Kama Sutra: Indian Erotic Treatise

Roli Books, 2012, hardcover, illustrated, A4 format, 206 pages, condition: as new.

This book has been attractively produced and is wonderfully written and illustrated with the full-page colour traditional Indian imagery and other paintings. Said to have been written sometime in the fourth century BC, the Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana is much more than a mere description of exotic sexual practices. It is an ancient classical work on the art of love.

Written in the style of a scientific manual, the book offers a view of sexuality absolutely untinged by guilt, shame or the sense of sin. In this gorgeous edition, the male-female union is portrayed in all its splendor through the use of Indian miniatures and other paintings.

The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the Kamasutra is neither exclusively nor predominantly a sex manual on sex positions,[but rather a guide on the art of living well, the nature of love, finding partners, maintaining sex life, and other aspects pertaining to pleasure-oriented faculties. It is a sutra-genre text with terse aphoristic verses that have survived into the modern era with different bhāyas (commentaries). The text is a mix of prose and anustubh-meter poetry verses.

Kamasutra acknowledges the Hindu concept of purusharthas, and lists desire, sexuality, and emotional fulfillment as one of the proper goals of life. It discussed methods for courtship, training in the arts to be socially engaging, finding a partner, flirting, maintaining power in a married life, when and how to commit adultery, sexual positions, and other topics. The text majorly dealt with the philosophy and theory of love, what triggers desire, what sustains it, and how and when it is good or bad