The Kamasutra is an ancient Indian treatise on the art of love. However, today most people consider the Kamasutra to be something like a collection of poses for sex.
What is the Kamasutra
The word "Kamasutra" consists of two parts: "kama" - the sphere of emotions and sensuality and "sutra" - instruction, body of knowledge, teaching. Thus, the Kamasutra is, in fact, a textbook on the art of expressing emotions, love and sex.
The author of the Kamasutra was the Indian philosopher Mallanaga Vatsyayana. By the way, the full title of the treatise sounds like "Vatsyayana Kama Sutra", that is, "instruction on the cameo, written by Vatsyayana." The philosopher himself lived approximately 3-4 centuries AD.
The original version of the treatise was not illustrated. Most of the positions in it are described rather briefly, and some are just named. Erotic miniatures, which are most often called "illustrations for the Kamasutra", were actually created in Mongolia and India much later. However, modern publishers often prefer to illustrate the book with photographs, rather than select miniatures.
Today the Kamasutra is still the most famous and one of the most complete manuals on sexual practice.
The treatise is a literary and historical document that gives an idea of the customs and practices that existed in India, and not only sexual, but also social.
Positions of the Kamasutra
In total, the Kamasutra has seven sections, 49 parts and 64 chapters. In fact, only one section is devoted to the actual sexual positions - the second - "On the love connection." According to the author, there are eight ways to have sex, eight positions in each - a total of 64 "arts", or positions. Some of them, by the way, are quite difficult to execute.
Sexual practices account for about one-fifth of the entire treatise. Actually, only three chapters tell about the poses. It is this part that is best known in popular culture. It is she who is most often translated into different languages, republished, richly illustrated, and many people believe that this is the whole book. It is even difficult to say how many "modernized" versions of the Kama Sutra exist today, and many of them are already very far from the original.
Vatsyayana believed that in itself there is nothing reprehensible about sex, it is a kind of "Divine unity", but having sex frivolously, according to the author, should not be, it is sinful.
The rest of the sections (that is, most of the book) talk about how you need to behave in order to be a good citizen, the author's reasoning about the relationship between men and women is presented.
Numbering of chapters in the Kamasutra
The first section tells about love, about the place it occupies in a person's life. The second is the already mentioned "On love connection". In addition to the positions themselves, it describes in detail the different types of kissing, caressing and variations in sexual behavior (including unusual types of sex). The third chapter talks about courtship and wedding traditions. The fourth contains instructions for married women. The rest of the chapters talk about seduction, getters and how to charm people, how to restore sex drive.
