The temple of Sunnat had as many as five hundred of these priestesses of Venus, and a Rajah has been known to entertain as many as two thousand of them.  Bayaderes, or Nautch girls, as they are often called in a general way, are of many grades.  The lowest go about the country in bands, while the highest may rise to the rank and dignity of an Aspasia.  To the former class belong those referred to by Lowrie (148)—­a band of twenty girls, all unveiled and dressed in their richest finery, who wanted to dance for his party and were greatly disappointed when refused.  “Most of them were very young—­about ten or eleven years old.”  Their course is brief; they soon lose their charms, are discarded, and end their lives as beggars.

AN INDIAN ASPASIA

A famous representative of the superior class of bayaderes is the heroine of King Cudraka’s drama just referred to—­Vasantasena.  She has amassed immense wealth—­the description of her palace takes up several pages—­and is one of the best known personages in town, yet that does not prevent her from being spoken of repeatedly as “a noble woman, the jewel of the city."[273] She is, indeed, represented as differing in her love from other bayaderes, and, as she herself remarks, “a bayaderes is not reprehensible in the eyes of the world if she gives her heart to a poor man.”  She sees the Brahman Tscharudatta in the temple garden of Kama, the god of love, and forthwith falls in love with him, as he does with her, though he is married.  One afternoon she is accosted in the street by a relative of the king, who annoys her with his unwelcome attentions.  She takes refuge in her lover’s house and, on the pretext that she has been pursued on account of her ornaments, leaves her jewelry in his charge.  The jewels are stolen during the night, and this mishap leads to a series of others which finally culminate in Tscharudatta being led out to execution for the alleged murder of Vasantasena.  At the last moment Vasantasena, who had been strangled by the king’s relative, but has been revived, appears on the scene, and her lover’s life is saved, as well as his honor.

The royal author of this drama, who has been called the Shakspere of India, probably lived in one of the first centuries of the Christian era.  His play may in a certain sense be regarded as a predecessor of Manon Lescaut and Camille, inasmuch as an attempt is made in it to ascribe to the heroine a delicacy of feeling to which women of her class are naturally strangers.  She hesitates to make advances to Tscharudatta, and at first wonders whether it would be proper to remain in his house.  See informs her pursuer that “love is won by noble character, not by importunate advances.”  Tscharudatta says of her:  “There is a proverb that ’money makes love—­the treasurer has the treasure,’ But no! she certainly cannot be won with treasures.”  She is in fact represented throughout as being different from the typical bayaderes, who are thus described by one of the characters: