Vatsyayana - The Kama Sutra

PENGUIN CLASSICS DELUXE EDITION

KAMA SUTRA

VATSYAYANA composed the Kama Sutra after careful study and consideration while observing a celibates life in full meditation. Very little else is known about him. His first name was perhaps Mallanaga and from his detailed descriptions of regional practices, we can surmise that he was from the Madyha Desha, the then cultural heartland of India. He lived nearly two thousand years ago and this work was the first of its kind anywhere in the world. Cited repeatedly in Indian literature, it became known outside that country just over a century ago and has been a byword for eroticism ever since.

ADITYA NARAYAN DHAIRYASHEEL HAKSAR is a well known translator of Sanskrit classics. He has also had a distinguished career as a diplomat, serving as Indian high commissioner to Kenya and the Seychelles, minister to the United States and ambassador to Portugal and Yugoslavia. His translations from the Sanskrit include The Shattered Thigh and Other Plays, Tales of the Ten Princes, Hitopadesa, Simhasana Dvatrimsika, Subhashitavali, and Three Satires from Ancient Kashmir, all published as Penguin Classics.

A GUIDE TO THE ART OF PLEASURE

a new translation by

A. N. D. HAKSAR

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First published in Great Britain by Penguin Classics 2011

Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2012

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Translation copyright A. N. D. Haksar, 2011

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Vatsyayana.

[Kamasutra. English]

Kama sutra: a guide to the art of pleasure / by Vatsyayana; a new

translation by A. N. D. Haskar.Penguin classics deluxe ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN: 978-1-101-65107-0

1. Love. 2. Sex. 3. Sex instruction. 4. Sex customs. 5. Vatsyayana. Kamasutra.

I. Haskar, A. N. D., 1933 II. Title.

HQ470.S3V31 2012

613.96dc23 2011043102

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P. M. S.

For
B.
with love

The Kama Sutra was written in India nearly two thousand years ago. It is barely more than a hundred years since it became known outside the country of its origin. Interest in it seems ageless. In India it has been cited century after century in other works, as well as influencing literature and art. In the wider world its celebrity, or notoriety, remains unaffected by the information explosion on its principal subject in our times.

Present Perceptions

The title has 183 listings in the online catalogue of the US Library of Congress. These include several books with the original text and commentary in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India. Much more numerous are translations into English and other languages such as French, German, Italian and Russian, not to mention those of South Asia like Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Telugu. There are also some scholarly studies of Indian history, literature and social life bearing on the work.

But more than half the titles in the Congressional list point to perspectives other than the academic. They range from Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra to Pocket Idiots Guide to the Kama Sutra, and from Kitchen Kama Sutra: 50 ways to seduce each other outside the bedroom to Pop-up Kama Sutra: 6 paper-engineered variations. The last entry is Kama Sutra 52: A years worth of best positions for passion and pleasure published in 2009.

The work seems to have two popular reputations in the West, according to a recent commentator from the United Kingdom. One as an exotic compendium of positions for human copulation and the other as a repository of Oriental erotic wisdom, the Ur-text of a profoundly spiritual tradition. Either way, he says, it has become a byword for sex itself. Also, one may add, a brand name for consumer marketing and advertisement, to go by the establishments and products which use its unpatented title.

This reputation also extends to modern India. Much of its vast population may yet be largely unaware of the work. But among many of its intellectual class the Kama Sutra is still held up as a proud example of that countrys alternative tradition of sexual morality.

An Ancient Assessment

The repute of the Kama Sutra and its author in ancient India, and its position in the knowledge system of the time, is perhaps put most simply in another well-known and possibly not much later work. This is the Panchatantra, a popular collection of animal and human fables still in wide circulation. In the prologue of its text a king, anxious to have his children well educated, is told: Majesty, it is heard that grammar takes twelve years. Then come Manu and other works on Dharma, Chanakya and those on Artha, and Vatsyayana and others on Kama. Thus are the sciences of Dharma, Artha and Kama learnt. Then does knowledge develop.

Four things seem clear from these references in a book which was meant for instruction as well as entertainment. First, general education at the time was seen broadly to comprise three main branches of knowledge after reading, writing and grammar. Second, each of these had come to be identified with the work of one particular authority. Third, Kama was one of the three branches and the name associated with it was that of Vatsyayana. Finally, though Kama may have had a wider connotation inclusive of other pursuits, its principal concern was with sex.

The Three Ends

It is fitting first to consider the wider context. It conceptualized a trinity of worldly pursuits or ends of human life, summed up in the words Dharma, Artha and Kama. Each has multiple meanings but, very broadly, Dharma is virtue and righteous conduct, Artha is wealth, power and material well-being and Kama is desire for and sensual pleasure of all kinds. There were areas, such as marriage, where they overlapped. But each was seen as a basic motivator and goal of normal human action as a whole, and worthy as such of study and regulation. A well-rounded education presumed some familiarity with this triad (