The Erotic “World” of the Kamasutra

Daud Ali
University of Pennsylvania, USA

The Kamasutra (Kāmasūtra) of Vatsyayana (Vātsyāyana Mallanāga) is an ancient Indian

treatise in Sanskrit on the proper enjoyment of sexual pleasures. It is the earliest and most
well-known text of the wider genre of writing in India known as kamashastra (kāmaśāstra),
or “the science of erotics.” The text is divided into seven “books” (adhikaran.as), each
comprised of multiple chapters (adhyāyas) and topics (prakaran.as) of varying length, and
is written in an aphoristic prose style known as sūtra, supplemented with occasional
verse-quotations. Though Vatsyayana places himself at the end of a substantial scholarly
tradition on the subject, the Kamasutra remains the only surviving work in the field of
kamashastra before the ninth century, though treatises on various aspects of erotics became
abundant in later times. The extant text of the Kamasutra comes with an important
̇
thirteenth-century commentary in Sanskrit, called the Jayamangala (Jayamangalā), written
by one Yasodhara (Yaśodhara).
The Kamasutra bears a resemblance in both style and overall structure to Kaut.ilya’s
famous manual on polity, the Arthashastra (Arthaśāstra), a text that Vatsyayana openly cites
in his first book (Wilhelm 1966; Trautmann 1971; Doniger 2016). The Arthashastra, whose
precise date may not be established with certainty and is the cause of extended scholarly
discussion, has generally been placed in the second or third century ce. It may thus be
surmised that Vatsyayana’s work, which seems unaware of the powerful Gupta dynasty
(c. 300–500 ce) that rose to power in the fourth century ce, should be placed sometime
in the latter half of the third century or the first decades of the fourth. Beyond this broad
ascription, nothing certain can be said of the date of the text’s composition nor its author
and his life.
A Companion to World Literature. Edited by Ken Seigneurie.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118635193.ctwl0051
2 Erotics and Politics of Love

Translation and Interpretation

The first translation of the Kamasutra into a European language, completed under the direc-
tion of the celebrated Orientalists Sir Richard Burton and Foster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot
(but probably actually translated by learned Indian pandits), appeared, along with another
kamashastra text known as the Anangaranga (Anangara ̇ ̇
nga), in the 1880s for private circu-
lation under the auspices of the “Hindoo Kama Shastra Society.”1 In the prefaces to these
texts, Burton and Arbuthnot made a passionate defense of their publication. In doing so
they inaugurated two distinct and enduring interpretive paradigms for texts like the Kama-
sutra. They presented Sanskrit erotic texts as an enlightened alternative to the antinomies of
Victorian morality and compared them to the controversial scientific manuals on domestic
science, female physiology, and sexual life that were being published in nineteenth-century
England by medical doctors (Arbuthnot and Burton 1883, 6).2 Moreover, they felt that
such texts could, as ethnographic documents, afford considerable advancement to the newly
emergent science of human sexual behavior. Burton and Arbuthnot sought to contribute to
the growing Orientalist interest in the sexual habits of the East (Grant 2005). These two
visions of the text – as a treatise recording the sexual habits of an Oriental society, and a
manual with an unfettered humanistic vision of sexuality – have cast a long shadow upon
subsequent interpretations of the Kamasutra.
Within a decade of Burton and Arbuthnot’s translation, the first printed editions of the
Sanskrit texts of both the Kamasutra and Anangaranga were published and became widely
known in scholarly and intellectual circles. The Kamasutra was soon deemed to be the ear-
liest and most authoritative text on Indian erotics, overshadowing the far more prevalent
and widely available treatises on the subject composed in the medieval period. Orientalists
and nationalist scholars took special interest in the text in their initial forays into ancient
Indian social history, where the subjects of sexual mores, marriage customs, and female
“libidinal” types were of special interest.3 The pronounced attention to women drew such
scholarship into the heated debates occuring in nationalist circles from the 1930s around
the “status of women” in Hindu civilization (Chakladar 1929). Among the most notable of
the earlier studies on sexual life in ancient India was Richard Schmidt’s Beiträge zur Indischen
Erotik (1911), which provided the first and to date most comprehensive survey of the genre
of kamashastra, beginning with Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra, but including many later works,
followed by a topical survey of key subjects of the śāstra with relevant quotations from indi-
vidual works. Such “scientific” and “ethnological” approaches to the Kamasutra remained a
common leitmotif in the circulation of later translations, which were often accompanied by
warnings stating that the translation was to be consulted by ethnologists, psychologists,
doctors, and others doing scientific work. But beginning in the 1970s, the text was also
increasingly presented, somewhat contradictorily, as a humanistic, quasi-scientific manual
on sex with a salacious “oriental” flourish. Indeed, the text was invoked by the famous Joy
of Sex, written by Alex Comfort, in 1972.
The Kamasutra continues to be one of the most translated books from Sanskrit literature.
Soon after its initial publication by the “Hindoo Kama Shastra Society,” French (Lamairesse
1891) and German (Schmidt 1897) translations appeared. Numerous renditions of the text
were prepared in European languages throughout the twentieth century. Among English
translations, and despite several important contributions made by Indian authors over the
 The Erotic “World” of the Kamasutra 3

