Ancient India: Why were courtesans forced to forfeit their dignity?
Prostitutes were not always what they are today, they’ve lived through an age of prestige and glory. And this very statement gives birth to an interesting question; When exactly did society seize the dignity of prostitutes?
Let me paint you a picture—ancient India. Thousands of years ago, courtesans belonged to one of the most cardinal sections of society. Their presence was almost a prerequisite—socially, politically, intellectually, artistically, and in some cases, sexually.
Now look around; most prostitutes in the country are living in a stashed away Kotha (brothel), or bluntly put, in a Randikhana, packed with five other women in a single 8-by-8-foot room, surviving off whatever petty money a drunkard would offer. Because let’s face it, desperation doesn’t come with options.
From being signified to being cheapened, where did things go wrong?
Going back in time, the earliest mention of prostitutes has been seen in the Hindu text, Rigveda. Though it does not talk exactly of prostitutes, rather the terms Jara and Jatini (paramour of secret lover) are spoken of. (In Rig. I.66.4 & I.117.18, 1.134.3 and other places).
Now, payments were not mandatory here. This was rather just the wife’s illicit love affair, usually because of her not-so-satisfactory marriage.
The extramarital love may have been voluntary and unpaid, but there is a possibility of it being regarded by the male partner as a form of service for which he was obliged to pay in some form.
So, these lovers were considered temporary, the actual Sanskrit word for which is maturtika (lasting for an instance).
Women who took up prostitution had to be reasonably sure of an independent livelihood.
With time, women who were raped, widowed, abandoned, deprived, or forced by family members into penurious conditions had to fit themselves into the crowded lanes of prostitution.
Women who were either exceptionally beautiful or still under the custody of their father or husband received far higher emoluments than such socially retarded women. So, the unaccomplished and plain-looking had to agree to mere subsistence rates or, frankly, anything they could lay their hands on. After all, given their plight, it was their only way of survival.
Around the 8th century B.C., the Buddhist literature, the Jatakas, first set forth the diversity of courtesans and how these women were categorized. It elucidates the different ranks among these women, their affairs, and even the fees they were “allowed” to charge. Prostitution was now starting to be recognized as an institution.
Alright, now coming to the zenith. Let me give you the essence of the two types of courtesans leading this article.
The first and most prominent ones would be the Ganikas.
By Gopal Swami Khetanchi (1958) Image source²
The Ganikas were the most learned, skilled, and cunningly elegant. With an arresting seductiveness, they were the ones with the best of charms. The Jain literature talks about the 72 skills that had to be mastered by a Ganika. You heard that right. SEVENTY-TWO.
From the art of singing to that of gambling, from poetry to perfuming, from being skilled at mineralogy to metallurgy. These women were to learn the entirety of the universe and its cosmic depths. And spending a night with them would cost a fortune.
Courtesans of ancient India, known as Ganikas, were the centre of city life. According to historian Sanjay K. Gautam, the courtesan in India was “a symbol of both sexual-erotic and aesthetic pleasure.”³(Article: Wikipedia, 2022)
Next, let’s talk about public women.
Devdasi by Gianpaolo Marchesi⁴: Image Source
Neither highly learned nor very good-looking, these women belonged to the rather lower positions on the bar of social ranking of prostitutes. They were usually purchased and given to temples as donations or Dakṣiṇā.
Many were captured in war, whereas some were women being punished for adultery. Women of this ilk suffered the most during their old age. Having lost their youth and charm, their demand was meagre.
They would often travel to religious sites, disguise themselves to look young and attractive, and try to seduce the pilgrims there in exchange for a futile amount of money.
Ergo, even if their youth was not entirely hopeless, they certainly could not look forward to promising senility.
Now here comes the interesting part. The courtesans, especially the particularly wealthy ones, were very influential in society and served uncountable purposes, yet society created irrational double standards en masse, to justify looking down upon them.
Let me tell you what I mean.
