The central character of the Kāmasūtra is the nāgaraka (fine gentleman), a representative of the urban culture. His life is spent in the arts, in games and entertainment. The art of cultural leisure requires a certain income, but caste does not matter: a śūdra living on a salary can also be a “fine gentleman”. An ideal nāgaraka house should have two bedrooms. One of them is in the inner room and is intended for wives, and the outer bedroom is for cultural, in which there is no place for the wife. Here the gentleman meets with ladies: with someone else's wife or with a cheerful widow, and most often with a courtesan who is able to give him aesthetic and intellectual pleasure. The courtesan plays a skillful game; the relationship between the lovers seems like a theatrical performance. It is no coincidence that in the Kāmasūtra the theater terminology is used for them: he is a nāyaka (playing the role of a hero-lover on stage), she is also a nāyikā (an actress in the role of a lover). Their retinue is the same one that appears in treatises on theatrical art: pīṭhamarda, viṭa, vidūṣaka. It can be difficult to determine whether fiction follows didactics or, on the contrary, literary images and dramatic scenes are reflected in the treatise.Kāmasūtra imitated Arthaśāstra, and the legendary royal advisers mentioned by Kauṭilya, as well as two linguists who are named in the Mahābhāṣya, appear as ancient teachers of the science of love. The very composition of a treatise on pleasure is part of the intellectual game that ancient Indian ladies and gentlemen indulged in.The mention of such geographical areas as Vatsagulma and Dakshiṇa Kośala suggests that Vātsyāyana was a contemporary of Hariṣeṇa and Kalidāsa, poets who wrote in the refined Kāvya style. The science of kāma, like the entire theory of the “three goals of life” (trivarga), could arise only in conditions of developed urbanization – not earlier, than the first centuries CE.