years (notable are Iyengar 1921, Bose 1944, and Upadhyaya 1961), Burton and Arbuth-
not’s text has continued to be the most cited and commonly available, although it has
recently been superseded by the much more careful work of Doniger and Kakar (2002).
Many translators have relied heavily on Yasodhara’s Jayamangala to interpret difficult and
ambiguous passages and terms from the Kamasutra, and have often incorporated his glosses
into their translations as Vatsyayana’s own words. Schmidt (1897) and Doniger and Kakar
(2002) are notable among translators who have resisted the temptation and clearly distin-
guish between Vatsyayana and his commentator (with Schmidt providing a translation of
both), making these publications preferred for scholarly use.
Since the 1960s, understanding of the Kamasutra has been greatly enriched by the publi-
cation, translation, and study of later works in the genre of kamashastra (see Comfort 1964;
Shastri 1967; Zysk 2002; Mylius 2009; Ali 2011), surveys of kamashastra as a whole (De
1969; Bhattacharyya 1975; Wojtilla 1998), and studies focusing on the relations of the sci-
ence of erotics to other fields like aesthetics (Hampiholi 1988), medicine (Das 2003), and
social history (Roy 1998, 1999; Ali 2004). Moreover, the publication of Michel Foucault’s
History of Sexuality (Foucault 1980) criticizing the humanistic foundations of sexual science,
and his perhaps hasty characterization of Indian erotics as an ars amatoria, has prompted
some theoretical discussion of Vatsyayana’s epistemology and its relation to precolonial
ethics (Desmond 2011; Gautam 2016).

Structure, Composition, and Contents

The first book of the Kamasutra, entitled “Generalities,” provides an introduction and the-
oretical foundation for the books that follow. It begins with a brief résumé of previous
writers on the topic of kama (kāma), placing its author, Vatsyayana, at the end of a long line
of authors who were the expositors of an original treatise on the three topics of worldly life
(dharma, kama, and artha) by Prajapati (Prajāpati), the Creator. While the earlier authors
in this genealogy are probably legendary, a number of the later authorities were no doubt
historical authors whose works are now lost. They were, however, available to Vatsyayana,
who mentions several of them in relation to the particular books of his work, often by
way of disagreement (Agrawala 1983). To what extent these authorities were relied upon
more generally by Vatsyayana is not entirely clear. Trautmann (1971, 169–173), using
statistical prose analysis, has suggested that books 1, 3, 4, and 5, all exhibiting a strong
similarity in style, indicate a strong editorial hand on the part of Vatsyayana, while books
2, 6, and 7 (on sex, courtesans, and estorica) seem to have been incorporated by Vatsyayana
with little editorial interference. It is clear from the Kamasutra, both explicitly and by
dint of Trautmann’s analysis, that several learned authorities on the topic of erotic plea-
sure were available, perhaps in different states of preservation and integrity, at the time of
Vatsyayana’s life. These authorities, along with others seemingly unknown to Vatsyayana,
are cited by later, medieval kamashastra authors, giving the impression of a substantial
field of knowledge comprised of multiple teaching traditions, and drawing extensively on
knowledge preserved in diverse scientific traditions in Sanskrit, only a portion of which is
available to us today.
4 Erotics and Politics of Love