If we look at the Ganikas, the wealthy, the charming, the educated ones. They used to arrange feasts for the poor and sometimes even the entire town. They would invest their wealth in public welfare, emanating river bridges, wells, etc. They bestowed a large chunk of their earnings on the well-being of people during epidemics.
These courtesans often invited men of similar age, wealth, and intellect to their homes or salons, where they would spend the evening discussing poetry and literature. Drinks were served, and the woman always drank first to mark the beginning of an evening of music, art, and alcohol that usually ended with drunken lovemaking in the company of a suited man.
In the Mahabharata, these courtesans even played the role of spies, where they were sent to seduce important men to procure vital political information needed in wars and military planning.
image source⁵: historyinworld.blogspot
The opinions of these women were highly regarded in the King’s court as they were considered clever and proficient in decision-making, even those concerning the state’s affairs. In the bargain, they were also given a concession on taxes by the state.
Now, although courtesans were socially important, religion had other plans (as always).
A belief found in Hinduism states that the murder of a prostitute is no crime. All prostitutes are considered thieves and swindlers.
It is no lie that courtesans had extravagant prices. A Jain text even says that a courtesan who had a faultless body and whose attainments were complete may charge 1000 Kārṣāpaṇa (silver coins) per night.
And about being swindlers? The erotic text, Kalavilasa, mentions 64 specified techniques in which a courtesan could deceive her customer. Vātsyāyana taught novices how to use their youth and charm to earn. The Kamasutra advises that the woman, without really getting attached to her client, should act as if she were. She should fake losing her ornaments and have mock quarrels with her mother about expenses and debts to make her client pay for her bills and debts.
But honestly, so what?
We are speaking of a time when the married woman did not have the right to be learned, accomplished, or to have desires. When the husbands started finding their wives dull and flavourless, they sought passion and taste and eventually found their way to the houses of courtesans.
These courtesans offered what was rarely found. They had worked hard to become everything that the common woman was not. Demanding a thousand silver coins for allowing men to indulge in their richness and intellect, just isn’t thievery.
Society had no hesitation in using the fruits of her labour while looking down upon her.⁶(Bhattacharji, 1987)
Let’s have a look at the public women forced into prostitution.
In later Vedic times, we often hear of women being given as Dakṣiṇā to Brahmin priests along with gold ornaments, cattle, horses, etc. It was said that those who bought and then gave maidens away to temples would secure their place in heaven.
We hear that he who gave a host of prostitutes to the sun god went to the region of the sun after death.⁷ (Bhattacharji, 1987)
According to the Mahābhārata, Yudhiṣṭhira gave hundreds of thousands of pretty maidens to other kings, as did King Śaśabindu at his horse’s sacrifice. Giving away women in such large numbers was the norm; it was as common as it could get.
Devdutt Pattanaik on Scroll.in: Image source⁸
The usually asked question here would be, where did all these many women come from?
The sources were not all that hard to find. Kautilya once stated that there were four main origins of common prostitutes; they could be the daughters of other prostitutes, young maidens purchased and sold to temples and brothels, women captured in war, or those being punished for adultery. More and more women were being forced into prostitution. After all, those who sold these women sure received a pile.
It is a perpetual cycle of women diving and being thrown into the seas of prostitution, then being sold and bought and then given away. Then hastily drowning and sinking away. Soon enough, into the sea went more women being propped on top of the ones dead already.
Even Vātsyāyana, in his Kamasutra, gives elaborate instructions on how a chaste girl should be seduced cunningly to make her yield to the man’s desires. Undoubtedly, on being forsaken by such a man, she would be forced to adopt prostitution as a profession.
In many references in the Puranas and later literary texts, the pretty maidens giving “services” to the kings are projected to heaven, where the earthly prostitutes figure as celestial nymphs serving the gods. Prostitutes became a symbol of prosperity.
Whether on earth or in heaven, monarchs or wealthy potents used such women to enhance their glory and pleasure.⁹ (Bhattacharji, 1987)
The sight of a prostitute was thought of as auspicious. During Durga Puja, the soil from a prostitute’s house is an indispensable article used for fashioning the idol of the goddess Durga. This was done for the reason of her being seen as a symbol of fertility and procreation, given her regular sexual involvement.
