A Hindu book of love ; (the Kama Sutra)

 

 by Vatsyayana
Edited by Leo Markun

 

CONTEXTS

* Introduction    5 
* Piety, Wealth, and Sexual Power  5
* The Arts and Sciences of Love 11 
* The Life of a Citizen  17 
* The Various Classes of Women 23 
* The Arts of Love  26 
* Acquiring  a  Wife    31 
* The Newly-Married Couple 34 
* Courtship  39 
* How a Hindu Cinderella Should Act 45 
* Some Hindu Marriage Problems 46 
* The King's Wives  49 
* Other Men's Wive'. 50 
* The Courtesan  54 
* The  Concubine   57 
* Some Good Advice to Courtesans 60 

Why should we be interested in a Hindu manual of love? Surely we need not go all the way to India to find pornography. We can find enough of that in certain of our popular magazines and bestselling novels. We can find it in illustrated advertisements of hosiery and lingerie even more than in those books which have had trouble with the Vice Society. Personally I have no prejudice against books of real or supposed aphrodisiac effects. However, I have no intention of writing such an one here. The Kama Sutra is, literally speaking, to some extent pornographical. That is to it treats among other things of the harlot (or .ornc, in classical Greek). It is in no libidinous. Since, however, it calls things recognizable names, it is not likely to be available for general circulation in an unexpurgated edition. That is a pity, because reading the book can hardly have any than an educational effect. Not that the Hindu sage made any great scientific contributions to our knowledge of sex. Occidental investigators have understood the nature and the plication of the sexual impulse better than wise men of the East.

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