PLEASURE AND CULTURE IN EARLY INDIA (WITH SPECIAL REFRENCE TO ARCHETYPE)

DR. MUKESH CHANDRA SRIVASTAVA
ASST. PROFESSOR ANCIENT HISTORY DEPTT.
G.V.P.G. COLLEGE RISIA, BAHRAICH U.P

[This paper represents the pleasure and culture in urban life in early India. How men and women did behaves as social and sexual beings? What was the city life? What were the parameters to control? then regulations of gender interactions .this paper is related with only one postulated manifestation of that change: a new public private sphere that an urban environ occasions an urban literature reports and engages with against socio -sexual discourse  can be formed. ]        Urbanization in early India is a complex and transforming historical experience .Moreover, the dominant sources from early India that dwell on aspect of social conduct such as dharmasastra do so in a theoretical and prescriptive fashion, making it difficult to discern categorically what trend s may prevailed perhaps at variance from what prescribed.     In any case such literature does not distinctly address the city or issues arising out of living in one. It is nonetheless possible to investigate this question and arrive at board tendencies that seem to stand in characterizing urban gender behavior. My purpose to do so this by exploring  a body of literature that has yet to receive serious and appropriate attention of historians , but which is uniquely endowed for an investigation of the kind  I undertake. We should refer kavya  defined  as a literature as a form of art as distinct form of scripture ( agama )  history ( itihasa ) and technicaltreatise (sastra). 1 This is the realm of Sanskrit  creative literature that includes not only poetry  ( mahakavya or sargabandha ) but drama ( natya ) tale (katha ) and biography ( akhyayika ). 2 Among its defining element is a linguistic and in thematic deference to aesthetics (alamkara ) and  emotion ( behave rendered as a rasa ) .  The fictive character of kavya and their orientation to a erotic ( srngra ) as a primary aesthetic gives a to literature and space and license as it were to explore themes of socio sexual behavior.  The classical Sanskrit literature flourished in the first several centuries of the millennium CE.                              Of the kind I undertake. It was contemporary to early Indian city life or urban life and indeed a product of it. Many kavya texts were actually written in cities and constitute themselves as a primary urban literature. They depicts the life of cities or behavior of cities the can be said to come close to    fobbing the self perception of urban culture albeit from a by and large elite of vintages. This is particularly valuable for an investigation of the city because of what archeologist and historians have found to the ‘endemic problem of definition ‘that is the fact that a universally applicable idea of urbanism continues to elude us. The main reason for this could be what is urbanism? Is a metaphysical, not scientific query .3 so what the answer would turn most entirely on the question perspective: the kavya provide one such prospective.4  However, this literary genre underestimated as a source of exploring the past, chiefly on account of its overtly aesthetic and conventional nature which is believed to render historical inquiry futile.One the major models of representation recognizable in classical Sanskrit kavya is the Construction of complex archetype. In the sense of the archetype I used this word as a recurrent motif. In keeping this approach of this research paper which explores the two type of archetypes the nagaraka and ganika which represents models of urban behavior respectively. These two types of archetype distinguish the city’s socio-sexual ethos. This paper draws a number of different kind of kavya several of these works celebrated like Bhasa ,Kalidasa ,Bana ,Bhavbhuti and Dandin.It cited at length primarily from Mrcchakatikum , Caturbani and from Kamsutra.Sudra Mrcchakatikum is a prakrana  of play from third /fourth century CE.A prakarna is a fiction play with multiple acts that has  a story usually dealing with bourgeois life .5 The plot of Mrcchakatikam revols around the love between a talented courtesan and a vitreous merchant of Ujjaini. The Caturbhani is set of four monologue plays, bhana from fourth /sixth century CE namely Ubhayabhisarika Isvaradatta’s   Dhurtavitasamvada and Saumillakas Padataditaka set in various cities enacted in each case by vita who is master art and erotic  and tutors prostitutes love art and craft of love. These plays are classic specimen of erotic camdey in Sanskrit .Vatsayana’s  kamsutra was written in fourth century CE; which  is not a  kavya ;but being an urban treatise6 on sexual pleasure and displaying character and concepts found in kavya. It is an allied text of defining significance.7  The term nagaraka is not a common in  kavya, a character is hardly evader described or   addressed as such .However, the attributes and pursuits that a nagaraka epitomize are amply evident in the characterization of male character across text like Mrcchakatikam ‘Dasakumaracharitum, Malvikaangnimitram, Caturbhani, Avimaraka, Maltimadhavum and Kuttimatum.  