Given all of that, you would think that prostitutes were esteemed in society, wouldn’t you?
Well, they weren’t. Prostitutes were still loathed.
Not just the Ganikas, but even the public women were often blamed for deceiving and robbing men of their earnings, even though their charges were almost negligible!
Society dropped all the blame on the heads of the prostitutes and decided to completely ignore the fact that they exist entirely because they render a service that society needs. These women act as men force them to act, and instead of accepting responsibility, the entire guilt is loaded on the women.
Even accepting food from the prostitutes started to be seen as ill-omened. But men still went on accepting sex from them, and nobody said a word. This double standard that society brought upon the prostitutes left them in a place where they couldn’t even fight for the respect they deserved, for they were only serving society and satisfying the needs of its people.
In a society where women became a personal possession, a woman who could not be possessed individually provoked this ambivalence.¹⁰ (Bhattacharji, 1987)
Most times, the woman did not even have the option of refusing a customer and had to sell herself, nonetheless. She did not have enough privilege to be able to refuse a man. I mean, she certainly had to feed herself, didn’t she?
If a price had been accepted, the commodity was the customer’s for use.¹¹ (Bhattacharji, 1987)
The Ganikas had the right to choose their customers, though she had no right to refuse the King. And if she did, she would either be fined with 5000 panas or be whipped with 1000 lashes. She was seized of control over her own body when it came to the royals.
Courtesans and prostitutes were since the beginning, seen as commodities; sometimes like precious gems and other times like cattle.
Now here is when things snowball. Colonial rule sets foot in India. The prostitutes holding onto threads of dignity. A blade flashed through all the threads. The Britishers had equally low regard for both, the highly important courtesans and the common prostitute. Coming from the place they came from, they could not even imagine the cultural importance of these women. They surely had never seen such accomplished and learned courtesans back in their country.
Capt Crockatt, ‘A nautch, native dancers at Nizugapatahi’, c. 1801 Source: © The British Museum, CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Image source)¹²
Without even trying to understand the position of prostitutes in India, they oppressed prostitute women to satisfy the “natural sexual desires” of the British people. They used their concept of “superiority of their race” to gain control over women’s bodies.¹³ (Howard, 2019)
Well, this was my take on the story of how courtesans were forced to forfeit their dignity. Writing about the given was nothing but a gut-stirring experience for me. Surely, the turn things took must’ve been agonizing for these women to witness and go through amid their erstwhile struggles. I would like to conclude by saying;
Courtesans were the kind of gold that ended up losing its value over time.
I wonder what today’s prostitutes would think if they understood their origins. I wonder if they even know of the vastness they once held.
Do you think today’s prostitutes being cheapened is justified? What would you do if you were one of them?
-Mannat.
Bibliography
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[8] Pattanaik, Devdutt. “Feudal Trap: Why Do Indians Fear Prostitutes and Traders?” Scroll.in, Scroll.in, 25 July 2016, https://scroll.in/article/812393/feudal-trap-why-do-indians-fear-prostitutes-and-traders.
[9] Bhattacharji, S. (1987, February 2). Retrieved from jstor: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3520437
[10] Bhattacharji, S. (1987, February 2). Retrieved from jstor: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3520437
[11] Bhattacharji, S. (1987, February 2). Retrieved from jstor: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3520437
[12] jparfitt. “Crockatt, ‘a Nautch, Native Dancers at Nizugapatahi’ c. 1801: Courtesans of India.” Courtesans of India | Centering Devadasis and Tawaifs, 6 Oct. 2019, https://www.huronresearch.ca/courtesansofindia/2017/12/05/crockatt-a-nautch-native-dancers-at-nizugapatahi-c-1801/.
[13] Howard, G. (2019, May). Retrieved from atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca: http://hdl.handle.net/10214/16082
