What is Kama Sutra?

Of all the treasures of learning that Europeans have acquired from the Far East, Kama Sutra is perhaps the best known, along with Yoga and Buddhism. Starting with the industrial revolution of the late 18th century and the advent of fashionable foreign traveling, Europe and Northern America have been flooded with art objects, ideas, values and philosophy from the Far East that changed, to a certain extent, our way of thinking.

Busy Westerners obsessed with living in the now are fascinated by the attitudes of people who are content to live each day as it comes and are not afraid of what the future holds.

When mentioning Kama Sutra, most people conjure up images of an exotic help book about sexual satisfaction or an ancient porn magazine. The real name of the book is actually “Vatsyayana’s Aphorisms on Love” (“Vatsyayana Kamasutram”) and is comprised of 36 chapters that make up the treaty.

The aim of this collection of aphorisms is to provide a comprehensive guide to sex, relationships with courtesans, courtship of married women, marriage and, finally, improving one’s chances to have good sex through the use of herbs, substances, spells and sex toys. As you can see, the purpose of this book was to become a definitive guide to what love and sex meant to the Indian society around the 4th century AD.

Aside from the section covering sex and love, the “Aphorisms on Love” is in fact an orthodox book, detailing the fashion of the society that spawned it. It teaches the aspiring lover what to do in order to get the woman he desires while still protecting both his and hers reputations and good names. Reputation was extremely important throughout the ancient world, and the person who forfeited his good name over such an insignificant thing as sex was considered to be frivolous, and unworthy of the esteem of others. Vatsyayana, a celibate scholar, believed that sex was not wrong in itself, but that engaging in it was certainly frivolous and sinful.

The 36 chapters are each written by an expert in their field covers a wide range of issues, such as observations on the daily life of a citizen, sexual positions, personal adornment, gaining the confidence of women through to how to correctly kiss and the means by which courtesans get money.

The best known part of the book, the study of sex and sexual positions, makes up only about 20 percent of the whole text. Nevertheless, those who are truly interested in sex should read the entire book. After numerous centuries the ancient theory is still surprisingly accurate because people still want the same basic things from one another.

As surprising as it sounds when it comes down to it the central tenants of the Kama Sutra are akin to Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, while the Indian book is much more careful to observe the morals of the time. Both books serve as guides to aspects of their respective societies and deal with them in a frank realistic manner.

The scholar Vatsyayana was not fooling himself when he wrote about men and women being naturally virtuous creatures and so was perfectly willing to give advice on how to seduce married women, just as Machiavelli knew that a prince is bound to do evil things from time to time.

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