Everyone knows the Kama Sutra is ancient India's racy sex manual. The title conjures titillating visions of erotic frescos in which regal maharajas with outsized genitals cavort with naked bejeweled nymphs in positions exotic enough to slip the discs of a yoga master.
Kama - is the Hindu god of love. The word also refers to the pursuit of love or pleasure, one of the four aims of life in Hindu traditions. Kama is always depicted as a handsome youth, shooting arrows of love that produce love. The Kama Sutra, which means Sex Science, is the earliest surviving example of a written Hindu love-manual.
Kama Sutra was written between the 1st and 4th Centuries AD by the Indian sage Vatsyayana, who lived in the North Indian city of Benares. D. His work was based on earlier Kama Shastras or "Rules of Love".
The Kama Sutra contains a total of 64 sexual Kama Sutra Positions. Vatsyayana believed there were eight ways of making love, multiplied by eight positions within each of these. In the book, they are known as the 64 Atrs.
Kama Sutra literally means "treatise on sexual pleasure." Unlike the Christian view that the sole purpose of sex is procreation, in the fourth century Hindu world that gave birth to the Kama Sutra, the cultivation of sexual pleasure, independent of procreation, was considered one of life's highest callings. The ancient Hindus believed that life had three purposes: religious piety (dharma), material success (artha), and sexual pleasure (kama). All three were equal, and the erotic was celebrated as the seat of earthly beauty. In the Hindu world the pursuit of sexual pleasure was revered as a sort of religious quest..
The Kama Sutra was written by one Vatsyayana Mallanaga, about whom nothing else is known. However, from the text, it's clear that he was upper-class. He takes servants for granted, and assumes his readers have the leisure time to seduce virgins and other men's wives, and the money to buy the gifts he recommends giving to do so. Vatsyayana also claims to have written his treatise "in chastity and highest meditation." It's hard to know what to make of this. Some commentators have scoffed that, given the subject matter, this seems highly unlikely. But considering the reverence with which the ancient Hindus approached matters sexual, it's also possible that Vatsyayana wrote his book with the gravity of, say, a modern-art critic discussing a cache of just-discovered erotic paintings by Picasso. We'll never know.
The Kama Sutra may be the ancient world's most famous sex book, but it was by no means the first. The Chinese had sex manuals 500 years earlier, and Ovid's "Ars Amatoria," a handbook for courtesans, preceded the "Kamasutra" by some 200 years. The Kama Sutra is not even the first Indian sex guide. Vatsyayana mentions several sages who trod his erotic path before him.
The sexual culture it describes is also surprisingly like our own. While the Kama Sutra describes girls and women as dependent on their fathers, husbands and adult sons - in the manner of women in today's Arab Middle East - in the India of the text, they enjoyed an independence and freedom of movement Saudi or Pakistani women can only dream of. While their wealthy fathers and husbands were running businesses and the government - not to mention fucking around - young women were often free to date men and select their own husbands, and married women were free to select lovers and entertain them.
The Kama Sutra is organized in seven sections that track men through life. In Book 1, the bachelor sets up his pad. In Book 2, he perfects his sexual techniques. This is the book that has inspired the videos, games and everything else that flies the Kama Sutra flag. In Book 3, our young man seduces a virgin. In Book 4, he marries and sets up a household for his wife and servants. By Book 5, he has grown sexually bored with his wife, and turns to seducing other men's wives.
Eventually, as he ages, the effort necessary for such dalliances loses its charm, so in Book 6, he takes up with courtesans, who work to please him - but for a price. Finally, in old age, he fears he is losing his potency and attractiveness, so Book 7 contains recipes for herbal potions to preserve them.
Although Vatsyayana was a man writing for men, some of the Kama Sutra speaks directly to women: Book 3 tells virgins how to attract husbands. Book 4 instructs women how to be good wives. Book 6 deals with the skills required of courtesans - including how they should provide for their own old age by stealing from their patrons. This information does not seem odd until you realize that in fourth century India, few if any women could read. It's not clear how they obtained the Kama Sutra's information. Apparently, some did. Presumably literate men read it to them, as clergy a few centuries ago read the Bible to illiterate congregants.
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