Kamasutra Read online

  This is no matter for numerical lists

  or textbook tables of contents.

  For people joined in sexual ecstasy,

  passion is what makes things happen.

  Enumeration may be a way of taming a subject that always threatens to break out of its shastric cage. Some of the most sensitive issues in the Kamasutra are domesticated by being enumerated; this is particularly true of Book Two, about the sexual act. In addition to the sixty-four that summarizes the text of that book, as we have just seen, and the 729 combinations of sexual types, many other aspects of sexuality stand up to be counted. There are 4 types of love [2.1.39–45], and some 105 other techniques: 12 embraces, 17 kisses, 16 bites and scratches, 17 positions, 6 unusual acts, 16 slaps and screams, 10 sexual strokes of a man, and 3 more movements for a woman acting the role of a man, 8 acts in oral sex, and, finally, 7 kinds of sex. But other tabulations prove more slippery, such as the reasons for sleeping with another man’s wife, which number 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, depending on whose system you follow [1.5.3–26]. The very fact that there is such disagreement about the precise number of reasons for adultery, and that the so-called fourth reason is basically a catch-all for any convoluted justification, with numerous separate items (thirteen or seventeen, depending on how you divide it), shows that the constraining net of numbers quickly stretches rather thin. The scientific and mystical aspects of numbers work in tandem. Although they may give the illusion of controlling and ‘demystifying’ sex, they may, at the same time, be mystifying it, by suggesting that the possible types of a particular sexual phenomenon coincide with a ‘natural’ number that is believed to represent something given in the cosmos.24

  Vatsyayana’s recurrent attempts to break out of the numerical forms express his hope of moving beyond totality toward infinity in love. He seems at first to be guaranteeing totality, by assuring the reader that there are just sixteen ways of biting, not fifteen, not seventeen.25 But then, on the one hand, he limits the totality by remarking that some of these sixteen may not always work well, and, on the other hand, he extends the totality into an infinity by suggesting that there may be other ways than the sixteen, that the text is in fact incomplete, its lists merely suggestive, not definitive—in effect, that there are different strokes for different folks. (Manu, too, formulates totalities in this way and then pulls back to qualify them. He constructs a network of rules so tight as to make life virtually impossible, and then offers the escape clause of apad, the emergency situation in which no rules apply at all.26) At these points, the Kamasutra is moving out of its scientific body into a non-scientific frame with a religious or moral viewpoint.

  The Kamasutra as a Play in Seven Acts

  Beneath the veneer of a sexual textbook, the Kamasutra resembles a work of dramatic fiction more than anything else. The man and woman whose sex lives are described here are called the nayaka and the nayika (male and female protagonists), and the men who assist the nayaka are called the pitamarda, vita, and vidushaka (the libertine, pander, and clown). All of these are terms for stock characters in Sanskrit dramas—the hero and heroine, sidekick, supporting player, and jester—according to yet another textbook, the one attributed to Bharata and dealing with dramatic writing, acting, and dancing, the Natyashastra. The very last line of the Kamasutra speaks of a man playing the part of a lover, as if on the stage. Is the Kamasutra a play about sex? Certainly it has a dramatic sequence, and, like most classical Indian dramas, it has seven acts. In Act One, which literally sets the stage for the drama, the bachelor sets up his pad; in Act Two, he perfects his sexual technique. Then he seduces a virgin (Act Three), gets married, and lives with a wife or wives (Act Four); tiring of her (or them), he seduces other men’s wives (Act Five); and when he tires of that, he frequents courtesans (Act Six). Finally, when he is too old to manage it at all, he resorts to the ancient Indian equivalent of Viagra: aphrodisiacs and magic spells (Act Seven).27

  In the course of this plot, the text, like a play, unfolds through a series of dialogues that take place on several levels. In the outermost frame, Pirandello-like, the author is a character in constant conversation with other authors who are characters. Inside this outer frame,28 there are numerous dialogues between men and women and between women and women, as well as a number of soliloquies, such as the passage alluded to above, in which men justify to themselves their reasons for committing adultery [1.5.3–26], and others in which courtesans justify to themselves their methods for jettisoning, or taking back, ex-lovers [6.4.1–34]. Even the lists in the text sometimes become dialogues in the commentary, when Yashodhara expands upon a single noun by imagining a dialogue around it. Thus, for example, Yashodhara glosses one of the reasons for a courtesan to take a lover, ‘compassion’: ‘Taking pity on someone who says, “I will die if you will not make love with me”̱ [6.1.17]. Or, glossing the phrase ‘she is suspicious of love-magic done with roots’: ‘When he says, “You are always using root-magic to put me in your power, so that I will be totally submissive to you”, she replies, “No! I would never do anything like that!”’ [6.2.56].

