Kama Sutra Explained

From all the treasures of learning that Europeans have adopted from the Far East, Kama Sutra is possibly the most practiced experience, together with Yoga and Buddhism. Beginning with the technological revolution of the late eighteenth century and the advent of trendy abroad traveling, Europe and north America have been overwhelmed with artwork objects, ideas, values and philosophy from the Far East that altered, to a certain extent, our way of thinking. Busy Westerners concerned by tomorrow are intrigued and enchanted by the postures of people who are pleased to live this day and who are not afraid of the future.

When bringing up Kama Sutra, almost all people imagine it as an exotic assistant book about intersexual satisfaction or simply an old porn magazine. The complete title of the book is in reality “Vatsyayana’s Aphorisms on Love” (“Vatsyayana Kamasutram”) and it is a pact made of thirty-six chapters. The purpose of this collection of aphorisms is to offer an all-round guidebook to sex, relationships with courtesans, courtship of married women, matrimony and, lastly, bettering one’s chances to have good sex through the usage of herbs, substances, enchantments and sex toys. As you are able to see, the intention of this book was to become a classical guide to what sexual love and sex meant to the Indian society around the fourth century A.D..

Apart from sex and love, the “Aphorisms on Love” is a very orthodox book, after the style of the society that engendered it. Its aim is to teach the lover what to do to get the woman he desires while at the same time protecting both his and hers good names and reputations. Reputation was highly significant everywhere in the ancient world, not just in India, and the individual who forfeited it for such an insignificant matter as sex was considered to be superficial, not worthy of the value of others. Vatsyayana himself, a celibate scholarly person, thought that sex wasn't bad in itself, but that engaging in it was certainly trivial and sinful.

The thirty-six chapters are each composed by an expert of the matter and address a broad range of issues, such as observations about the day-to-day life of a citizen, sex positions, individual adornment, how to kiss, acquiring the confidence of women and the means by which courtesans get profit. The most known part of the book, the study of sex and sexual positions, comprises only about twenty percent of the whole thing textbook. Nonetheless, those who are really curious in sex had better read the entire book. After many centuries the ancient theory is still amazingly precise since people still need the same basic things from each other.

Although this might sound very unlikely, at the bottom Kama Sutra is reasonably related to Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, although the Indian book on love is much more cautious to keep an eye on the ethics of the time. Both books are guidebooks to some of the aspects of their respective societies and both deal with them in a plainspoken and honest manner. Vatsyayana is not fooling himself that men and women are by nature pure creatures and so was perfectly inclined to pass advice about how to seduce married women, exactly as Machiavelli recognised that a prince is bound to do evil things occasionally.