The Hindus (57 page)

Here we encounter the paradox of women’s voices telling us, through the text, that women had no voices. Vatsyayana takes for granted the type of rape that we now call sexual harassment, as he describes men in power who can take whatever women they want (5.5.7-10). But he often expresses points of view clearly favorable to women,
⁴⁷
particularly in comparison with other texts of the same era. The text often quotes women in direct speech, expressing views that men are advised to take seriously. The discussion of the reasons why women become unfaithful, for instance, rejects the traditional patriarchal party line that one finds in most Sanskrit texts, a line that punishes very cruelly indeed any woman who sleeps with a man other than her husband. The
Kama-sutra
, by contrast, begins its discussion of adultery with an egalitarian, if cynical, formulation: “A woman desires any attractive man she sees, and, in the same way, a man desires a woman. But after some consideration, the matter goes no farther (5.1.8).” The text does go on to state that women have less concern for morality than men have, and does assume that women don’t think about anything but men. And it is written in the service of the hero, the would-be adulterer, who reasons, if all women are keen to give it away, why shouldn’t one of them give it to him? But the author empathetically imagines various women’s reasons
not
to commit adultery (of which consideration for dharma comes last, as an afterthought), and the would-be seducer takes the woman’s misgivings seriously, even if only to disarm her (5.1.17-42). This discussion is ostensibly intended to teach the male reader of the text how to manipulate and exploit such women, but perhaps inadvertently, it also provides a most perceptive exposition of the reasons why inadequate husbands drive away their wives (5.1.51-54).

Such passages may express a woman’s voice or at least a woman’s point of view. In a culture in which men and women speak to each other (which is to say, in most cultures), we might do best to regard the authors of most texts as androgynes, and the
Kama-sutra
is no exception. We can find women’s voices, sometimes speaking against their moment in history, perhaps even against their author. By asking our own questions, which the author may or may not have considered, we can see that his text does contain many answers to them, embedded in other questions and answers that may have been more meaningful to him.

The
Kama-sutra
assumes a kind of sexual freedom for women that would have appalled Manu but simply does not interest Kautilya. To begin with, the text of the
Kama-sutra
was intended for women as well as men. Vatsyayana argues at some length that some women, at least (courtesans and the daughters of kings and ministers of state) should read his text and that others should learn its contents in other ways, as people in general were expected to know the contents of texts without actually reading them (1.3.1-14). Book 3 devotes one chapter to advice to virgins trying to get husbands (3.4.36-37), and book 4 consists of instructions for wives (the descriptions of co-wives jockeying for power could have served as the script for the opening of the
Ramayana
). Book 6 is said to have been commissioned by the courtesans of Pataliputra, presumably for their own use.

Vatsyayana is also a strong advocate for women’s sexual pleasure. He tells us that a woman who does not experience the pleasures of love may hate her man and may even leave him for another (3.2.35; 4.2.31-35). If, as the context suggests, this woman is married, the casual manner in which Vatsyayana suggests that she leave her husband is in sharp contrast with position assumed by Manu. The
Kama-sutra
also acknowledges that women could use magic
^go
to control their husbands, though it regards this as a last resort (4.1.19-21).
⁴⁸
Vatsyayana also casually mentions, among the women that one might not only sleep with but marry (1.5.22), not only “secondhand” women (whom Manu despises as “previously had by another man”) but widows: “a widow who is tormented by the weakness of the senses . . . finds, again, a man who enjoys life and is well endowed with good qualities (4.2.31-34).”

The basic agreement of the three principal
shastras
, as well as their divergent emphases, is manifest in their different rankings of the eight forms of marriage that all three list.

Let’s begin with Manu, who ranks the marriages in this order, each named after the presiding deity or supernatural figure(s):

Manu insists that the marriages of the ghouls and the antigods should never be performed and that for all classes but Brahmins, the best marriage is when the couple desire each other.
^gp

The
Artha-shastra
defines marriages much more briefly, names them differently, and puts them in a different order:

Kautilya regards the first four as lawful with the sanction of the father of the bride, and the last four with the sanction of her father and the mother, because they are the ones who get the bride-price for her (3.2.10-11). Here, as usual, where Manu’s hierarchy depends on class, Kautilya’s depends on money. The
Kama-sutra
never lists the marriages at all, nor does it discuss the first four, but it gives detailed instructions on how to manage the three that are ranked last in Manu: the centaur, ghoul, and ogre marriages (3.5.12-30).

A
dharma-sutra
in the third century BCE lists only six forms of marriages;
⁴⁹
it was left for all three of the later
shastras
to add the two last and worst forms, rape and drugging, a change that signals a significant loss for women. By regarding these two as worse than the other forms of marriage, but not to be ruled out, the
shastras
simultaneously legitimized rape as a form of marriage and gave some degree of legal sanction, retroactively, to women who had been raped. The inclusion of rape in all three lists might be taken as evidence that a wide divergence of customs was actually tolerated in India at that time, though as we have already heard Vatsyayana explicitly state, the fact that something is mentioned in a text is not proof that people should (or do) actually do it. That is, where Manu tells you not to do it and then how to do it, the
Kama-sutra
tells you how to do it and then not to do it. But both instances are evidence that the
shastras
acknowledge the validity, if not the virtue, of practices they do not like.