  And, finally, the text is like a drama because it is a fantasy. More precisely, it combines a survey of actual sources of pleasure in ancient India (‘is’) with imaginative suggestions for other sources of pleasure (‘should’, or perhaps, ‘could’). For example, the passage about sneaking into the harem [5.6] is pure fairy-tale, including ways to become invisible and the trick of wearing woman’s clothing, straight out of the romances of the Ocean of Story (‘could’); but it is also laced with some rather closely observed psychological tips on ways to break into a house (‘is’). On the one hand, the Kamasutra abounds in realia, in details about foods and clothing and games and drugs and the most banal aspects of housekeeping (‘is’). On the other hand, it imagines a world not only of total sexual freedom but of total social freedom altogether (‘could’). The male protagonist may be of any class, as we learn from Vatsyayana [at 3.2.1], Yashodhara [on 1.4.1] and Shastri [on 1.4.35]: ‘This classification of rich and poor citizens acquaints us with the social order that prevailed in Vatsyayana’s times. Here, it is nowhere mentioned that only persons of high caste were rich and of low castes, poor. It appears that after becoming rich one rose high in the social order; the low caste disappeared.’ But the man-about-town has no caste, no social ties.

  Moreover, he has, as we say of a certain type of man today, no visible source of income. Vatsyayana tells us, at the start of the section headed ‘The Lifestyle of the Man-about-Town’, that the playboy may have to live ‘wherever he has to stay to make a living’ and that he finances his lifestyle by ‘using the money that he has obtained from gifts, conquest, trade, or wages, or from inheritance, or from both’. His sidekicks, too, have quite realistic present money problems [1.4.31–3], his wife is entrusted with all the household management, including the finances, and his mistresses work hard to make and keep their money. But we never see the man-about-town at work. Busy teaching his birds to talk, he never drops in to check things at the shop. Throughout the text, his one concern is the pursuit of pleasure. Well, there were undoubtedly men in ancient India who had that sort of money, and the privilege that came with it; Sanskrit literature tells us, in particular, of wealthy merchants whose sons engaged in the sorts of adventures, erotic and otherwise, that other literatures often reserve for princes.29 Vatsyayana insists that anyone, not just the man-about-town, can live the life of pleasure—if he or she has money [1.4.29–30]. But were there also other sorts of implied readers, less privileged readers, of this text? And if there were, was this, for them, a world that merely snapped into place on holidays? Was it real for the rich, and for city-dwellers, and mere fantasy for the poor, and for villagers? Or was it, for all readers, a world of ideal sex like Erica Jong’s ‘zipless fuck’,30 or the capitalist fantasies of Hugh Hefner’s glossy Playboy empire?

  The text is an instrument of desire, as its title proclaims. It may even have been intended as a sourcebook for
other fantasies, for poets composing erotic works.31 N. N. Bhattacharya argues that not only the social circumstances but the sex itself is fantastic: ‘Vatsyayana’s attempt to write a scientific treatise is indeed praiseworthy, but the difficulty was that … he had no practical knowledge of the subject. We must say that it is a pedantic and superficial production of scholasticism.’ In Bhattacharya’s view, the sexual positions are ‘acrobatic techniques, most of which are impossible to follow in the practical field. The drugs he prescribes are mostly imaginative and superstitious, and they do not correspond to those found in the standard Ayurvedic texts.’32 The sexual fantasy in the Kamasutra is the culmination of centuries of erotic meditations every bit as complex as the parallel ascetic meditations of the literature of the Upanishads and their commentaries.

  The Genders of the Kamasutra

  If the ideal reader of this text, like its protagonist, is a person with no social ties or economic responsibilities, could that reader be a woman?33 It is difficult to assess how broad a spectrum of ancient Indian society knew the text first-hand. The production of manuscripts, especially illuminated manuscripts, was necessarily an élite matter; men of wealth and power, kings and merchants, would commission texts to be copied out for their private use. It is often said that only upper-class men were allowed to read Sanskrit, particularly the sacred texts, but the very fact that the texts prescribe punishments for women and lower-class men who read these texts suggests that some of them might do so.34 In some, but not all, Sanskrit dramas, the women speak dialects, Prakrit or Apabhramsha, while the men speak Sanskrit.35 But women and people of the lower classes may well have read non-religious Sanskrit of various kinds, including the scientific literature, which was circulated by specialists, called shastras, who knew the shastras and explained them.