In Kamsutra the designation of nagaraka figures re peadtly and given prominent   treatment recent translation of the  text renders the term as a man about town  who is  sophisticated connoisseur   of good  life in general of pleasure particularly.8 The life of nagaraka was divided in different phases .It is not possible to describe the life of nagaraka. The first phase of the life of nagaraka to maintain and enhancement of bodily hygiene and attractiveness .The second phase is to involve participitation in sporting context.The third phase of nagaraka’s life refers to communitarian cultivation of art and recreation, including music, poetry, coversatation and theater. The pithamarda and vita among his hangers on are also said to be’  skilled in the arts’and  in teaching them .10 The final aspects of his pursuits presented somewhat teleologically as a guard finale or climax is indulgence in amorous dalliance and sex. It fallows from the analysis that the ideal of the nagaraka consisted in the careful cultivation of every aspect of human personality: body, mind, spirit, sense and etiquette. He is seen to belong to like etavitluce society ‘people of similar knowledge, intelligence, character wealth and age in which he                   circulate and interacts.  Significantly, underlying the various attributes endeavors of nagaraka and company are twin central concern; pleasure and culture. These can be regarded as furnishing the primary principle of an urban behavior needs underlying. For, although it is obvious that only a man of means could be nagaraka the word literally simply a man is living in city. ( nagara ) 11 and in order to commence on the life style of the nagaraka the kamsutra another. 12 this urban contextualizing of the nagaraka is echoed by the low opinion the text has of sexual and cultural activity in the village .13 The equation asserted seems confirmed as reasonable.    To elaborate on the close mixing to sexual pleasure and culture in the concept of nagaraka ;as I have mentioned earlier the all function and activities though the day seems to be as if building up the erotic rendezvous the love ritual at night . The ritual itself is explicated the demonstrated much an art form in subsequent chapters of kamsutra.14 From the kavya these are different kind of nagaraka mentioned in kamsutra 15 for intense Brahmin Carudutta,Saislaka, kings and princes ( jayantaka , Agnimitra, Candrodaya , Guptakula Upharaverma) professional and their sons ( the judges and their sons executive officer of the king , general’s sons grammarian , physician ,  master painter , vina teacher and merchant and their sons ,the latest group . The most complete and memorable nagaraka in the kavyas albeit one fallen on poverty, is carudutta of the Mrcchakatikam . In him not only do all the accomplishment  and refinement of the nagaraka ‘s way of living together , these are shown to be enhanced by a  nature that is generous of  the fault .Thus  Carudatta is  eulogized as ‘ handsome in appearance and speech’s (priyadarsa priyavadi ). ‘the ideal of the educated 16 , ocean of seemly conduct refined and magnanimous  of spirit , treasure of all manly virtues’ and additionally, a wish fulfilling tree for the needy and the for the good  to cross over the miseries .16 For all these qualities ,Carudutta is shown universally    acclaimed as ‘an adornment to Ujjaini ;and the foremost in the city. Thus Carudutta clearly personified the urban ideal, albeit one which in the Mrcchakatikam is qualified by the virtue of charity and magnanimity, something that is not explicitly a concern for the kamsutra’s nagaraka . Magnanimity apart, however, Carudutta is true to the nagaraka tendency to sexual and cultural good taste. The former is exemplified by his ardours for Vasantsenna the best city courtesans and beautiful and sophisticated women. The latter his commitment to culture, is highlighted in two episode from the play. However, the Mrcchakatikam evidence on the phenomenon of the nagaraka   is complex. There are hints that Carudutta’s sophistication and in ordinate aesthetic predisposition are the object of mild satire. For intense when Carudutta signs paeans to the mail vocalist’s sweet , feminine voice his vidusaka Maiterye replies that he founds a women reading Sanskrit and a man singing in a low sweet tone hilarious  and boring.17  There are some also the sentiments expressed in the Kuttanikuttam by relatives and well-wishers of the male protagonist similarly attached to the prostitutes.18            Thus all of above pleasure and culture appear to be the leading values that orient public behavior in the city. At least among the well of echelons to which the kavya observation in this regard are more or less confined.Nagaraka and  ganika represent  an urban strategy – an ingenious response to normative attitudes towards   sex that seeks to rule out all indulgence  outside the contract of  marriage and reorient it  away from  pleasure even within it. The pursuit of the culture in common by men and women creates a uniquely urban zone where they can freely access each other socially and sexually, something that is denied by the traditional structure of the society and its pattriarchalcum -caste ideology.
NOTES AND REFRENCES:1. A.K. Warder: Indian Kavya literature vol.I literary criticism Delhi; Motilal Banarasidas, 1989 P.X.2. Ibid p.122.3. Paul Wheatly: The Pivot of the four quarters:  A preliminary enquiry in to its origins and character of the Ancient Chinese city: Edinburg University Press 1971 p.398.4. There is not seen a proper definition.5. A. K. Warder: Indian Kavya Literature p.136.6. Kanpur: History and Culture in Kashmir p.45.7. Ibid p. 50, 53, 59-60. Also Kanpur, Eminent Rulers p. 68.8. Doniger and Kakar (trans.) Vatsayana Mallanga Kamsutra p.187 note I.4.19. Kamsutra (hereafter KS) I.4.31 -32.10. Kamsutra (KS I.4.1) 11. Ibid I.4.212. Ibid 36 Kaul: The city in Early India Chapter 6.13. Kamsutra I.1-1014. Ibid I.4.2.15. Ibid I .4.2.36; V.I.52, 54.16. Ibid 17. Mrcha I P.26.18. Kuttani 301-24 p.111. The Kuttanimatam is Damoderguta’s ninth century erotic satirical prose poem about matron’s advice to young prostitutes.