After this intellectual geneaology, Vatsyayana provides a brief topical survey of his own
work. This is followed by his definition of pleasure and an epistemological justification for
the study of erotics. Kama, or “pleasure,” in general, according to Vatsyayana, consisted
of the engagement of the sense organs (ear, skin, eye, tongue, and nose) with their appro-
priate sense objects while being overseen by the mind and superintended by the soul, and
more particularly, was an experience permeated by arousal arising from the sensation of
touch. Central to this understanding was not simply that sexual pleasure was connected
to a more general theory of sensual pleasure incorporating all the senses, but that pleasure
itself was conceived as a hierarchical interaction between elements of the self under certain
conditions. Once the senses were engaged, pleasure was most centrally experienced by the
“internal organ” denoted by the Sanskrit term manas (usually rendered as “mind” or “heart”
in English), leading to the well-known synonym in Sanskrit for kama as “mind-born” (man-
asija). The relationship between the mind and the sense organs was supposed to be one of
mastery, and the proper enjoyment of pleasure thus involved a kind of conquest and control
of the senses – not the out-and-out supression of the senses but their careful control. This
enjoyment, supported by Vatsyayana’s teaching, is consistently cast in opposition to the
enslavement of the mind to the senses, which posed numerous dangers to the protagonists
of the Kamasutra and was seen to be highly undesirable.
Vatsyayana places the knowledge of kama within a value system that had been established
in the last centuries before the Common Era around the Vedic householder’s life, known as
the trivarga, or “threefold path,” comprised of the spheres of righteousness (dharma), gain
(artha), and pleasure (kama) – each of which was the subject of a theoretical knowledge, or
shastra. Vatsyayana argues that unlike the other spheres of human effort, kama was a field
of knowledge that was open to women, and he details various ways that a young maiden
could learn about the subject from more experienced females. Yet, despite this gesture
(and the subsequent treatment of courtesans in book 6), the Kamasutra is decidedly ori-
ented toward the viewpoint of a male protagonist, known in the opening chapters as the
nāgaraka. The figure of the nāgaraka, denoting literally a “city dweller,” but also connoting
urbanity and sophistication, was to have as his most important qualification some form of
disposable wealth. According to Vatsyayana he was to set up his residence in a city and
divide his house into inner and outer chambers. Vatsyayana describes the outer quarters
of the nāgaraka’s house in some detail – it was furnished with couches, cushions, musi-
cal instruments, books, a spitoon, bird-cages, and an attached garden. It is in the outer
chambers of the house that the nāgaraka was to meet his friends, agents, and potential sex-
ual partners. His wife and family resided in the inner quarters of the residence. Elsewhere
Vatsyayana makes clear what this description implies, that for the nāgaraka sexual pleasure
was conceptually (and spatially) separate from conjugality. Vatsyayana then presents the
daily routine of the nāgaraka in some detail, emphasizing personal hygiene, bodily care,
and refined sociability. The nāgaraka’s social circles included not only other men considered
to be his equals, but a coterie of men of birth who served as his attendants, advising and
accompanying him in his quest for pleasure. He was to spend his afternoons and evenings
enjoying various entertainments, including animal fights, garden outings, games of vari-
ous sorts, and conversation with such men and, of course, eligible women invited into his
circle. The heightened sociability of these interactions was the hallmark of the nāgaraka
and his lifestyle, and was deemed a necessary and integral part of proper erotic enjoyment.
 The Erotic “World” of the Kamasutra 5

