PROSTITUTION IN ANCIENT INDIA 33 such women were frequently forced to take up prostitution as a profession. And when they did so, they found themselves in a unique position : they constituted the only section of women who had to be their own bread' winners and guardians. All the others—maiden daughters, sisters, wives, widows and maidservants—were wards of men : fathers, brothers, husbands, masters or sons.2 So, women who took up prostitution had to be reasonably sure of an independent livelihood ; their customers had to make it a viable proposition for them. Economic Status It is easy to see that all avenues to prostitution did not offer the same kind of economic security. A raped woman had little chance of an honourable marriage and social rehabilitation ; so, reduced to prostitution, she had to accept whatever came her way. This also held true for the old maid turned prostitute. But a young widow or a pretty wanton maid or an unhappily married attractive woman could perhaps choose her partner and name her price, at least in the beginning of her career while she still enjoyed the protection of her father's, husband's or in-laws' home. We have absolutely no way of knowing when prostitution in India arose as a recognizable profession or how much the prostitute received by way of payment. Its emergence and recognition as a profession was presumably concomitant with the institution of strict marriage rules, especially monoandry, and the wife being regarded as the private property other husband. The terms sadharani or samanya (common), synonyms for prostitute, distinguish her as a woman not possessed by one man ; this is the desideratum. When a woman does not belong to one man but obliges many, as the terms varangana, varastri, varavadhu and varamukhycP signify, since she is not the responsibility of any one man, she looks after herself. she does by accepting payment from each of the men she obliges; she then This becomes panyastri, one whose favours can be bought with money. The process of the emergence of prostitution must have been slow, varying from region to region and from age to age. By the later Vedic age, i.e., around the eighth or seventh century B.C., we have references to a more regularized form of prostitution recognized as a social institution. Early Buddhist literature, especially the Jatakas, bear testimony to the existence of different categories of prostitutes, and incidentally provides some information about their fees as also of their financial position. Professional prostitution presupposes an economic condition in which surplus was produced, a surplus which also earned prosperity from abroad through trade and commerce. It also presupposes the rise of petty principalities, the breakdown of tribal society, the rise of the joint or extended family and the social subjugation of women in general. In a settled agricultural community, the woman gradually lost social mobility and a measure of freedom that she had been enjoying before. She became man's ward, possession, object of enjoyments Also, with the accumulation