After getting educated one should set up as a householder, using the money one has acquired either through inheritance or through gifts, conquest, trade and wages, or by both means. One can then live the life of a gentleman. This can be in a metropolis, a city or a large market town, wherever good people live or travel takes one. Have a house built there. It should be near water, have an orchard and separate quarters for working, and contain two bedrooms.
(1–3)
The outer bedroom should have a good soft bed, low in the middle, with two pillows and a white sheet spread over it. At its head there is a place for a brush and a stand for keeping a pot of beeswax, a bottle of perfume, some lemon peel and betel leaves. Creams and garlands left over from the night before can also be placed there. On the ground is a spittoon. A lute hangs from a peg of ivory on the wall. Near it there is a drawing board with pencils, a book and a garland of amaranth leaves.
(4)
A couch is kept near the bed, and not too far from it a round, cushioned seat spread on the ground with dice and gambling boards on it. Outside the bedroom are cages for pet birds, and a secluded place for wood-carving and other pastimes. In the orchard there is a padded swing in the shade and a bench of baked clay spread with flowers.
After getting up in the morning and relieving himself a gentleman cleans his teeth and rubs some scented paste on his body. Perfuming his hair with incense smoke, applying beeswax and red lac to his face and putting on a garland, he then looks at himself in a mirror and freshens his mouth with betel leaf before attending to the day’s work.
(5)
He should bathe every day, have a massage every second day and use the fish-bone body-scraper every third day. The nails and the whiskers should be trimmed every fourth day and the body hair removed every fifth or tenth day. The armpits should always be kept clean of perspiration.
(6)
He should eat in the morning and the afternoon. In the evening too, according to Charayana. After meals he spends time making his parrots and mynah birds talk, watching quail, cock and ram fights and other similar recreation. He also interacts with his companions, parasites and jesters, and then has a nap.
(7–8)
By the late afternoon he is dressed to go out for social gatherings and soirées. At dusk there are concerts of music. After that he returns to his chamber, which has meanwhile been decorated and perfumed with incense smoke, and waits there by the bedside with his aides for girlfriends coming out to meet him. A messenger woman may be sent to fetch them or he may go himself.
(9–11)
When they arrive he and his aides should receive them with all courtesies and many winning words. If they have come in bad weather and their clothes have got wet in the rain, he should himself redo their makeup or have his friends attend to this. Such is his routine, by day and night.
(12–13)
A gentleman may amuse himself by going to festivals, soirées, drinking parties, picnics and literary games.
(14)
As for these, there is always a gathering of select people at the temple of the goddess Sarasvati on a specified day every month or fortnight. Actors and dancers perform there. Also visiting artists, who receive appropriate prizes on the following day and are asked to stay on or dismissed depending on the audience’s reaction. Both groups should naturally work together during the festival, as well as in any trouble. It is their duty to honour and help other visitors and outsiders. Such festivals also take place at other temples dedicated to particular deities.
(15–18)
A soirée or social gathering may take place at the house of a courtesan, an assembly hall or an individual’s dwelling place. On such occasions people of the same age, with similar education and intelligence, means and inclinations, get together for congenial conversation and discussion of questions of poetry and art with courtesans. Like-minded ones are brought to these gatherings and the brilliant and popular among them are specially honoured.
(19–21)
Drinking parties are held at one another’s houses. There courtesans ply guests with wines and spirits made from honey, molasses, grain and fruit, and also drink with them. They further serve them relishes, salty and spicy, bitter and sour, with fruit, greens and vegetables.
(22–23)
Picnics in parks and gardens can be described in the same way. Dressed with care and mounted on horseback, men go out in the morning. They are accompanied by courtesans and followed by servants. These are day trips. The participants spend time betting on cock fights, watching theatrical shows and in other agreeable activities. They return in the evening, carrying souvenirs of their pleasures in the park. In the summer they go similarly for water sports in pools and tanks filled artificially.
(24–26)
These include goblin nights, moonlit wakes, spring festivals and well-known games peculiar to different regions, like plucking the mango, eating roasted grain, nibbling lotus stems, collecting new leaves, squirting water, pantomimes, the silk-cotton tree game and mock-fights with wild jasmine flowers. People play them as they wish. A solitary man can also play depending on his means, and so can courtesans and other women with their girlfriends and other men.
(27–30)
One is called the companion. He has no wealth, only himself. A wooden seat, a back-scraper and some astringent are his sole possessions. But he hails from a respectable background, is skilled in all the arts and makes a living by teaching them at social gatherings, together with proper manners for courtesans. Another is called the parasite. He had wealth but has used it up. A married person of quality, he subsists on the general reputation he has among courtesans and assemblies. Then there is the jester or clown. His knowledge is limited, but he is good company and completely trustworthy. These are the people courtesans and gentlemen use as advisers in their compacts and disputes, as they do skilled beggar women, unmarried girls, widows and old courtesans.
(31–35)
A gentleman living in a village should describe the cultured life of the city to intelligent and curious members of his community and encourage their desire to live similarly. He should arrange social gatherings with these people, give them entertaining company, help them in their work and earn their gratitude by doing them favours. So much for the life of a gentleman.
(36)
In gatherings, to gain esteem
and respect among the people,
do not talk too much in Sanskrit
nor too much in the local language.
(37)
The wise will not attend
a gathering unpopular,
which is but a free-for-all
and causes hurt to others.
(38)
But one which is in keeping
with the public mood, and whose
sole function is amusement:
by going to such gatherings
the wise attain success.
(39)