In fact, Vatsyayana recommends a list of some 64 allied “arts” – ranging from skills in
carpentry, singing, and making drinks, to poetry, meter, and astronomy. The ideal lover
was a man of many talents.
The final chapter of the first book treats the types of women that the nāgaraka could
enjoy – an important classification because later books of the treatise focus on these cate-
gories of women in extenso. Here the Kamasutra introduces a new vocabulary for lovers – that
of male and female protagonist, denoted by the terms nāyaka and nāyikā, respectively.
While the nāgaraka is identified with a single type of nāyaka in this chapter, female lovers
(nāyikā) could be of various types, and Vatsyayana’s discussion seeks to distinguish the num-
ber of types of women that a nāgaraka, as nāyaka, could enjoy. According to Vatsyayana,
sexual pleasure with a virgin of the same social class for the purpose of sons increased one’s
reputation and was recommended by the lawbooks, while sexual pleasure with women
of either a higher class or married to another man was forbidden. Sexual relations with
non-virgins unattached to other men, to courtesans, and to women of the lower classes was
neither enjoined nor forbidden by the lawbooks, making pleasure the only purpose of such
liaisons. Vatsyayana goes on to discuss precisely how many types of nāyikās could be dis-
tinguished from this list of female types. Vatsyayana’s patriarchal perspective here deftly
affirms the preeminence of conjugality while at the same time noting that a man’s sexual
pleasure was in no sense bounded by marriage, elaborating categories of women that he
could resort to for pleasure alone without censure. Vatsyayana ends with a list of scenarios
(not all of which involved sexual desire) when a man might decide to attempt to pursue a
woman attached to another man, a topic he will return to later in the work.
The second book of the Kamasutra is the only one of the seven that is concerned with
the sexual act itself. It begins by dividing men and women (nāyakas and nāyikās) into
sexual types based on genital size – named famously after animals – and then, factor-
ing in endurance and temperament, discusses the relative compatability of their different
combinations. In connection with this Vatsyayana raises what seems to have been a mat-
ter of debate among writers on the subject – precisely how women gain pleasure from
sex and the nature of female orgasm. The quotations adduced by Vatsyayana, as well as
his own opinion on the matter, suggest the belief that female orgasm involved an emis-
sion – of what Vatsyayana’s commentator understands to be “female semen,” a fluid that
was thought to be required for conception. Subsequent chapters in the second book treat a
variety of subjects like embracing, kissing, nail-scratching, biting, slapping, and positions
in intercourse, as well as oral sex. The emphasis for the most part is in enumerating lists of
techniques – named either after the manner of their execution, or, in the case of biting and
scratching, the shape of the marks they left on the body (which were thought to be highly
stimulating to lovers). The chapter on oral sex – a practice generally frowned upon but not
forbidden – contains a description of the “third gender” (tritı̄yaprakr.ti), a catch-all term
for same-sex and transgender roles, who Vatsyayana and others associate with the practice.
The third book advises a man how to acquire and court a virgin for marriage. The ideal
scenario, with which Vatsyayana begins, involves a man of means as well as a woman of the
same social class with attractive features including wealth, beauty, and education. In such a
scenario, the man was to court the woman through the agency of their families and friends.
Vatsyayana advises the man to avoid women with certain physical characteristics which
were thought to be portents of misfortune (a long-standing tradition in early India known
6 Erotics and Politics of Love

from other texts). After choosing the most desirable bride and being approved by her family
over other suitors, they were to marry according to the rules of the lawbooks. Once married,
the couple were to sleep separately on the ground for three nights, after which the man
was to gradually gain the woman’s “confidence” (viśrambhan.a) through various strategies
of affection, tenderness, and care before gradually introducing her to sex. This approach
secured the wife’s attachment and loyalty in the marriage, according to Vatsyayana. He then
sets out other scenarios in which the male suitor, not being able to attain a virgin through
the normal means because of some disablity, must resort to other strategies for winning a
woman’s affection, ranging from courtship from childhood to seduction, elopement, and
even abduction.
The fourth book of the Kamasutra, on the conduct of wives is, perhaps significantly, its
shortest. It begins with the “only wife” – suggesting ways for her to keep her husband
happy and prevent him from taking a second wife. Later chapters take up the house-
hold with multiple wives. Polygamy and concubinage in large powerful households were
acknowledged as a matter of course in legal treatises, and the compulsions of economic and
political alliance, the capture and exchange of women in war, and the availability of women
in the service retinues of ranking queens – all contributed to a complex sexual environment
within the households of the men of power, particularly the king – a subject thematized
in contemporary literary sources (Ali 2006). Vatsyayana discusses the conduct and strate-
gies of co-wives, beginning with senior and junior wives, who were to treat each other as
“younger sister” and “mother,” respectively, followed by brief treatments of concubines and
unfavored wives. All of these women are assumed to be resident in the women’s quarters of
the palace, denoted by the Sanskrit term antah.puram. Vatsyayana describes the daily proto-
col of the king with respect to the women of the antah.puram – rituals highly reminiscent of
court procedures. According to Vatsyayana, each day he was to receive “gifts” of garlands,
scented oils, and clothes from the women, which he was to return to them while meeting
each woman individually and showing her honor appropriate to her rank. Periods of fertil-
ity and menses for each woman were tracked and a roster maintained for selecting which
woman the king would sleep with on any given night.
The fifth book deals with the avowedly controversial topic of “Other Men’s Wives.”
Though dismissing such liaisons in the first book, Vatsyayana here explains that when the
life and wellbeing of the nāgaraka were in danger as a result of an incurable love-sickness
toward another man’s wife, such relations could be pursued – carefully. The approach was
to be indirect and strategic, particularly of women in households of equal or greater sta-
tus. Vatsyayana suggests that the nāgaraka first consider the reasons a woman might be
inclined or disinclined to his advances before developing a plan. Also important was judg-
ing the receptiveness of a woman and testing her feelings during the process of seduction.
Crucial for the nāgaraka was the use of a female messenger as go-between, particularly for
married women of established households. While the seduction of women from families of
presumably equal status formed one context for Vatsyayana’s discussion, sex with women
of inferior social status – women in villages and women of menial households – is also
discussed. While recognizing that women of these backgrounds could be taken almost at
will by the king and his men, Vatsyayana cautions against entering the households of such
women, for this would set a bad example for others in a kingdom. His concern here, as
throughout, is not with the violation of conjugal fidelity or the consent of the woman
 The Erotic “World” of the Kamasutra 7

