num_pages: 304
description: 'When the wheel of sexual ecstasy is in full motion, there is no textbook at all &amp; no order.' 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 - &amp; also about the positions in sexual intercourse. It was composed in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India, sometime in the third century CE. It combines an encyclopaedic coverage of all imaginable aspects of sex with a closely observed sexual psychology &amp; a dramatic, novelistic narrative of seduction, consummation &amp; disentanglement. Best known in English thru the highly mannered, padded &amp; 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 &amp; most famous Sanskrit commentary (13th century) &amp; from a 20th-century Hindi commentary, &amp; explanatory notes by the two translators.
language: English
title: Kamasutra
titlecomplete: Kamasutra
genres: Religion, Erotica, Reference, Philosophy, Spirituality, Nonfiction, India, Classics, Sexuality, History
ratings_count: 6296
publisher: Oxford University Press