Overview

The Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love. It is about the art of living - about finding a partner, maintaining power in a marriage, committing adultery, living as or with a courtesan, using drugs - and also about the positions in sexual intercourse. It was composed in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India, sometime in the third century of the common era, probably in North India. It combines an encyclopedic coverage of all imaginable aspects of sex with a closely observed sexual pyschology and a dramatic, novelistic narrative of seduction, consummation, and disentanglement. Best known in English through the highly mannered, padded, and inaccurate nineteenth-century translation of Sir Richard Burton, the text is presented here in an entirely new translation into clear, vivid, sexually frank English, together with three commentaries: translated excerpts from the earliest and most famous Sanskrit commentary (13th century) and from a twentieth-century Hindi commentary, and explanatory notes by the two translators.The lively and entertaining introduction by Wendy Doniger discusses the history of the text and its reception in India and Europe, analyses its attitudes toward gender and sexual violence, and sets it in the context of ancient Indian social theory, scientific method, and sexual ethics.
ISBN-13

9780192802705

ISBN-10

0192802704

Weight

1.05 Pounds

Dimensions

5.25 x 0.75 x 8.00 In

List Price

$26.00

Format

Hardcover

Language

English

Pages

300 pages

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published On

2002-06-06


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