in question, but the trespass of patriarchal privilege, and the dangers it could involve.
Entering the house of another man even of inferior social status could expose the king to
unnecessary risk. The idea was rather to orchestrate through various strategies the entry of
the desired woman into the royal household either as a guest or slave, where she could be
seduced through different methods. In the final chapter of the book Vatsyayana turns to
the sexual mores of women residing in the antah.puram, who, he notes, were often sexually
unsatisfied by their single husband. Such women could resort to the use of sexual instru-
ments to please themselves, have sex with one another, or assist the clandestine entry of
men into their quarters. Once again, Vatsyayana emphatically advises against any attempt
on the part of the nāgaraka to enter the antah.puram as potentially disastrous for his well-
being, but at the same time provides strategic advice for those who would throw caution
to the wind.
The sixth book of the Kamasutra concerns prostitutes. Unlike other portions of Vat-
syayana’s text, which only very occasionally present a female perspective, this book, at least
on the face of it, is devoted entirely to a female point of view. Though Vatsyayana recognizes
different types of prostitutes, his advice seems primarily directed to women moving in the
circles of the wealthy and affluent, women who may be understood as “courtesans” – for
whom the knowledge of the greater “arts” of pleasure (discussed above) was a necessity. It
instructs such a woman how to select, approach, and win over a suitable man who will sup-
port her generously. A notable feature of Vatsyayana’s counsel is his conceptualization of her
relationship with her would-be patron as an elaborate, feigned courtship. Through fastidi-
ous and unflinching pretense, the courtesan was to elicit greater and greater affection (and
wealth) from her customer, cast as a suitor, by strategies like revealing her affection toward
him only gradually, thus heightening his desire and pliability. Once he was attained, she
was to behave like a faithful wife or concubine. Vatsyayana provides a plethora of strategies
that the courtesan could use to simulate courtship and attachment, including the presence
of a “mother” (real or pretended) who was to feign dislike for the suitor, propelling the cour-
tesan further into his arms. The goal of all such dissemblance was to achieve the patron’s
undivided devotion, and, of course, the gifts and supports that went with it. Numerous
methods of extracting money from her lover are set out by Vatsyayana, who also advises
the courtesan on when and how to divest herself of a client once his affection waned or his
funds dried up. Vatsyayana’s advice to courtesans provides us with a vivid dose of sexual
Realpolitik.
The final book of the Kamasutra is entitled “Esoterica.” Here Vatsyayana presents “se-
cret” methods for those, who, for various reasons, were unable to follow the policy laid out
in previous chapters. For while “beauty, good qualities, age and generosity effect success [in
love], an ointment made of the leaves of the East Indian rose bay, wild ginger and the Indian
plum also effects success [in love].” The chapters of this book provide a variety of “covert”
and supplementary methods – mostly potions, ointments, and spells – some of which may
be traced back to the age-old tradition of the Atharvaveda while others seem to proceed from
more obscure and uncertain origins. They are concerned with familiar “themes” or topoi: suc-
cess in love, influencing others, creating virility, rekindling exhausted passion, increasing
penis size, ensuring fidelity, and controlling uncompliant lovers. Though these recipes are
explicitly conceived of as what might be termed “para-technologies” – alternative methods
8 Erotics and Politics of Love

to be resorted to when the normal course of advice could no longer be followed – they nev-
ertheless formed a consistent and increasingly important part of later kamashastra manuals.
Vatsyayana concludes the text with a series of verses reminding the reader of the overall
purpose of the work and emphasizing the practice and intentions of the author. He claims
to have composed it only after consulting previous treatises on the subject and having done
so while both celibate and in a meditative state, for the sake of a “worldly life.” A man who
follows its teachings, while at the same time pursuing the other worldly goals (dharma and
artha), obtains success in the world and truly conquers his senses.

