Much has been written about the Kamasutra and with the advent of the
digital age great emphasis has been placed upon the sexual positions of
the work, leading to the popular misconception that the Kamasutra is
merely a book of pornographic images consisting of weird and wonderful sex positions.
The Kamasutra is in fact a collection of works by great Indian
philosophers
dating back as far as the 4th century BC as an extension to religious
beliefs and teachings. Collectively these philosophical commentaries deal
with the three pursuits of life; dharma, artha and kama, or virtue, prosperity
and love.
Dharma deals with the morality of individuals and society as an ethical
way in which we should treat one another in order to achieve a cohesive
society. Artha guides individuals to prosperity and material wealth in
order to achieve survival. It is however the commentaries on kama that we
are interested in here, the erotic science and rules of behaviour that
assure the continuation of life.
It is the collection of commentaries on kama that spurned the work of
Vatsyayana, an Indian scholar from the fourth century AD in the city of
Pataliputra along the shores of the Ganga river where the city of Patna
now stands.
Vatsyayana decided to condense the huge amounts of text on kamashastra
(knowledge of love), summarizing them in the Kamasutra. The sexual
parts of
the work show eroticism as the search for pleasure gained by a
'divine state' from sexual techniques and this makes the Kamasutra as relevant
today as when it was written around 1700 years ago.
Society and morality has however changed since those times, for
example; part of the teachings of the kamasutra describe how to seduce and
encourage the sexual interaction of another mans wife with methods of
deceiving the unfortunate husband. In today's society it would seem
hypocritical to endorse the sanctity of marriage whilst at the same time
encouraging adultery and deception. Prostitution was also widespread and
accepted with prostitutes negotiating their own 'rates' and paying taxes
accordingly; a practice that was not outlawed until the British arrived.
It is taught within the Kamasutra that a man acts out of virtue if he
seduces a woman for the purposes of marriage but that it is eroticism that
is his acceptable driving force to seduce a woman who is already married
or that he has no desire to marry. Girls should learn and memorise the
sexual sciences through childhood but should remain virgins until the age
of sixteen; at which time they should get married.
Homosexuality for both men and women was widely accepted and taught
within the Kamasutra and sexual deviations such as bestiality were
abundant. This can be witnessed by the plethora of Indian art and
sculpture depicting sexually explicit behaviour between same sex, opposite
sex and with animals. The kamasutra itself did not contain any drawings or
images; only written descriptions of sexual positions, techniques and
methods of attaining the 'divine state'.
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