Is the ancient Indian erotic scripture Kama Sutra a simple book of pleasure or a profound book of philosophy? We explore Vatsyayana’s wisdom on love and life.
A barren land where even goats think deeply
As the world becomes more chaotic, more and more people are going to India. This is because a different universe from that of the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi, the pinnacle of Asian civilization, is unfolding in this vast land.
The image of India that has stayed with me after visiting the country several times is that the dry, vast land is the factor that made man the way he is. The birthplaces of the world’s religions are vast lands like India or the Middle East, but they are neither rich nor barren, and they have neither droughts nor floods, but they have in common that they are in a state with natural advantages that are just enough to live on. If they are rich, they will be intoxicated with pleasure without thinking, and if they are poor, they will fight for survival with tenacity. However, they seem to be the perfect natural beings to contemplate existence in the midst of hunger and abundance because of their natural conditions.
India was like that. The trees, stones and rivers flowed as if they were thinking. Especially the animals and trees were standing in a twisted position as if they were blaming themselves for asking, “Why am I here? Goats and cows wandered the roads and fields asking the same question. They were all philosophers. When I saw the cows wandering around the city, I couldn’t possibly eat the flesh of those eyes.
So all the religions and mythological origins on earth are so full of contemplative beings that one wonders if India is the origin of them all. For them, life is an absolute subject of thought that exists as reality itself, and they do not need to feel the humiliation or discomfort caused by the class system or poverty from the outside. The idea that someone is poor because they are poor is only possible if there is an entity that recognizes poverty, but isn’t that a value that doesn’t apply to an ontological entity that has transcended such a judgment?
I once spent an entire night in the sleeper compartment of a moving train. All the religions and philosophies of the world are being studied and reformed, but Hinduism is so profound that it is enough to learn it as it has been handed down, a confident statement that symbolizes today’s India. I dare say that religious philosophy is impossible without seeing India.
But if there is more to say about India than this metaphysical thing, I dare to give two pieces of advice.
First, I often tell people that if they are in despair, if they have lost hope, if they are facing bankruptcy, incurable disease, death, or heartbreak, and if they cannot find the meaning of life, they should go to India and die after wandering around for a while. This is because it is a place where you can gain the courage to live without dying.
Second, it is not a place for women to go alone. Some of my companions had hysterical fits because of the men there, but Indian men are the subjects who have been legally and institutionally trained to have the most perfect masculine functions on the planet. The philosophy professor said this with a straight face. He said he can manipulate women as much as he wants in his relationships, and it’s because of Indian philosophy. For reference, when Korean women go there to study, almost all of them end up marrying a local. I told women not to go alone, but the number of women who actually sneak off alone is increasing.
What about Indian women? They are probably the most sexually stimulating dancers on the planet. They are nothing like the dancing of Latin American women. Most Indian films are dance and song films. Since the forbidden areas of sexual expression are wide, explicit scenes of sexual acts are not shown, but songs and dances are used to depict sexual functions. How diverse is this field? Isn’t it common knowledge that the energy and artistry that created the driving force behind this second piece of advice was formed by the Kama Sutra? Is there any other country in the world with such a profound yet generalized philosophy of sex?
The pinnacle of erotic literature
Perhaps the highest level of contemplation was the recreation of life itself. In contrast to all the religions of the world, which suppress sexual desire and treat it as a taboo, the Brahmins – the Hindus – were the most realistic practitioners of the concept of heaven in eroticism. Once you know that yoga is actually interpreted as physical training to achieve perfect sex, you will be able to guess how precious sex is in the present value of the heavenly consciousness of life.
The Kama Sutra and The Art of the Bedchamber are considered the two greatest sex manuals in the world. Each has its own characteristics. While The Art of the Bedchamber is an imperial approach to Chinese sex, the Kama Sutra originated in India around the 4th century BC and contains the philosophical ideas of all Indian people, meaning “love and affection.