The World of the Kamasutra and Its Legacy

The first book of the Kamasutra, often neglected in favor of the treatment of sex in book 2,
provides key information on social and historical context, for it sets out the qualifications
and social parameters of the ideal subject of Vatsyayana’s teaching, the nāgaraka. Despite its
apparently humanistic rhetoric, the Kamasutra is emphatically clear that its teaching was
directed to men (and to a lesser extent women) of both wealth and birth. The Kamasutra’s
notion of sex is neither biologically grounded nor presumed to be a form of universal human
self-fulfillment. It was a fundamentally social pursuit, and conceived of as a carefully cul-
tivated avocation. Its skillful pursuit was a matter of distinction among the high-ranking
men of the court and city, who were routinely compared in their public encomia to the
very god of love, Kamadeva (Kāmadeva) himself, with respect to their beauty and sexual
prowess.
Erotic pursuits in the Kamasutra are placed against a capaciously defined notion of enjoy-
ment, best exemplified in the text’s list of 64 allied “arts” to be cultivated by the protag-
onists of love. These arts – including everything from poetry to material and sumptuary
refinements – were to be enjoyed in garden expeditions, salon-like gatherings in the house-
holds of the nobility, or in the courtesans’ quarter of the city, and to a certain extent,
no doubt, at royal assemblies themselves. They linked the world of the nāgaraka to an
emergent cosmopolitan and courtly culture that crystallized during the Gupta period and
remained a stable cultural figuration for over a millennium (Pollock 1996; Ali 2004). So
enduring was this image of the nāgaraka, the focal point of the Kamasutra, that over a thou-
sand years later an aphorism from a fourteenth-century manual on erotics still defines him
in similar terms: “The six qualities of the nāgaraka are thought to be fashionable attire,
wisdom, purity, wealth, singing, and being accomplished in clever conversation.”4
The Kamasutra shares an extensive vocabulary with contemporary Sanskrit art literature
̇
(kāvya) and manuals on poetics (alankāraśāstra). If the Kamasutra recommended its pro-
tagonists master the arts of poetry and drama, then the manuals on poetics demanded the
poet’s familiarity with the science of erotics (Ali 2004). Erotic love was the preferred theme
of kāvya, and was an indispensible element of the courtly elite’s image of itself. Indeed,
there is a deep and rich imbrication between the science of erotics and courtly literature.
Both traditions shared the conceptualization of lovers as divided into types of male and
female lovers, or nāyakas and nāyikās, and it would seem thus that the nāyakas and nāyikās
who formed the leading characters of Sanskrit poems and plays were precisely those lovers,
redescribed, that formed the subjects of the science of pleasure.
 The Erotic “World” of the Kamasutra 9

