Kama Sutra/ Kâm Sûtr
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The Kamasutra tradition in India
India Today, August 6, 2015
Bibek Debroy
Wendy Doniger's analysis of The Kamasutra is ruined by sweeping generalisations and flippant insertions
Kalidasa then desÂÂcribes the union of Shiva and Parvati in a canto so erotic that many later, more prudish scholars reÂÂfuse to accept it as a genuine part of the poem. This is a quote towards the end of the book (p.164), where a case is made out that The Kamasutra tradition was deliberately downplaÂyed in India. The Kalidasa reference is to Kumarasambhavam. For a scholar who meticulously cites chapter and verse, strangely, Wendy Doniger doesn't tell us which erotic canto she means. But obviously, it is the eighth canto, concerning the union of Shiva and Parvati. A legitimate case has often been advanced, based on literary quality, that cantos 9-17 of Kumarasambhavam weren't written by Kalidasa. But did prudery prevent inclusion of the eighth canto? The Nirnaya Sagar and Sahitya Akademi editions had all 17 cantos. Mallinatha Suri's commentary covered eight cantos. If one excludes versions of Kumarasambhavam published as textbooks, who are these prudish scholars? The Ralph Griffiths translation also had seven cantos. Does this mean Griffiths was a prude? This digression on Kalidasa illustrates the problem with Doniger. Her proposition is true and would have remained true even if she had not massaged and tortured the evidence.
"Indrani resembles Juno, the wife of Jupiter, king of the Roman gods (or Hera, wife of the Greek Zeus), in many ways, including her own enormous sexual appetite and her jealousy about her husband's notorious adulteries" (p.78). Indrani means Shachi or Poulami. Jealousy and wrath are fine. But where is the evidence for Indrani's "enormous sexual appetite"? A little care in such instances would have meant that one would have taken the scholarship more seriously. For valid reasons, there is criticism of the 19th century Richard Francis Burton/Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot translation of The Kamasutra, which made it popular. Many popular perceptions about The Kamasutra are still based on Burton/Arbuthnot. But consider this. "Thus, when Krishna, the incarnate god in the Bhagavad Gita, wishes to stir the martial instincts of the conscience-stricken human hero Arjuna, he says to him, 'Stop behaving like a kliba!'" (p.114). This is against the background of a discussion of kliba, eunuch. But does 2.3 of the Bhagavad Gita actually use the word kliba? No, it doesn't. It uses the word klaibyam. You might say this is minute trivia. Indeed, but if the case is based on scholarship, one had best be careful and that difference does imply a change in nuance in the translation.
Doniger's slim book is on The Kamasutra, as it is, and not as it is often taken to be, a mishmash of sexual positions and diverse types of male and female genitalia. Indeed, out of the seven chapters in The Kamasutra, only one is devoted to such topics. The Doniger book has seven chapters and the first six are excellent. The odd flippancy apart, these chapters are scholarly and researched well, rightly equating kama with sensual pleasure, rather than the narrower sexual pleasure, and juxtaposing kama with the other two objectives of artha and dharma. If one reads this book, or better still, reads the original Sanskrit or a non-Burton English translation (Wendy Doniger/Sudhir Kakar, Indra Sinha, Alain Danielou), one will get away from that equation with sexual positions perpetuated by coffee-table books with photographs from Khajuraho and other places. More than the discussion of Vatsyayana's The Kamasutra (Vatsyayana followed several other authors whose works are now lost), it is this setting of "kamasutra" against the background of dharmashastra and arthashastra that makes these six chapters interesting. (In fairness, Danielou makes similar points, especially about arthashastra).
Having said this, there is a problem. Here is a long quote (p.100). "Vatsyayana also knew about the G-spot (named after the German gynaecologist Ernst Grafenberg): 'When her eyes roll when she feels him in certain spots, he presses her in just those spots.' Vatsyayana quotes a predecessor who said, 'This is the secret of young women'-and, indeed, it remained a secret in Europe for quite a few centuries, in part because Sir Richard Burton mistranslated it: 'Here Suvarnanabha says that while a man is doing to the woman what he likes best during congress, he should always make a point of pressing those parts of her body on which she turns her eyes.' Here, as elsewhere, Burton wrongly followed the commentary, which suggests the reading of 'she turns her eyes' in the sense of looking at something, instead of the eyes rolling. By following one part of the commentary, Burton has missed one point of the passage, how to locate the G-spot, and by inserting, gratuitously, the phrase 'what he likes best', he has totally missed the larger point, the importance of learning how to give a woman an orgasm." What does sutra mean? Etymology apart, a sutra was deliberately brief and cryptic, to facilitate memorisation in a process of oral transmission. Therefore, a sutra needs commentaries and The Kamasutra is no different. Had Doniger stuck to the importance of female orgasm, I wouldn't have had issues. But so as to enthral a contemporary audience, the G-spot must be brought in. Any reader who doesn't know the sutra nature of the text or isn't familiar with the Sanskrit, will assume the proposition in the Doniger book to be absolutely true, because of the lack of distinction between a strict translation and an interpretation.