Indians divided the purpose of life into three categories: (1) dharma (the ethics that govern human behavior), (2) arthas (the pursuit of profit), and (3) kamas (sexual desire). If Dharma is a religious scripture that symbolizes the realm of faith and philosophical thought, then Artha is a set of social rules and norms that belong to the realm of political and social science. In contrast, the Kama Sutra is a law that simultaneously pursues procreation and sensuality as a means of pleasure, and should be interpreted as a holistic awareness and practice of life that includes not only simple sensuality but also pleasure and the creation of offspring.
The ideal Hindu life is divided into three stages: learning artha in childhood, learning kama in youth, and learning dharma in old age. It seems to be a very reasonable way of life.
The Kama Sutra is a book of precepts for successfully accomplishing the task of attaining sexual love, which is one of the three major goals of human beings during adolescence. It was originally written in beautiful verse, like other scriptures, and is often presented as the work of Vatsyayana Va-tsyaya-na, but it is known to have been written by several authors. The broad philosophical ideas of the Kama Sutra were gradually broken down and elaborated upon by later generations, resulting in the various versions of the Kama Sutra that exist today.
It is known as the original source of the famous Khajuraho erotic sculptures, and all the literature is sold there in various forms. This strange form of faith, with its elaborate carvings of sex positions on the tower, seems to be the true face of religion, showing the most naked expression of human primal instincts. If you go to Khajuraho, you will find bookstores lining the streets selling various editions of the Kama Sutra.
The variety of these books is probably greater than that of any other famous book in the world, ranging from paperbacks to tabloid-sized tomes, and even including all kinds of pictures. There are also different interpretations and applications.
Some are edited versions of the Kama Sutra for women only, while others are condensed versions. There are even color versions that include pictures of modern actors in various sexual positions alongside the original illustrations.
The Kama Sutra is the only work in the history of world literature that describes sexual activity in such detail and beauty. Since the verses are untranslatable and are usually chanted, there should be no problem understanding them. Anyone who passes through Khajuraho without buying a copy of this book is probably suffering from severe OCD. This is because no pornographic video can beat the Kama Sutra.
Composition and content of the Kama Sutra
As is generally known, the Kama Sutra is not only a book on sexual techniques, but also a book on sexual philosophy, which comprehensively covers the methodology of effectively carrying out the instinct of a living being that can include pleasure in the process of procreation, one of the three purposes of human beings. The book, which consists of seven chapters, is briefly introduced in the following order.
Chapter 1 Introduction General Introduction
Human life is divided into three parts: the first part is spent working to gain knowledge and material goods, the second part is devoted to love, and the last part is focused on liberation.
“Even if the pigeon you get today is small, it is better than the peacock you will get tomorrow,” says the author, who advocates the philosophy of practicality of life, which is a disregard for the power of the law of nature. The author says that the practicality of life “can only be achieved through constant effort combined with courage.
What about sex, then? Sexual pleasure can only be achieved by practicing the 64 techniques from an early age, and this book is a systematic guide to doing so. We must not forget that sex is not just an act of seeking pleasure, but a synthesis and extension of the right way and practicality from the perspective of a holistic realization of life.
Chapter 2: Theory of Sexual Intercourse or Sexual Activity between Men and Women
The male genitals are divided into small, medium, and large, and the male genitals are called bulls, bulls, and rabbits, and the female genitals are called female elephants, female horses, and female deer. Sexual intercourse between similar types is called same-sex, and between different types is called opposite-sex, and the technique varies accordingly.
The methods of obtaining pleasure are divided into (1) skill, or repetition, (2) imagination, or being guided by desire even without experience, (3) memory, or being reminded of an old lover, and (4) sensation, or feeling the pleasure directly.
To enhance pleasure, hugging, kissing (“The mouth of a calf is not clean at ordinary times, but it is clean when it sucks milk from its mother. A dog’s mouth is clean when it is hunting. The beak of a bird is clean when it pecks fruit from a tree. So there is a famous saying, “A woman’s mouth is clean when she has intercourse and kisses. Nails (good nails are free of lines, flat, shiny, free of dirt, do not split or crack, grow long, and have eight beautiful and pleasant conditions) After describing in detail the techniques of scratching and biting with the teeth, the book describes in detail the various postures of the act, the techniques of hitting and howling, the techniques before and after the act, the layout of the bedroom, and so on.
