Kama Sutra: A Guide to the Art of Pleasure

Product Information

McConnachie, James (2007). The Book of Love: In Search of the Kamasutra. London: Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-1-84354-373-2. Suitable age for kama knowledge, the three goals of life: dharma, Artha, Kama; their essential interrelationship, natural human questions John Keay (2010). India: A History: from the Earliest Civilisations to the Boom of the Twenty-first Century. Grove Press. pp.81–103. ISBN 978-0-8021-9550-0. Archived from the original on 20 May 2015 . Retrieved 10 December 2014. Apte, Vaman Shivram (1965). The Practical Sanskrit Dictionary (fourth revised & enlargeded.). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. ISBN 81-208-0567-4.

If a man and a woman are very much in love and embrace as if they are entering into each others bodies, either while the woman is sitting on the lap of the man, or in front of him, or on a bed, this is called an embrace like a mixture of milk and water. You'll see a wide variety of explicitness in the instruction as well. If you don't want to see actual nude models contorting themselves in incredible ways, you can find books that have tame illustrations, or even just descriptions. Of course, if you want the nude model photos, those are available too (just tell people you're reading it for the articles). Coltrane, Scott (1998). Gender and families. Rowman & Littlefield. p.36. ISBN 9780803990364. Archived from the original on 30 April 2016 . Retrieved 15 November 2015.

a b J. A. B. Van Buitenen, Dharma and Moksa, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 7, No. 1/2 (Apr. - Jul., 1957), pp 33–40

A translation by Indra Sinha was published in 1980. In the early 1990s, its chapter on sexual positions began circulating on the Internet as an independent text and today is often assumed to be the whole of the Kama Sutra. [107] Another example of the forms of intimacy discussed in the Kamasutra includes chumbanas (kissing). [81] The text presents twenty-six forms of kisses, ranging from those appropriate for showing respect and affection, to those during foreplay and sex. Vatsyayana also mentions variations in kissing cultures in different parts of ancient India. [81] The best kiss for an intimate partner, according to kamasutra, is one that is based on the awareness of the avastha (the emotional state of one's partner) when the two are not in a sexual union. During sex, the text recommends going with the flow and mirroring with abhiyoga and samprayoga. [81] The Hindu tradition has the concept of the Purusharthas which outlines "four main goals of life". [26] [27] It holds that every human being has four proper goals that are necessary and sufficient for a fulfilling and happy life: [28] The Kamasutra is a " sutra"-genre text consisting of intensely condensed, aphoristic verses. Doniger describes them as a "kind of atomic string (thread) of meanings", which are so cryptic that any translation is more like deciphering and filling in the text. [65] Condensing a text into a sutra-genre religious text form makes it easier to remember and transmit, but it also introduces ambiguity and the need to understand the context of each chapter, its philological roots, as well as the prior literature, states Doniger. [65] However, this method of knowledge preservation and transmission has its foundation in the Vedas, which themselves are cryptic and require a commentator and teacher-guide to comprehend the details and the inter-relationship of the ideas. [65] [66] The Kamasutra too has attracted commentaries, of which the most well known are those of 12th-century [66] or 13th-century [67] Yaśodhara's Jayamaṅgalā in the Sanskrit language, and of Devadatta Shastri who commented on the original text as well as its commentaries in the Hindi language. [65] [68] There are many other Sanskrit commentaries on the Kamasutra, such as the Sutra Vritti by Narsingha Sastri. [66] These commentaries on the Kamasutra cite and quote text from other Hindu texts such as the Upanishads, the Arthashastra, the Natyashastra, the Manusmriti, the Nyayasutra, the Markandeya Purana, the Mahabharata, the Nitishastra and others to provide the context, per the norms of its literary traditions. [69] The extant translations of the Kamasutra typically incorporate these commentaries, states Daniélou. [70]c] Chris Bartley (2001), Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, Editor: Oliver Learman, ISBN 0-415-17281-0, Routledge, Article on Purushartha, pp 443 Jyoti Puri, who has published a review and feminist critique of the text, states that the " Kamasutra is frequently appropriated as indisputable evidence of a non-Western and tolerant, indeed celebratory, view of sexuality" and for "the belief that the Kamasutra provides a transparent glimpse into the positive, even exalted, view of sexuality". [115] However, according to Puri, this is a colonial and anticolonial modernist interpretation of the text. These narratives neither resonate with nor provide the "politics of gender, race, nationality and class" in ancient India published by other historians and that may have been prevalent then. [116]

a b Sushil Kumar De (1969). Ancient Indian Erotics and Erotic Literature. K.L. Mukhopadhyay. pp. 89–92. While a lot of people think the Kama Sutra is just a picture book of complicated sex positions, the reality is that the original illustrations are considered works of art and there is a lot of text involved, including advice and philosophy about intimacy and love, in addition to the creative love-making. To create a helpful list we included choices for those interested in the scholarly origins of the practice, plus more modern interpretations for those people just looking for sexual inspiration. The term Kama Sutra comes from an ancient Hindu textbook written in Sanskrit about erotic love called The Kamasutra. Very little is known about its author, Vatsyayana Mallanga, other than his name. It was written probably sometime in the third century.

What is the Kama Sutra Really About?

John Koller, Puruṣārtha as Human Aims, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Oct., 1968), pp. 315–319 In 1961, S. C. Upadhyaya published his translation as the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana: Complete Translation from the Original. [102] According to Jyoti Puri, it is considered among the best-known scholarly English-language translations of the Kamasutra in post-independent India. [103] The Kamasutra manuscripts have survived in many versions across the Indian subcontinent. While attempting to get a translation of the Sanskrit kama-sastra text Anangaranga that had already been widely translated by the Hindus in regional languages such as Marathi, associates of the British Orientalist Richard Burton stumbled into portions of the Kamasutra manuscript. He commissioned the Sanskrit scholar Bhagvanlal Indraji to locate a complete Kamasutra manuscript and translate it. Indraji collected variant manuscripts in libraries and temples of Varanasi, Kolkata and Jaipur. Burton published an edited English translation of these manuscripts, but not a critical edition of the Kamasutra in Sanskrit. [52]