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11. THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLEASURE
KĀMA-DEVA, the Hindu god of love, is no little son of mother Venus, no putto-chubby, tender infant-but a brilliant, dexterous youth. His glamorous mate is Ratī, "Lust and Sensual Delight." And like the divine Eros of Hesiod, celebrated by Phaedrus in Plato's dialogue, Kāma was the first-born of the gods.
First Chaos came, and then broad-bosomed Earth, The everlasting seat of all that is, And Love.1
This dangerous youth's divine military commander-in-chief is Vasanta, "Spring." With a fragrant wind from the south Vasanta brings the landscape into blossom and softens all creatures for the sweet, piercing, irresistible attack of the god of love.
Kāma carries a bow entwined with flowers, and five arrows the points of which are fragrant blossoms. The bow and arrow, it must be borne in mind, were once to be taken very seriously. They were always the classic weapon of Indian warfare, from the remote centuries of the Vedic period, through the age of Epic chivalry, and even through the subsequent period of the contending tyrant-kings, until the Moslem invasions introduced the Chinese-Western invention of gunpowder, cannon, guns, and bullets. Kāma is called Puspa-bāṇa, "whose arrows are flowers," and Pañca-sayaka, "endowed with five arrows." He 1 Hesiod, Theogony 116ff.; Plato, Symposium 178 B.
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