Chapter 3: How to Dress a Maiden or Marry a Woman
Since the purpose of sexual activity is to have offspring, the methods of acquiring a wife are very strict and there are many taboos. Fifteen types of women who cannot marry (women with bad names, women who do not meet others, women who are married, women with malko, women with spots on their bodies, women with ox shoulders, women with bent bodies, women with ugly faces, women with wide foreheads, women who defile the sacred, women who have committed adultery, Five types of women are listed as bad names: women with irregular menstruation, women who are pregnant, women who are related to the family, and women who sweat a lot.
However, a man’s role in making his hard-won wife happy is not easy. For the first three days after marriage, the man must keep his virginity to remove his wife’s fear of sex.
During these three days, the man must observe five rules: he must lie on the floor without a mat; he must avoid sexual intercourse; he must avoid salt and sugar; he must take a bath while listening to music for a week; and he must wear a suit to social gatherings such as concerts, entertain relatives, and give gifts.
It introduces various types of marriage behavior, such as how to win a girl’s heart from a young age, how to approach a woman without an introduction, and so on, to help a man succeed in getting a wife.
Chapter 4: Duties of a Wife
This is the least interesting part. It introduces seven types of women that a married woman should not date and six things that should be avoided. These are common sense things, even in our way of thinking.
The six conditions under which a man can have a concubine even if his wife is still alive, and the roles of wife and concubine are also strict. In our way of thinking, these are the seven evils that should be avoided. They are: when a wife falls ill, when a wife’s temper is bad, when a wife’s pure affection is gone, when a wife has only daughters, when a husband’s lust is unusually strong and he needs more than one wife, and when a wife is pregnant.
Chapter 5: About Sex Outside of Marriage or Seducing Another’s Wife
The conditions under which a married woman can be seduced are limited to a few situations, such as when she is a flirt, when one needs to get the woman in terms of dharma and profit (artha), or when they are enemies. In such cases, love is divided into 10 stages, which is much more specific than Stendhal’s “The Theory of Love”.
In other words, the 10 stages of a man showing affection to a woman are divided into the pleasure of looking, the pleasure of meeting, the stage of pouring out one’s heart to a woman, the desire to meet, lack of sleep, becoming thin, neglecting other things, forgetting shame, going crazy, fainting, and dying.
However, there are 25 types of situations in which a woman is not seduced by a man other than her husband, indicating the difficulty of seducing a married woman. Conversely, 24 types of men are listed as easy for a married woman to seduce, and 26 types of women are listed as easy for a man to seduce. Attracting a woman’s affection, testing a woman’s heart, and the role of a matchmaker are all below the level of common sense for modern people.
Chapter 6: The Courtesan or Prostitute
This chapter mainly discusses the art of professional women in conquering men and how men gain popularity from such women, which is not very fresh. However, from the perspective that a significant portion of women’s functions require a prostitute-like role, the 22 types of men to prefer, the 23 types of men to choose as partners for noble love, and the 16 types of men to avoid dating are interesting. The 11 mistakes women tend to make when choosing a man, such as pleasing the government, getting money from the government, and reuniting with a former lover, are useful, while the others are corny.
Chapter 7: The Secret of Love
There are magical secrets like the “Energy, Beauty, and Charm Preservation Method” and the “Energy Loss Prevention Method,” but since they are based on Indian herbal medicine, their actual usefulness has not been tested. Some of them are easy to test. In principle, it can be seen that all the experiments developed by modern medicine, such as preventing loss of potency, using fake penises, enlarging the penis, shrinking the female genitalia, and loss of potency, were already practiced in India.
Summary of the plot of the Kama Sutra book
Contrary to what is known in the secular world, this book is not only a general introduction to sexual techniques, but also covers the entire range of human behavior through sex, as it also seeks to provide the incidental pleasure of human reproduction.
The fact that this book is not only about simple sexual techniques, but also about sexual behavior that integrates the art of living with philosophy, enhances its value.
