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Mallanaga Vatsyayana - Kamasutra (Oxford World’s Classics)

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When the wheel of sexual ecstasy is in full motion, there is no textbook at all, and no order.The Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love. It is about the art of living - about finding a partner, maintaining power in a marriage, committing adultery, living as or with a courtesan, using drugs - and also about the positions in sexual intercourse. It was composed in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India, sometime in the third century CE. It combines an encyclopaedic coverage of all imaginable aspects of sex with a closely observed sexualpsychology and a dramatic, novelistic narrative of seduction, consummation, and disentanglement. Best known in English through the highly mannered, padded, and inaccurate nineteenth-century translation of Sir Richard Burton, the text is presented here in an entirely new translation into clear, vivid, sexually frankEnglish, together with three commentaries: translated excerpts from the earliest and most famous Sanskrit commentary (13th century) and from a twentieth-century Hindi commentary, and explanatory notes by the two translators.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxfords commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

KAMASUTRA

THE Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love. It was composed in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India, probably in North India and probably sometime in the third century of the common era, most likely in its second half, at the dawn of the Gupta Empire. Virtually nothing is known about the author, Vatsyayana Mallanaga, other than his name and what we learn from this text.

WENDY DONIGER (OFLAHERTY) is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and the author of translations of Sanskrit texts, including the Rig Veda (1981) and the Laws of Manu (1991), as well as books about IndiaSplitting the Difference: Gender and Myth in Ancient Greece and India (1988)about mythOther Peoples Myths: The Cave of Echoes (1984)and about sexSiva: The Erotic Ascetic (1973) and The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade (2000).

SUDHIR KAKAR is a psychoanalyst and currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. He is the author of many books on India that cover a wide spectrum from Hindu childhood to Indias healing traditions, from male-female relations to Hindu-Muslim violence, from classical love tales to modern mysticism. His most recent books are The Ascetic of Desire (1999), a fictionalized account of the life of Vatsyayana, the author of the Kamasutra, and the the novel Ecstasy (2001).

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Refer to the to navigate through the material in this Oxford Worlds Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes.

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

Picture 1

VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

Kamasutra

A new, complete English translation of the
Sanskrit text

with excerpts from the
Sanskrit
Jayamangala commentary of
Yashodhara Indrapada,
the Hindi
Jaya commentary of
Devadatta Shastri,
and explanatory notes by the translators

Kamasutra Oxford Worlds Classics - image 2

Translated and edited by
WENDY DONIGER and SUDHIR KAKAR

Kamasutra Oxford Worlds Classics - image 3

Kamasutra Oxford Worlds Classics - image 4

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

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It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar 2002

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published as an Oxford Worlds Classics paperback 2003
Reissued 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Data available

ISBN 9780199539161

Typeset in Ehrhardt
by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

For Katha and Kali

CONTENTS

with excerpts from Yashodharas commentary, the Jayamangala

INTRODUCTION
I. THE TEXT
The Text and its Author(s)

The Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love. It is not, as most people think, a book about the positions in sexual intercourse. It is a book about the art of livingabout finding a partner, maintaining power in a marriage, committing adultery, living as or with a courtesan, using drugsand also about the positions in sexual intercourse. The two words in its title mean desire/love/pleasure/sex (kama) and a treatise (sutra).

Virtually nothing is known about the author, Vatsyayana Mallanaga, other than his name and what we learn from this text; and all that he tells us is that he composed it in chastity and in the highest meditation [7.2.57], about which we may conclude, as he himself remarks about someone elses claim of virtue [5.4.15], that it may or may not have happened. But Vatsyayana tells us something important about his text, namely, that it is a distillation of the works of a number of authors who preceded him, authors whose texts have not come down to us: Auddalaki, Babhravya, Charayana, Dattaka, Ghotakamukha, Gonardiya, Gonikaputra, and Suvarnanabha. These other authors, called teachers or scholars, supply what Indian logic called the other side (literally, the former wing, purvapaksha), the arguments that opponents might raise. In this case, they are former in both the logical and chronological sense of the word; Vatsyayana cites them often, sometimes in agreement, sometimes in disagreement. Always his own voice comes through, as he acts as ringmaster over the many acts that he incorporates in his sexual circus. The Kamasutra was therefore certainly not the first of its genre, nor was it the last. The many textbooks of eroticism that follow it, such as Kokkakas Ratirahasya (also called the Kokashastra, pre-thirteenth century) and Kalyanamallas Anangaranga (fifteenth century), cite it as a foundational authority. The Nagarasarvasva of Bhikshu Padamashri and the Panchasayaka of Jyotirishvara (eleventh to thirteenth century) explicitly base themselves on the Kamasutra, the first on Books Two, Five, and Seven, and the second on Books Two, Three, Five, and Seven. The Kamasutra also made a deep impact on Indian literature; its vocabulary and taxonomies were diffused into later Sanskrit erotic poetry.

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