Several genres of Sanskrit courtly literature whose earliest examples date between the
fourth and seventh centuries seem to evoke contexts set out in the later books of the Kama-
sutra, particularly books 4 through 6. Two notable examples are the nāt.ikā and the bhān.a
genres. In the former, a kind of palace drama, the king falls in love with what appears
to be a maiden from one of the queens’ retinues, provoking the jealousy of the king’s
wives, and ensuing romantic escapades, but all is resolved when the young girl’s identity
is revealed to be of noble birth and political advantage (in some cases her identity being
concealed through accident or the designs of the king’s wily chief minister). These dramas,
which include texts like Kalidasa’s (Kālidāsa) Malavikagnimitra (Mālavikāgnimitra), Bhasa’s
(Bhāsa) Svapnavasavadatta (Svapnavāsavadatta), and Harsa’s (Hars.a) Ratnavali (Ratnāvalı̄)
and Priyadarsika (Priyadarśikā), combine erotic and political fantasy but also reveal seri-
ous psychic and social anxieties that attended sexual relationships in noble households,
where the balance of affections between wives and concubines was a matter of both emo-
tion and power (see Goodwin 1998; Ali 2006). The bhān.a is a monologue play narrated
by a figure known as a vit.a, who Vatsyayana defines as a man of birth and culture reduced
to penury by the wiles of courtesans, and who remained fit only to act as an advisor for
the nāgaraka. In the bhān.a plays, the vit.a recalls in wry and witty tones the people he
encounters while strolling through the courtesans’ quarter of the royal city. Notable here
is the quartet of bhān.as known as the caturbhān.ı̄. In addition to the bhān.a plays, there are
substantial number of “courtesan kāvyas” – Damodaragupta’s Kuttanimata (Kut.t.anı̄mata),
Ksemendra’s (Ks.emendra) Samayamatrka (Samayamāt.rkā), and Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha
̇
(Śr.ngāramañjarı̄kathā) to name the most well known – that take the form of stories nar-
rated as advice to young courtesans. Musings on courtesans seem to have been an enduring
theme in Sanskrit courtly ethics more generally (Sternbach 1953).
If the “world” of the Kamasutra should be understood as connected to the elite urban
and courtly norms that emerged between the fourth and seventh centuries, it must also
be placed against the longue-durée evolution of erotic science itself in India. When Burton
and Arbuthnot “discovered” the tradition in the nineteenth century, they encountered not
the Kamasutra but a myriad of shorter treatises composed in the “medieval” period whose
prevalence suggest that they were the actual “bearers” of erotic science in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Placing Vatsyayana’s work against the larger history of these writings
has barely begun, but even cursory attempts reveal that the horizons of kamashastra clearly
shifted over the centuries. On the one hand kamashastra remained indellibly associated
with the courtly elite (even at Indo-Persian courts of the second millennium, where at
least one kamashastra text was comissioned). Yet the emphasis of the science gradually
shifted in several ways. Many later kamashastra texts invoke Vatsyayana’s authority, but
few reproduce the Kamasutra’s thematic structure and breadth. The great majority of later
treatises dispense with Vatsyayana’s section on general topics altogether, beginning instead
with the enumeration of male and female types, the foundation of the book on “sex” in the
Kamasutra. Likewise, few later kamashastra texts contain much material on courtesans. The
overwhelming thematic emphasis in these treatises seems to be on sex itself, beginning
with the discussion of types of lovers, but carrying on into the enumeration of styles and
types of kissing, biting, scratching, embracing and nail-marking, sexual positions, with
occasional chapters on wives, and often very substantial sections on esoterica.
10 Erotics and Politics of Love

Later kamashastra texts view the human body, particularly the female body, as a more
complex and variable entity, traversed by intricate webs of pleasure channels, subject to
the cycles of the moon, and bearing the marks and signs of the future – all of which tend
to make the sexual body a vast template for collective and individual interpretation and
manipulation through various “para-technologies” that exceeded the procedures of tradi-
tional courtship and romance. While such changes may be consistent with the growth
of new bodily, astronomical, and esoteric religious doctrines known as tantra that were
sometimes prevalent in elite and courtly contexts by the end of the first millennium, later
manuals also saw a growing emphasis on conjugality and procreation, particularly in texts
composed after 1500 (Zysk 2002). While these concerns, largely absent in the Kamasutra,
were rooted on the one hand in new religious developments and on the other in tradi-
tional anxieties around the maintenance of social boundaries and the reproduction of the
patriarchal household, it should be kept in mind that the older tradition of “independent”
nāyikās of the Kamasutra tradition never entirely died out. The broad aesthetic concerns
of the Kamasutra seem to have been absorbed and expanded by literary traditions in later
times, while its technical and esoteric elements were greatly invigorated and expanded
under the influence of new religious doctrines.

SEE ALSO: Reading Ancient World Literature, Passionately; Perspectives on Kalidasa’s Shakuntala; Intro-
duction to World Literature 601 to 1450; Gender and Representation; Patronage, Spoliation, and Forms
of Government; Orientalia; Richard Burton

Notes
1 Doniger and Kakar (2002, li). Also see Grant 3 See Schmidt (1904) and Meyer (1915) and for
(2005) on the Orientalist framing of the a much later work in this tradition, see Fišer
text. (1967).
2 On the texts cited, see McGrath (2002, 4 Minanatha, Smaradı̄pika 173, anthologized in
47ff.) Sastri (1967).

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Further Reading
Ali, Daud. 2011. “Rethinking the History of the of Love, translated by F.F. Arbuthnot and Richard
Kāma World in Early India.” Journal of Indian Burton. New York: Lancer.
Philosophy, 39 (1): 1–13. Shastri, Goswami Damodar, ed. 1929. Kāmasūtra of
Arbuthnot, F.F., and Richard Burton. (1885) 1964. Vātsyāyana. Benares: Jaikrishnadas and Haridas
“Preface.” In The Ananga Ranga or the Hindu Art Gupta.