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Key points
- The 'Kama Sutra' is attributed to Vatsyayana, who lived in the 3rd century.
- Only in 1962 could the work be published in the USA and UK.
- Still today, many Westerners think of it as no more than an exotic sex manual.
In my previous post, I examined the place of the Kama Sutra in Hindu philosophy. In this post, I will look more at the work’s contents.
Westerners often think of the Kama Sutra as no more than an exotic sex manual. But I will show that it is, in fact, much broader in scope.
Who Wrote the Kama Sutra?
The Kama Sutra is attributed to one Vatsyayana but may, in fact, be a compendium of older texts.
In the colophon, Vatsyayana tells us that he composed the work while a brahmacharya (celibate religious student) in Varanasi, after pondering the kama shastras (textbooks on kama, or pleasure) of ancient authors.
He often cites these authorities, occasionally adding his own opinion or corrective:
The ancient authors consider that since women are incapable of understanding the sciences, it is useless to teach them such things. Vatsyayana notes that they can understand practical science and that practice depends entirely on theory.
Other than this, little is known of Vatsyayana. Textual clues suggest that he lived in the second half of the 3rd century C.E., possibly in Pataliputra (modern-day Patna, in Bihar). But owing to the nature of the work, the practices he describes, even if still contemporary, are likely to be several centuries older.
The Origins of the Kama Sutra
In Chapter 1 of the Kama Sutra, Vatsyayana attributes the first formulation of the Kama Shastra, in no less than a thousand chapters, to the man-bull Nandi, who, as Doorkeeper of Kailash, overheard the lovemaking of the gods Shiva and Parvati.
In another age, the Upanishadic sage Shvetaketu summarized Nandi’s Kama Shastra in five hundred chapters, which the sons of Babhru condensed into 150 chapters.
This being still too long, the work of the Babhravyas (sons of Babhru) came to be divided between several authors so that the original concept was nearly lost.
Thus, Vatsyayana resolved to return to the text of the Babhravyas and summarize it.
Given the nature of the task, Vatsyayana opted for the condensed sutra form, consisting of terse aphorisms intended to be unfolded by a teacher or commentary. The most famous commentary on the Kama Sutra is the 12th or 13th-century Jayamangala of Yashodhara.
Vatsyayana’s Kama Sutra became the pivotal text on eroticism, cited, among others, by Kokkoka in the Ratirahasya (c. 13th century) and Kalyanamalla in the Anangaranga (c. 16th century).
The 7 Parts of the Kama Sutra
The Kama Sutra consists of 36 chapters organized into seven books or parts:
- General Remarks
- Amorous Advances
- Acquiring a Wife
- Duties and Privileges of the Wife
- Other Men’s Wives
- About Courtesans
- Occult Practices
Books 2 and 6 are the longest; the shortest are Books 4 and 7, with only two chapters each.
The first book describes the lifestyle, routine, engagements, accomplishments, and behavior of the nagaraka, or “well-bred townsman,” to whom most of the text appears to be addressed.
[The nagaraka] must bathe every day, have a massage every two days, soap himself every three days. Every four days, he must trim his beard and moustache, on the fifth or tenth day shave his pubic hair and armpits and, always, scent himself to disguise the smell of sweat from the armpits and be pleasant to contact.
The Famous Second Book
Book 2 is a lot more technical and famous for it. It begins by classifying men and women into animal types according to size, endurance, and temperament:
According to the size of his sexual organ, a man is called a hare, bull, or stallion. The woman, according to type, is called doe, mare, and cow-elephant. Those that are matched form three balanced pairs.
This is followed by chapters on embraces, caresses, scratching, biting, oral sex, and more. To master the more acrobatic sexual positions, water immersion is recommended: “Many amusing positions can be practiced in this way since they are easier.”
Male and female homosexuality are discussed in terms of a third gender. Other variant practices include role inversion, transvestism, sadomasochism, and group sex.
The Lesser-Known Books
Book 3 is about how to obtain, treat, and cajole a virgin bride. There is surprisingly little discussion of caste. It is said only that “one should play, marry, associate with one’s equals, people of one’s own circle.” Wealth, which is by far the more important consideration, should be evenly matched because “whoever marries someone richer becomes inferior in the home.”
The behavior of the wife, detailed in Book 4, is complicated by the politics of the harem and her position within it. For the only wife, things are a lot simpler: “The only wife is totally trusting, considering her husband like a god and completely devoted to him.” On the bright side, widows can remarry, and there is no mention of sati (the rare practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband’s funeral pyre). The text lays out the advantages of having just one wife.
Book 5 discusses sex with other men’s wives, which, in general, is not to be recommended. Still, there is an entire chapter on the task of the go-between.
Book 6 addresses courtesans: which men to go for, how to get them, how to behave with them, how to squeeze them for money, and how to get rid of them if they no longer have any.
If all else fails, the final book sets out magical and medicinal formulas for manipulating recalcitrant lovers and enhancing sexual prowess.
The History of the Kama Sutra in the West
Those with rosy retrospection of free speech should know that it was not until 1962 that the Kama Sutra could be published in the UK and U.S.
In the UK, prosecutions brought about by the Society of the Suppression of Vice resulted in several publishers being imprisoned. Books that fell afoul of the Obscene Publications Act 1857 could only be circulated privately among the members of a society. For this reason, the traveler and author Sir Richard Francis Burton (d. 1890) founded the “Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares” to bring out the first English translation of the Kama Sutra—a joint effort that bore the name of Richard Burton. Though heavily sanitized, with, for example, the sexual organs abstractly referred to as lingam and yoni, it soon became one of the most pirated books in the English language.
Today, pornography is ubiquitous, but in a time when it could hardly be found, it is the chapter on sexual positions that excited the most interest. In the 1990s, the chapter on sexual positions from the 1980 Sinha translation began circulating on the Internet, and to this day, many people think of the Kama Sutra as no more than a sex manual.
But as Vatsyayana warned, making love without theory is like being an illiterate priest, and who would want to get with that?
Read more in Indian Mythology and Philosophy.
References
Kama Sutra 1.3.3-4.
Kama Sutra 1.4.6.
Kama Sutra 2.1.1-2.