  Large portions of the Kamasutra are clearly written for men, yet the women in the Kamasutra speak in Sanskrit, and Vatsyayana argues at some length that some women, at least, should read this text, and that others should learn its contents in other ways [1.3.1–14]. Book Three devotes one section to advice to virgins trying to get husbands [3.4.36–47], and these women certainly have agency. Book Four consists of instructions for wives; and Book Six is said to have been commissioned by the courtesans de luxe of Pataliputra, presumably for their own use. Their powers may have been extensive but fragile; the devious devices that the courtesan uses to make her lover leave her, rather than simply kicking him out [6.3.39–44], are an example of what the anthropologist James Scott has taught us to recognize as the ‘weapons of the weak.’ Yet Shastri [on 1.5.3] suggests that these women were very privileged indeed:

  The difference between the courtesan [veshya] and the courtesan de luxe [ganika] is the difference between the earth and the sky. The most beautiful, talented and virtuous among the courtesans was given the title of courtesan de luxe. The Lalitavistara calls a princess versed in the texts a courtesan de luxe. In the Kavyamimamsa, Rajashekhara writes that in ancient times many courtesans de luxe and princesses were excellent poets. The daughters of these courtesans de luxe had the right to study together with the sons of men-about-town. In fact, a courtesan de luxe was regarded as the wealth and glory of the entire kingdom. The whole society was proud of her. On hearing the name ‘courtesan’, one should not imagine that this was a woman who had had discarded all social conventions and customary modes of conduct. The courtesan is an uncommon woman whose upbringing and education is also extraordinary. She is educated in a way that facilitates physical and mental development, an education of which ordinary women are deprived. Courtesans have been educated and skilled since ancient times. Well-born maidens profited from their abilities. They were regarded as a special part of the society. Courtesans are often mentioned in Tantric treatises. Buddhist literature is also full of praise for courtesans. They are described in detail in the Puranas, the Kavyas and in Jaina literature. All courtesans were proud of their beauty. The works of Bhasa, Kalidasa, Vishakhadatta, Magha, Dandin, Shudraka, Bana and other poets provide interesting descriptions of courtesans.

  Some women, and not only courtesans, may well have had both the economic power to obtain a copy of the Kamasutra and the power to learn to read Sanskrit.

  If parts of the text are directed toward women, is it also the case that they reflect women’s voices? The women in the Kamasutra are not only less idealized than the men, but more differentiated. The men are briefly and occasionally dichotomized,36 but the number of the types of women is debated at some length, some authors counting as many as eight, while Vatsyayana limits them to four (with an ambiguous addition of the third nature) [1.51–27].37 Both men and women are objects of desire; and, within the basic categories, Vatsyayana on numerous occasions reminds us that both men and women are individuals, and that the rules must be modified for individual tastes. But are both men and women subjects in the Kamasutra?

  The text not only assumes an official male voice (the voice of Vatsyayana) but presents methods that deny that women’s words truly represent their feelings; women’s shouts of ‘Stop!’ or ‘Mother!’ are taken not as indications of their wish to escape the pain being inflicted on them, but merely as part of a ploy designed to excite their male partners [2.7.1–21]. These passages inculcate what we now recognize as the rape mentality—’her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes’—a dangerous line of thought that leads ultimately to places where we now no longer want to be: disregarding a woman’s protests against rape. Indeed, at 3.5.26–7 Vatsyayana lists rape as one of the worst, but still acceptable, wedding devices, and Shastri comments: ‘If one has intercourse with a girl who is sleeping or has been made unconscious by the administration of a drug and who is then forced to marry the villain because of the loss of her virginity, this is the ghoulish form of marriage. The scriptures call such men ghouls and prescribe the death penalty for them.’38 The type of rape that we now call sexual harassment is taken for granted by Vatsyayana, who describes men in power who can take whatever women they want: ‘the man in charge of threads may take widows, women who have no man to protect them, and wandering women ascetics; the city police-chief may take the women who roam about begging, for he knows where they are vulnerable, because of his own night-roamings’ [5.5.7–9].

