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Key points
- The Kama Sutra is rooted in the Vedas.
- In the Vedas, pleasure, or kama, is one of the three aims of human life.
- It is in lovemaking that kama finds its paroxysm.
In the West, the Kama Sutra is known as a book on contortionist sexual positions, or even, erroneously, as a manual for tantric sex.
But it is, in fact, much broader in scope, being the principal and earliest surviving text on the third of the Hindu aims of human life.
The Purusharthas
The older layers of the Vedas repeatedly refer to the three aims of human life, or purusharthas:
- Dharma (law, or moral order)
- Artha (prosperity), and
- Kama (pleasure).
Later, a fourth purushartha, moksha (spiritual liberation), is added to the triad, or trivarga, of dharma, artha, and kama.
Should the purusharthas come into conflict, dharma ought to prevail over artha and kama. Even the Kama Sutra is clear about this.
Artha is important not only in itself, but also in supporting dharma and kama. In times of poverty and insecurity, it becomes harder to abide by dharma, or revel in kama, which is, in that much, the flowering of human life.
The principal surviving text on artha is the Arthashastra (fourth century BCE). The principal surviving text on dharma is the Laws of Manu (first century CE). The Laws of Manu and Arthashastra might be considered the counterparts of the Kama Sutra (third century CE).
Kama Defined
Although I briefly defined kama as “pleasure,” the concept is broader than that, and more nuanced, with connotations of desire, emotional attraction, sensuality, aesthetic appreciation, and savoir vivre.
The Kama Sutra itself defines kama as “the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses … assisted by the mind together with the soul.”
The ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of sense and its object, and the consciousness of pleasure which arises from that contact is Kama.
If kama is mind-sense enjoyment, it is in lovemaking that it finds its paroxysm, a state so heightened and divine as to be the source of life and creation.
Kama as a God
Already in the Rig Veda, desire is the germ of spirit, “the connexion of the existent with the non-existent.”
By the time of the Atharvaveda (1200-900 BCE), Kama has become a god, mentioned in the same breath as Indra, Agni, and Varuna. The Atharvaveda contains a hymn entitled: “A Glorification of Kama as God of Desire of All that is Good.”
Like Eros and Cupid, Kama came to be portrayed as flying about shooting arrows of desire. His mount is a parrot, his bow is made of sugarcane, and his arrows are tipped with one of five flowers, each one symbolizing a form of desire.
With the world threatened by the demon Taraka, invincible to all but a son of Shiva, Parvati and the other gods sent Kama as a last resort to draw Shiva out of his monkish meditation.
But when Kama fired his arrow, Shiva opened his third eye and burnt him to cinders, leaving the world barren and infertile.
Having been pierced by the arrow, Shiva married Parvati. He later reconstituted Kama, but only as a mental image—which is how true love came to be of the mind.
Holi, the festival of colours, love, and spring, celebrates, among others, the return of Kama into the world.
Kama in the Kama Sutra
From the outset, the Kama Sutra acknowledges its Vedic heritage, naming a Vedic character, Shvetaketu, as the first human author of a kamashastra (textbook of kama).
Kama is a capacity or art and, like every art or capacity, requires cultivation:
Making love without theory is like being an illiterate priest, with no knowledge of grammar, who still pours the offerings into the sacred fire.
Since life is short, every opportunity is to be seized upon: “A pigeon to eat is better than a peacock in the sky.” The Sanskrit for masturbation is simhakranta, “to seize the lion.” Desire is not dirty, pleasure not shameful—so long as the intention is pure.
Inevitably, the wiser we become, the more pleasure we take, and are able to take, even if we would rather call it something else, like tranquillity or joy.
Kama-inspired motifs are common on mediaeval Hindu temples, such as the Kandariya Mahadeva temple at Khajuraho (pictured), suggesting that the prudishness of modern Indians, or at least, middle class Indians, is born out of Islamic and British sensitivities.
According to lore, erotic carvings protected temples from lightning—but not, unfortunately, from the depredations of puritans, and it is on account of their remoteness that those at Khajuraho have survived.
Because the debates on the existence of the individual soul (Atma) have little practical bearing, the outlook on desire is probably the most important point of difference between Hinduism and Buddhism.
According to the Kama Sutra, the man accomplished in dharma, artha, and kama “effortlessly attains the maximum of bliss in this world and the next.”
As for the fourth purushartha, moksha, it is mentioned only twice in the Kama Sutra, and one of those times in the context of getting rid of an unwanted lover.
Read more in Indian Mythology and Philosophy.
References
Kama Sutra 1.2.11.
Rig Veda 10.129.
Atharvaveda 9.2.
Kama Sutra 1.3.7.
Kama Sutra 1.2.39.