As for their differences, not surprisingly, the
Kama-sutra
ranks the love match (the centaur wedding of mutual consent) as the best form of marriage (“because it gives pleasure and costs little trouble and no formal courtship, and because its essence is mutual love [3.5.30]”), while Manu ranks it the best for all classes
except Brahmins
, and Kautilya, ever the cynic, ranks it with the bad marriages (though as the best of that second quartet). Clearly there was quite a range of opinions about the way to treat brides at this time, some hearkening back to the earlier freedom of women at the time of the
Mahabharata
, others anticipating the narrowing of women’s options in the medieval period.

One subject on which Manu and Vatsyayana express widely divergent opinions is homosexuality. Classical Hinduism is in general significantly silent on the subject of homoeroticism, but Hindu mythology does drop hints from which we can excavate a pretty virulent homophobia.
⁵⁰
The dharma textbooks generally ignore, stigmatize, or penalize male homosexual activity: Manu prescribes either loss of caste (11.68) or the mildest of sanctions, a ritual bath (11.174), in dramatic contrast with the heavy penalties, including death, for heterosexual crimes like adultery; the
Artha-shastra
stipulates the payment of just a small fine (3.18.4, 4.13.236). Most Sanskrit texts regard atypical sexual or gender behavior
⁵¹
as an intrinsic part of the nature of the person who commits such acts and refer to such a person with the Sanskrit word
kliba,
which has traditionally been translated as “eunuch,” but did not primarily mean “eunuch.”
Kliba
includes a wide range of meanings under the general rubric of “a man who doesn’t do what a man’s gotta do,”
^gq
a man who fails to be a man, a defective male, a male suffering from failure, distortion, and lack. It is a catchall term that the
shastras
used to indicate a man who was in their terms sexually dysfunctional (or in ours, sexually challenged), including someone who was sterile or impotent, a transvestite, a man who had oral sex with other men, who had anal sex, a man with mutilated or defective sexual organs, a man who produced only female children, a hermaphrodite, and finally, a man who had been castrated (for men were castrated in punishment for sexual crimes in ancient India, though such men were not used in harems). “An effeminate man” or, more informally and pejoratively, a “pansy” is probably as close as English can get.

But the
Kama-sutra
departs from this view in significant ways, providing, once again, an alternative view of Hindu social customs. It does not use the pejorative term
kliba
at all, but speaks instead of a “third nature” or perhaps a “third sexuality” in the sense of sexual behavior:
tritiya prakriti,
a term that first appears in this sense in the
Mahabharata
.
Prakriti
(“nature”; more literally, “what is made before”), from
pra
(“before”) and
kri
(the verb “to make”), is a term that we have encountered twice in other forms: as the natural language Prakrit in contrast with the artificial language Sanskrit and as the word for “matter” in contrast with “spirit” (
purusha
).
^gr
Here is what the
Kama-sutra
has to say about the third nature:

The
Kama-sutra
says nothing more about this cross-dressing male, with his stereotypical female gender behavior, but it discusses the fellatio technique of the closeted man of the third nature, who presents himself not as a woman but as a man, a masseur, in considerable sensual detail, in the longest consecutive passage in the text describing a physical act, and with what might even be called gusto (2.9.12-24). Two verses that immediately follow the section about the third nature describe men who seem bound to one another by discriminating affection rather than promiscuous passion (2.9.35-36). These men are called men-about-town, the term used to designate the hetero (or even metro) sexual heroes of the
Kama-sutra
. In striking contrast with workingmen of the third nature, always designated by the pronoun “she” no matter whether she dresses as a man or as a woman, these men who are bound by affection are described with nouns and pronouns that unambiguously designate males, yet they are grouped with women. Vatsyayana remarks casually that some people list a person of the third nature as a “different” sort of
woman
who may be a man’s lover (1.5.27). Perhaps, then, they are bisexuals.

Vatsyayana is unique in the literature of the period in describing lesbian activity. He does this at the beginning of the chapter about the harem, in a brief passage about what he calls “Oriental customs” (5.6.2-4). (The use of the term “Oriental,” or “Eastern,” for what Vatsyayana regards as a disreputable lesbian practice in what was soon to be a colonized part of the Gupta Empire—indeed, the eastern part—suggests that “Orientalism” began not with the British but with the Orientals themselves.) These women use dildos, as well as bulbs, roots, or fruits that have the form of the male organ, and statues of men that have distinct sexual characteristics. But they engage in sexual acts with one another not through the kind of personal choice that drives a man of the third nature, but only in the absence of men, as is sometimes said of men in prison or English boys in boarding schools: “The women of the harem cannot meet men, because they are carefully guarded; and since they have only one husband shared by many women in common, they are not satisfied. Therefore they give pleasure to one another with the following techniques.” The commentary makes this explicit, and also helpfully suggests the particular vegetables that one might use: “By imagining a man, they experience a heightened emotion that gives extreme satisfaction. These things have a form just like the male sexual organ: the bulbs of arrowroot, plantain, and so forth; the roots of coconut palms, breadfruit, and so forth; and the fruits of the bottle-gourd, cucumber, and so forth (5.6.2).” One can imagine little gardens of plantain and cucumber being tenderly cultivated within the inner courtyards of the palace. The
Kama-sutra
makes only one brief reference to women who may have chosen women as sexual partners in preference to men (7.1.20; cf. Manu 8.369-70), and it never refers to women of this type as people of a “third nature.” Still, here is an instance in which ancient Hindu attitudes to human behavior are far more liberal than those that have prevailed in Europe and America for most of their history.