What is the Kamasutra?

The Kamasutra is one of the texts that is the most the subject of fantasies and misconceptions.

Considered in the West as an erotic book, a catalog of sexual positions, the Kama Sutra is in fact a founding text of medieval Hinduism.

Far from being interested only in sex, it is a manual of life composed of seven books divided into thirty-six chapters, written in the 4th century whose purpose is to pay homage to the three objectives of life on dharma (virtue), artha (material well-being) and kâma (love and pleasure).

It is a text that covers all areas of knowledge, from the art of writing to music to dancing, how to live your life, how to earn money.

It shows how, keeping the erotic aspect in mind, one can achieve spiritual awakening...

For Kama brings the enjoyment that people can give themselves through the five senses, mind and soul.

Often lavishly illustrated with miniatures, it offers advice on seduction and for a harmonious life as a couple, in particular through sexual positions (which are however only a chapter of the book strictly speaking), intended for the origin to the Indian aristocracy.

This is a book of great interest for the study of life in ancient India.

The Kâmasûtra or Kâmashâstra is the oldest Sanskrit text that has come down to us on the art of love.

Its title is made up of two words that are important to understand. "Kama" means "desire", "love", "passion", it is also one of the names of the god of carnal love, Indian equivalent of Eros or Cupid.

The second term "sutra" has the first meaning "thread", "cord".

It also designates in Hindu scholarly literature a rule or recommendation expressed through a brief formula, but also a philosophical or religious treatise from which an aphorism derives.

From the Hindu point of view, the Kamasutra is indeed a treatise that aims to codify amorous conduct.

There are, for example, recommendations like this: "reasonable people who know the importance of virtue, money and pleasure as well as conventions social, do not get carried away by passion » Kamasutra 7.2.53.

Originally, the Kâmasûtra was essentially intended for men and courtesans: it describes the sexual act and the love relationship according to the duties and expectations of each of the partners.

However, the book also gives advice to women and couples and indicates that men were not bound to have sex alone, but also had to master kissing, caressing, biting and scratching.

It describes about twenty positions, but also the behavior to be held by the partners to then leave room for their imagination.

History of its design

It was probably composed in northern India around the 4th century AD and is attributed to the Brahman Vatsayana Mallanaga.

Like most Sanskrit treatises on philosophy, mythology or the arts, the Kamasutra is part of a framework narrative and is presented as the summary of a much more important text, revealed in a mythical and lost past over time.

The author of the text presents himself as the guarantor and transmitter of the universal and eternal principles set out in the aforementioned text.

However, this introduction would not only be a literary trick, but the expression of a reality for the writer of the text

It seems, indeed, that Vatsayana wrote this work because various treatises on "erotic science" by the old masters had become inaccessible.

The first of these treatises contained a thousand chapters and a human life would not have sufficed to study it!

It was therefore summarized and reworked several times until it finally became incomprehensible.

So the science of love, less and less faithfully transmitted, was threatened with disappearance.

Wanting to avoid this, Vatsayana therefore undertook to make a compilation for the use of his contemporaries: the famous Kamasutra.

Book composition and structure

The Kâmasûtra is not only devoted to sex, but also deals with the ways and arts of living that a cultured person should know.

It discusses, for example, the use of music, food, perfumes...

Like any traditional knowledge that we wish to codify, the Kamasutra seeks to give a systematic representation of all aspects of love.

Some sections concern women and the sixth volume is devoted to courtesans.

The treatise begins with generalities where the author pays homage to the sages of the past, praises the "purposes of man" warns that "those who indulge excessively in the sexual life destroy themselves as well as their loved ones" and finally gives various advice to the readers of the book.

Indeed those who are not courtesans must also study theory and practice.

But they must do so in secret, initiated by "a woman accustomed to sleeping with men, a friend already initiated, a trustworthy old servant, or even a beggar nun known for a long time. »

It also indicates that the erotic art includes subsidiary sciences known as the "sixty-four arts" (Kala), among which are activities as diverse as music, dance, drawing, making bouquets of flowers, preparing perfumes, charms and magic, manicure, needlework, agriculture, riddles, knowledge of local and foreign languages ​​etc…

The following books deal successively with the art of seduction, the choice of a wife, the duties and different states of married women, relationships with other people's wives, i.e. adultery, – taught, specifies Vatsayana, not with the aim of encouraging people to commit it, but on the contrary in order to thwart the maneuvers of possible rivals.

The kâma sûtra is an art of love above all between a man and a woman.

The sexual postures, so often presented in the West, are only a "tiny" part of the work.

They are recipes to enhance the love life of the couple for the purpose of real love harmony.

Kamasutra and Yoga

The Kama Sutra emphasizes the fluidity of romantic relationships, just as Yoga emphasizes the fluidity of movement.

This means holding each position for a while and then changing it smoothly. Movements should be slow and fluid, gradually increasing your flexibility.

Natha Yoga, the Way of the Transmitter (the one who transmits the teaching) and the oldest transmission line of Yoga, based on Tantrism, whose foundation is the union of Shiva and Shakti.

◦ Shiva is the symbol of Universal Consciousness

◦ Shakti is the symbol of Universal Energy

Consciousness is the origin, the "all".

It is immobile and eternal.

It reveals and is revealed through all the manifestations of creation: objects, living beings, mental states,...

Energy is the dynamic and changing side.

It is this dynamism that allows Consciousness to reveal itself.

If Shiva represents eternal joy, the changeless "all", Shakti is the movement through which consciousness manifests through the birth, expansion, then retraction (decline) and disappearance of all things .

For tantrics, Shiva and Shakti are inseparable, they are one, united since always and forever.

The initiation to tantric sex allows nowadays to relearn how to make love in full consciousness and to practice many postures for two allowing the physical, spiritual unity and the two souls of the couple.