The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Paperback – December 25, 2011

Kama Sutra from a sacred perspective, interesting and worthy to read. I like this book and I learned a great deal of things related to sexual abilities before bed, and on the way to it. Understanding women thinking way through their acting and speaking way. The book is really good, sorry for those who are only looking for images, and detailed explanations related to sex and positions. The book has all that, but we have to get the whole picture. Recommend it.

How little has changed in 2,000 years. The new translation of "Kama Sutra" 2 millennia after Vatsyayana wrote it is of great interest for many reasons, not the least of which is its description of the roles that men and women played in relation to one another in India. Our sexual behaviors, our division of labor with regard to gender, our vanities and jealousies -- and the need to manage these -- are all resoundingly familiar even in this new and wondrous millennium that bears little resemblance to Vatsyayana's world. Or so we might have assumed.Penguin has released, in time for Valentine's Day, a very handsome paperback edition of "Kama Sutra" translated by A.N.D. Haksar. The sexy cover (pull out both flaps to get the full effect) by Malika Favre is clever, lively and tongue in cheek. This is the only time you'll encounter the sexual positions that have become synonymous with this book, though this time the positions serve double-duty. The rest is up to the reader to figure out.There are seven books within "Kama Sutra," and only chapter two, Sexual Union, gets specific about the methods of lovemaking. There are a lot of variables involved in getting to the actual union. And there are eight parts of sexual union (embracing, kissing, scratching, biting, coition, moaning, reversing roles and oral sex) and the eight varieties of each of those. The other books in "Kama Sutra" deal with winning a wife and her slow seduction (for she is likely a virgin), the first or only wife, the complexities of the man's other wives, the courtesan and "esoteric matters" including attractiveness and revival of passion.It is interesting to note that little is known about the author. He studied, observed and wrote while living a "celibate's life in full meditation." He was most likely from Madhya Desha, considered the cultural heartland of India at the time. He created a book of manners, with prescribed behaviors even for times when a woman has no choice but to act upon her jealousies or when a man wants to mark a woman with his bite. Note, as well, that whatever he does to her, she can do to him in return -- with twice the vigor.This book does have a place in our current literature and it can continue to inform our thinking about sexuality. It's based on the basics of arousal and copulation and nothing much has changed in that regard. In the traditional roles of man and woman, a man has certain duties to perform and, in turn, a woman plays her own provocative role. Anyone reading Jamie Bufalino's weekly column, "Get Naked," in the magazine Time Out New York, will hear echoes of "Kama Sutra" every week. Bufalino might even have a copy in his back pocket.