The girl rolling her eyes around, as opposed to looking at something? Possible and plausible, but it's an interpretation, not a translation that is automatic. "Feels him"? Feels what? The sutra nature of the text prevents us from knowing exactly. It could be a penis, it could be a mechanical contraption. Nor does the Sanskrit allow one to confidently choose "spot" over "place". The intrinsic academic qualities of the book are likely to be discounted because of this tendency to decide a proposition and then try to fit everything into that proposition. Even then, the first six chapters make for interesting reading. What ruins the book is the last chapter, titled "The Rise and Fall of Kama and the Kamasutra". This has sweeping generalisations about contemporary India. Yes, that attracts controversy and yes, that gets quotes. But does one want to reduce an otherwise good book to Chapter 7 alone? That's what Wendy Doniger has ensured.
The evolution of the Kama Sutra
Devdutt Pattanaik, May 18, 2024: The Times of India
Indian Knowledge Systems are being discussed across schools in India. But they do not include India’s vast exploration of erotic pleasure: the story of Kama.
Everyone mentions Krishna’s Bhagavad Gita from the Mahabharata, but no one talks about Kama Gita also found in the Mahabharata. To appreciate Kama Gita, we need to explore India’s long tryst with kama, spelt in English both without and with capitalisation.Kama of Kama-sutra and Kama-shastra can be both a common noun and a proper noun.
As the common noun kama (spelt without capitalization) refers to desire, both romantic and erotic, which eventually leads to fertility. This is the driving force of life, known as ‘eros’ in English. The word is used in this sense in the Vedic corpus composed between 1500 BC and 500 BC.
As a proper noun, Kama (spelt with capitalization) refers to a god who arouses the body, fills it with heat of passion. He has two consort: the more popular Rati, goddess of sex, and the less known Priti, goddess of romance. Kama became the enemy of hermits from Buddhist times, and eventually a friend of householders, in Puranic lore, who has to be regulated carefully to ensure there is order in the world.
Kama-sutra text speaks of kama (common noun) not Kama (proper noun), the god who enchants Brahma, is burnt by Shiva and is resurrected through Vishnu. Known as Mara in Buddhism, Kama’s earliest image, housed in Mathura Museum, is dated to 100 BC. His popularity becomes widespread only after 500 AD.
Vatsyayana presented Kama-sutra as a truncated version of what was known to the gods. There were 100,000 chapters in the first erotic treatise written by Prajapati himself who created all living beings. There were 1000 chapters in the next erotic treatise written by Nandi, who was given this knowledge by the divine couple, Shiva and Shakti, atop Mount Kailas.
There were 500 chapters recorded by Shvetaketu, son of Uddalaka, who introduced the institution of marriage as per the Mahabharata. Shankha edited these to 300 chapters, for the benefit of husbands and wives. Babhravya further edited them to 150 chapters and divided them into seven sections, which was distributed amongst seven of his students:
Understanding kama, was taken up by Charayana Preparing for kama, was taken up by Suvarnanabha
Kama for the virgin, was taken up by Ghotakamukha
Kama within marriage, was taken up by Gonardiya
Kama outside marriage, was taken up by Gonikaputra
Kama with the courtesan, was taken up by Dattaka, who could pleasure both women and men, and so knew every secret of pleasure.
Kama that needs aphrodisiacs, both chemical and physical, was taken up by Kuchumara
Vatsyayana put these seven sections back together, just as Veda Vyasa put together the scattered mantras of the Veda long ago. Like all shastra-texts, Kama-sutra does not present itself as an original idea, but as a particular expression of a timeless boundless idea (sanatan).
This way of approaching knowledge, as something that exists forever, needing to be contextualized as per place (sthan), time (kala) and people (patra), is typically Indian thing.
Following Vatsyayana, there were many texts. The following is a short list.
10th century, Nagara-sarvasva (urban way) of Padmasri
12th century, Rati-rahasya (secret of erotica) of Kokkoka
13th century, Pancha-sayaka (five arrows) of Jyotirisvara
14th century, Smara-dipika (lamp of longing) of Minanatha
15th century, Rati-manjari (love blossoms) of Jayadeva
15th century, Rati-ratnapradipika (love jewel collection) of Praudha Devaraja Maharaja
16th century, Ananga-ranga (arena of love) of Kalyanamalla
16th century, Kandarapa-chudamani (crest-jewel of desire) of Virabhadra
Amongst these, Nagarasarvasva is Buddhist as the author praises the goddesses Tara and Aryamanjushri. While Kama-sutra comes from a cosmopolitan ecosystem, the later texts become increasingly elitist as they are written for kings and for the courtly life.
They do not engage too much with the concept of balance between dharma, artha and kama, and focus on the sexual act. Some new ideas emerge, a greater comfort with oral sex performed by, and on, men and women.
These treatises are written in Sanskrit, thus limited to the elite. Erotic art, after a brief appearance on temple walls, was restricted to privacy of inner chambers, where they appeared on walls, or in palm leaf, birch bark and paper manuscripts, locked in ornamented boxes.
But kama-shastra managed to reach the public in the most innovative of ways – the use of devotional metaphors. Spiritual language became the armour of sensuality and eroticism. For the gods knew pleasure, not power, is what makes life worth living.
As the Kama-gita of the Mahabharata informs us, locked in the act of regulating and restraining kama is kama. Those who deny pleasure, those who confuse pleasure with exploitation, those who get outraged by equating pleasure with corruption, are simply those who seek pleasure in the most perverse way. This is revealed by Krishna to Yudhishthira. In Book 14, Ashwamedha parva, Section 13 Verse 12-17, Kama reveals:
I am present in the very knowledge used to destroy me.
I am present in the very rituals used to destroy me.
I am present in the very restraint used to destroy me.
I am present in the very resolve used to destroy me.
