34 SOCIAL SCIENTIST of private property, the wife was more zealously guarded and jealously watched over. Society was now polygamous ; polyandry disappeared except in some small pockets. Whether as an unmarried girl, a wife or a widow, she belonged to some man ; so other men could not approach her without trespassing on the owner's property rights. Pleasure outside the home, therefore, had to be paid for, hence prostitution had to be institutionalized so that there was an assurance of a steady supply for ready payment. It must have been a long and tortuous process for women of this profession to congregate in a 'red light area', away from the village—and later also from towns—where men could go and seek their company. Social ostracism on the one hand and professional solidarity of the guild type of association on the other, ensured their security and prosperity. Although the later Vedic literature tacitly assumes and sometimes even overtly mentions prostitutes, it is in the Buddhist texts that we see them first as professionals. In Vedic literature, especially in the Aitareya and Sankhayana Aranyaka^, the prostitute is mentioned in an apparently obscene altercation with the neophyte (brahmacarin). In the Vratyasukta of the Atharvaveda, she follows the Magadha. These are clearly part of a fertility ritual. It is in this role that she has persisted in ritual and literature down the ages. There are various myths and legends regarding the origin of prostitution. The Mahabharata account of the destruction of the Yadavas and Vrsnis4 ends with the women of these tribes being abducted by barbarian brigands. In the Kuru and Pancala regions5 inhabited by the Madras and the Sindhu-Sauviras, the Brahmin sages Dalbhya Caikitayana and Svetaketu's nephew Astavakra were said to be associated with the teaching of erotics in which prostitution constitutes a section. In the Mahabharatcf and the Matsya purana7 we are given fictitious accounts of the origin of prostitution. Ksemendra says that wicked mothers give their daughters, enjoyed and abandoned by men, to others.8 Vatsyayana in his Kamasutra gives detailed instructions on how a chaste girl should be seduced cleverly until she yields to a man's lust.9 Presumably, when such a man abandoned her she was forced to adopt prostitution as a profession. We also hear of the jayopojivins or jayajivins, husbands who lived on the wife's income which she earned by selling herself. This itself was regarded as a minor sin on the husband's part, an upapataka which could be expiated by taking the comparatively mild candrayana vow.10 All these texts reveal to us some of the channels by which women came to prostitution. Another old channel of the supply of prostitutes was young virgins given away as gifts on special religious and secular occasions. The number of such girls given away to brahmins, guests, priests, sons-in-law is staggering. In later Vedic times we hear of daksinas, sacrificial fees to officiating priests. Such fees included horses, cattle, gold and also women of various categories—unmarried^ married without ^bijdren and married with obildrw. On^