I have begun reading the Kamasutra… but seriously, there is an academic purpose to it, I swear.

My personal interest that is fueling my desire to choose Vatsyayana’s text for my paper topic in my South Asian History course, without it I wouldn’t want to spend the many hours researching it. However, unlike most people in the world who read the text, I will actually be reading the whole of the text, not just the chapters on “congress” positions.

The text itself is quite interesting from an academic perspective. In the Hindu religion, there are four stages in life (Purusharthas): Kama being sensual pleasure; Artha being worldly prosperity (wealth/status); Dharma being morality, virtue and ethics (basically “religion”); and Moksha being “liberation” (that is, spiritual liberation from the cycle of reincarnation). Each of the four things have their own “shastra” outlining the practices a Hindu must follow in order to obtain the desired goal in their life.

Like everyone else who learns about the Kamasutra nowadays, I originally learned about the text as a book of “exotic sex positions.” Not what it was originally designed as; before being translated into English by Victorians who saw it as extraordinarily “taboo.” It just doesn’t cover sex but the whole experience of love and both physical and emotional gratification. My interest in using this text as a basis for my paper was spawned by learning about what it truly is and not what you see on book-store shelves in the West (usually a bunch of pictures of naked people or diagrams showing you how to perform such things as the “congress of the cow” or as we know it: “doggy-styIe”).

Out of the six chapters I’ve read so far (36 in total) there has been covered a variety of things pertaining to; as Vatsyayana calls it: “the game of love.” Of course “congress positions” are covered but everything down to various types of kissing, embracing and caressing as well as a most interesting discovery; the “art” of nail marking, teeth marking, erotic slapping and “love-wagers” (which I find to be incredibly fascinating). This of course is not a “wife-beating guide” but an outline of “courtly love” rituals (similar to those of chivalric knights during the Medieval period in Europe) that existed in courtly life around 2000 years ago in India.

And that brings me to the focus of the paper itself. I will attempt to find out how this text actually effected “normal” people’s lives. That is, people who lived in villages and were not given significant forms of education. I will look at various points throughout Indian history (if there are any sources whatsoever) as to whether it effected everyday Indian life in marriages and relationships or not.

Oddly enough, Vatsyayana introduces the text as something that “all Indian people should read and practice.” Contrary to what I’ve read so far, especially those pertaining to preparing oneself for the daily routine, would actually only pertain to people who would have lived in “high-society.” Those people who sat back, enjoyed life, made babies and entertained a plethora of courtesans (basically very sophisticated prostitutes who had incredible educations and were hired to delight a person in every way possible, not just with sex).

With that said, what I find most interesting about the text itself is the dichotomy between things I see as still relevant (in the sense that they could be easily integrated) to modern day loving relationships and things that make absolutely no sense whatosever in the same context. I expect to find far more irrelevant things in the chapters pertaining to marriages since the Hindu system of marriage, which is based on the laws of Manu and the superiority of men over women, has no relevancy here in the West (no offence to Hindu’s but Manu is a fool and misogynist). I do very much like the relevant stuff though and I find the arts of nail marking and teeth marking most intriguing. This paper is definitely going to be quite interesting.

3 Comments »

1. That does sound quite interesting indeed. Reading it should be pretty entertaining on multiple levels.

   Comment by whoozwah — October 21, 2008 @ 8:25 pm

2. *fap fap fap fap fap fap fap*

   Wait, what were you saying?

   Comment by famicommander — October 23, 2008 @ 9:11 pm

3. strikingly appropriate and absurdly inappropriate at the same time. Nice one.

   Comment by whoozwah — October 24, 2008 @ 10:01 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.