties ascribed upon Śakuntalā are elaborately discussed in Kāmasūtra as the duties of an ideal wife^[3]. In the third fourth verse Kālidāsa has simplified a controversial term of Kāmasūtra “paṇyasadharmatvāt” which was described in the previous section of this chapter as “artho hi kanyā parakīya eva”.

In short, through the four verses of an ascetic, Kālidāsa has tried to explore the glory of material life and doing a hidden proclamation to experience Kāma as the alchemy of desire other than a leading foot-step towards the peak of inner happiness or the supernatural world. It is also very important that Kālidāsa represented a society of Nāgarakas. Most of his writings are human centered and glorifies the importance of material life.

Scriptures on Kāmaśāstra give an alternative possibility about the concept of body which is widely discussed as a mortal entity throughout the orthodox systems of Indian philosophy. Moreover, as a result of the works of colonial historians and indological scholars, it is believed that the East is always stands for the static mode of life; rejecting the polyphonic nature of life. The West, on contrary, is considered as the symbol of the dynamic nature of life that gives unconcealed happiness and opportunities to the celebrated life. This contradictory concept leads to the view that the East and West are credited as spiritual and material respectively. But it is noted that, the modern studies on the social formation of ancient India undoubtedly reject these kinds of arguments. The concept of life reflected in the works on Kāmaśāstra proves that an alternative vision on social life was prevalent in the society of ancient India.

The society in Kāmaśāstra glorifies the life and always tries to light the ardor to the endless feast of life. Celebration of the body is the pivot of the works of Kāmaśāstra where the discussion on the pleasure of life is frequent. They tried to search the ultimate pleasure of the mind through the possibilities of body. That is why they forced to search for the material ways to attain the pleasure. Sometimes, these enquiries deconstructed the traditional concepts of life and death. At a time, it is accompanied with the materialistic views of Cārvāka system indirectly. The people in Kāmaśāstra addressed the body and gave more importance to it as a valuable truth beyond spirituality. They did not reject the reality of the empirical world but realize the value of being. It doesn’t mean that the society depicted in the Kāmaśāstra works are completely free from the spiritual environment and priest craft. It is very clear that the socio-cultural conditions of the society in Kāmaśāstra was molded by the hegemony of brahmanical concepts based on the four-fold varṇa systems. But a strong urge to the material vision of body can be traced in the same context. The internal contradiction of the society cannot be disclosed unless the dominated ideas of priest craft and spiritualism have been destructed. While unveiling the spiritualistic tendencies of the material culture of the society, it can be seen that an alternative life under the glorified status quo streams through the reality of material world.

Footnotes and references:

[back to top]

[1]:

brahmacaryameva tvā vidyāgrahaṇāt | (kāmasūtra, 1ḥ 2. 6)

[2]:

(1) yāsyatyadya śakuntaleti hṛdayaṃ saṃspṛṣṭamutkaṇṭhayā,
kaṇṭhaḥ staṃbhitabāṣpavṛttikaluṣaścintājaṭaṃ darśanam |
vaiklavyaṃ mama tā vadīdṛśamaho snehādaraṇyaukasaḥ,
pīṭhyante gṛhiṇaḥ kathaṃ nu tanayāviśleṣaduḥkhairnavaiḥ ||
(2) pātuṃ na prathamaṃ vivasyati jalaṃ yuṣmāsvapīteṣu yā,
nādatte priyamaṇḍanā'pi bhavatāṃ snehena yā pallavam |
ādye vaḥ kusumaprasūtisamaye yasyā bhavatyutsavaḥ,
seyaṃ yāti śakuntalā patigṛhaṃ sarvairanujñāyatām ||
(3) śuśrūṣasva gurūn kuru priyasakhīvṛttiṃ sapatnījane,
bharturviprakṛtā'pi roṣaṇatayā mā sma pratīpaṃ gamaḥ |
bhūyiṣṭhaṃ bhava dakṣiṇā parijane bhāgyeṣvanutsekinī,
yāntyevaṃ gṛhiṇīpadaṃ yuvatayo vāmāḥ kulasyādhayaḥ ||
(4) artho hi kanyā parakīya eva tāmadya saṃprekṣya parigrahītuḥ |
jāto mamāyaṃ viśadaḥ prakāmaṃ pratyarpitanyāsa ivāntarātmā ||

[3]:

(1) guruṣu bhṛtyavargeṣu nāyakabhaginīṣu tatpatiṣu ca yathārhaṃ pratipattiḥ || (4. 1. 5)
⁽²⁾ kaniṣṭhā tu mātṛvatsapatnīṃ paśyet || (4. 2. 16.)
⁽³⁾ bhāryaikacāriṇī gūḍhaviśrambhā devavatpatimānukūlyena varteta || (4, 1. 1)
⁽⁴⁾ parijane dākṣiṇyam || (4. 1. 39)
⁽⁵⁾ bhogeṣvanutsekaḥ || (4. 1. 38)