from The Kama Sutra

VATSYAYANA

The Kama Sutra is the greatest sex manual ever written. Compiled in the fourth century from texts dating back to 800 B.C., its depth and breadth are staggering. With chapters on, among other things, scratching, biting, squeezing, caressing, screwing, fellating, relaxing, seducing, meeting your wife, meeting other men’s wives, pandering, prostituting, breaking up, making up, making better, and making bigger, it covers all the sexual bases, plus a few you might not have known about—for example, can you name the eight different types of marks that can be left with fingernails?

The diversity of sexual practices in the Kama Sutra reflects the great number of Indian subcultures from which its compiler drew his information. In some regions cunnilingus and fellatio are common, in others forbidden. In some places men dress as women and work as prostitutes; in other places there aren’t prostitutes at all. Sodomy tends only to take place in the south, whereas in the north the women don’t even like to kiss. Finally, “in country villages” and in Koshala (a matriarchal society), women like violent sex and dildos and often hide a multitude of young men in their quarters to “satiate [their] desires, either one by one, or as a group.” Is that what they mean by the wisdom of the ancients?

Among my favorite sections is the one on penis enlargement. The surest technique seems to be that of taking the hairs of the shuka insect, mixing them with oil, and then rubbing them on the penis for ten consecutive nights. When the penis swells, its owner should sleep face downward on a wooden bed with a hole to let the perturbed member hang through. Various cooling mixtures are then employed to ease the accompanying pain, and once the man feels okay again the swelling endures for life. Sounds good, right? But before you run off to depilate your backyard shukas, take note: the Kama Sutra advises that all techniques for increasing penis size be learned from an expert.

The excerpt that follows is taken from the section on the stimulation of erotic desire. It divides all potential players into six categories, depending on the size of their equipment. What’s marked is the attention given to the pleasure of the woman as well as the man—a concern we don’t expect to find in centuries prior to our own. But the Kama Sutra is just as much for her as for him, and even cites a source as saying that a woman needs to have an orgasm in order to be impregnated. I think the continued propagation of the species during the Victorian period in England disproves the theory, but hey, you can’t knock its intention.

Man is divided into three classes, viz. the hare man, the bull man, and the horse man, according to the size of his lingam [penis]. Woman also, according to the depth of her yoni [vagina], is either a female deer, a mare, or a female elephant. There are thus three equal unions between persons of corresponding dimensions, and there are six unequal unions, when the dimensions do not correspond, or nine in all . . .

There are also nine kinds of union according to the force of passion or carnal desire, as follows: A man is called a man of small passion whose desire at the time of sexual union is not great, whose semen is scanty, and who cannot bear the warm embraces of the female. Those who differ from this temperament are called men of middling passion, while those of intense passion are full of desire. In the same way, women are supposed to have the three degrees of feeling as specified above. Lastly, according to time there are three kinds of men and women, the short-timed, the moderate-timed, and the long-timed; and of these, as in the previous statements, there are nine kinds of union.

But on this last head there is a difference of opinion about the female, which should be stated. Auddalika says, “Females do not emit as males do. The males simply remove their desire, while the females, from their consciousness of desire, feel a certain kind of pleasure, which gives them satisfaction, but it is impossible for them to tell you what kind of pleasure they feel. The fact from which this becomes evident is, that males, when engaged in coition, cease of themselves after emission, and are satisfied, but it is not so with females.”

This opinion is however objected to on the grounds that, if a male be a long-timed, the female loves him the more, but if he be short-timed, she is dissatisfied with him. And this circumstance, some say, would prove that the female emits also.

But this opinion does not hold good, for if it takes a long time to allay a woman’s desire, and during this time she is enjoying great pleasure, it is quite natural then that she should wish for its continuation. And on this subject there is a verse as follows: “By union with men the lust, desire, or passion of women is satisfied, and the pleasure derived from the consciousness of it is called their satisfaction.”

The followers of Babhravya, however, say that the semen of women continues to fall from the beginning of the sexual union to its end, and it is right that it should be so, for if they had no semen there would be no embryo.

To this there is an objection. In the beginning of coition the passion of the woman is middling, and she cannot bear the vigorous thrusts of her lover, but by degrees her passion increases until she ceases to think about her body, and then finally she wishes to stop from further coition.

This objection, however, does not hold good, for even in ordinary things that revolve with great force, such as a potter’s wheel, or a top, we find that the motion at first is slow, but by degrees it becomes very rapid. In the same way the passion of the woman having gradually increased, she has a desire to discontinue coition, when all the semen has fallen away. And there is a verse with regard to this as follows: “The fall of the semen of the man takes place only at the end of coition, while the semen of the woman falls continually, and after the semen of both has all fallen away then they wish for the discontinuance of coition.”

Lastly, Vatsyayana is of opinion that the semen of the female falls in the same way as that of the male.

—translated by Sir Richard F. Burton