  The Kamasutra, however, often quotes women in direct speech, expressing views that men are advised to take seriously, and it is surprisingly sympathetic to women, particularly to what they suffer from inadequate husbands. Of course, male texts may merely engage in a ventriloquism that attributes to women viewpoints that in fact serve male goals. But in numerous places, the Kamasutra expresses points of view clearly favourable to women,39 particularly in comparison with other texts of the same era. The discussion of the reasons why women commit adultery, for instance, rejects the traditional patriarchal party line that one finds in most Sanskrit texts such as the Laws of Manu: ‘Good looks do not matter to women, nor do they care about youth; “A man!” they say, and enjoy sex with him, whether he is good-looking or ugly’ [9.15]. The Kamasutra begins its discussion of adultery with a far more egalitarian, if equally cynical, formulation: ‘A woman desires any attractive man she sees, and, in the same way, a man desires a woman. But, after some consideration, the matter goes no farther’ [5.1.8]. The text does argue that women have less concern for morality than men have, and does assume that women don’t think about anything but men. And it is written in the service of the hero, the would-be adulterer, who reasons, if all women are keen to give it away, why shouldn’t one of them give it to him? But the author empathetically imagines various women’s reasons not to commit adultery [5.1.17–42]; and the would-be seducer takes the woman’s misgivings seriously, even if only to disarm her. This discussion is ostensibly intended to teach the male reader of the text to manipulate and exploit such women, but, perhaps inadvertently, it provides a compassionate exposition of the reasons why inadequate husbands drive away their wives [5.1.51–4].

  Vatsyayana tells us that a woman who does not experience the
pleasures of love may hate her man and leave him for another [3.2.35 and 4.2.31–5]. If, as the context suggests, this woman is married, the casual manner in which Vatsyayana suggests that she leave her husband is in sharp contrast to such shastras as Manu’s: ‘A virtuous wife should constantly serve her husband like a god, even if he behaves badly, freely indulges his lust, and is devoid of any good qualities’ [5.154]. But the belief that she might hate him was hardly unique to the Kamasutra. ‘Hated by her husband’ or ‘hating her husband’ (the compound can be tantalizingly ambiguous in Sanskrit, as it is in Kamasutra 3.2.35) is an established taxonomic category in ancient Hindu texts; a woman in the Rig Veda is ‘hated by/hating her husband’,40 and other Vedic texts contrast the ‘favourite’ wife with the ‘avoided’ wife.41 ‘Hated’ in the first sense in this context usually means that the husband prefers, and sleeps with, the other wives; it serves as a synonym for ‘unlucky in love’. A husband could not be ‘hated’ in this way, but there were other ways. Even Manu grants that ‘A husband should wait for one year for a wife who hates him. … If she hates him because he is insane, fallen, impotent, without seed, or suffering from a disease caused by his evil, she should not be deserted or deprived of her inheritance’ [9.77 and 9.79]. Vatsyayana incorporated this tradition even as he incorporated an argument in favour of female orgasm far more subtle than views that prevailed in Europe until very recently indeed [2.1.10–31].

  In addition to his general representations of women’s voices and needs, Vatsyayana tells us that an entire work, the basis of Book Six of his own work, was commissioned by women, courtesans [1.1.11]. And Yashodhara tells us how this happened: Dattaka happened to be cursed to be a woman for a while, and so knew how to write about courtesans from both sides of the bed, as it were. It is an inspired move on the part of Yashodhara to make the author of this text a bisexual, who ‘tastes both flavours’, or, as we would say, swings both ways.42 Yet this is also a move that greatly mitigates the strong female agency in the text: where Vatsyayana tells us that women had this text made, Yashodhara tells us that an extraordinary man knew more about the courtesans’ art than they knew themselves. In a culture in which men and women speak to one another (which is to say, in most cultures), we might do best to regard the authors of most texts as androgynes, and the Kamasutra is no exception.43 Yet we must admit that we find these voices, carrying meanings that have value for us, only by transcending, if not totally disregarding, the original context. Were we to remain within the strict bounds of the historical situation, we could not notice the women’s voices speaking against their moment in history, perhaps even against their author. Only by asking our own questions, which the author may not have considered at all, can we see that his text does contain many answers to them, fortuitously embedded in other questions and answers that were more meaningful to him.