More significantly, these terms had Orientalist implications for most English readers. The use of any Sanskrit term at all in place of an English equivalent anthropologized sex, distanced it, made it safe for English readers by assuring them, or pretending to assure them, that the text was not about real sexual organs, their sexual organs, but merely about the appendages of weird, dark people far away. This move dodged ‘the smell of obscenity’ through the same logic that allowed National Geographic to depict the bare breasts of black African women long before it became respectable to show white women’s breasts in Playboy.,88 It enabled the authors to pretend that the book was not obscene because it was about India, when they really thought it was about sex, and knew that English readers would think so too.
In fact, the Burton translation is most accurate in the sections of Book Two that deal with the sexual positions, the topic for which the book became famous. Can this relative accuracy be explained by the fact that this is the part of the book most closely glossed by the Anangaranga? Or was it because this was what Burton cared about most, or worked on most carefully? Or was it because sex is easier to understand, being universal, than the cultural information that is specific to India? For the book is, really, about India after all, and this area, the realm of South Asian cultural assumptions built into the text, is where the Burton translation goes wrong most often.
Other Translations
Several other English translations have been published in India, some of them based on the Burton translation, some apparently original works, but these are not generally available outside India, nor is any of them a significant improvement on the Burton translation. In particular, most of the Indian translations lack the frankness about sexual matters that is the strong point of the Burton translation.89 Two French translations (by Isidore Liseux in 1883 and by Pierre Eugène Lemairesse in 1891) were basically translations of the Burton translation. (Lemairesse also folded in other bits of erotic literature and used, as a preface, a text by the Marquis de Sade.) An original, far more accurate, and complete German translation, of both the text and Yashodhara’s commentary, was published by Richard Schmidt in 1897.90 Reprinted several times, it remains the best European translation, though its usefulness in our day is somewhat impaired by Schmidt’s decision to haul out a Latin fig leaf to cover up what Monty Python used to call the naughty bits, mostly in Book Two. It was general practice in the nineteenth century to castrate the ‘obscene’ parts of Sanskrit texts (as Griffith did) or to translate them into Latin, and Schmidt’s fastidiousness makes all the more remarkable the Burton translation’s courage in rendering everything into English (everything but lingam and yoni). In fact, Burton and Arbuthnot remarked, ‘It was at first our intention, after rendering the [Anangaranga] into English, to dress it up in Latin, that it might not fall into the hands of the vulgar’,91 but they decided to render it all into English, and damn the torpedoes.92 Schmidt’s translation lacks notes, for which he more than compensated by writing two massive and still authoritative books about sex in ancient India.93 Klaus Mylius, in 1987, rendered the entire text (though not the commentary) into German, with excellent notes, producing a translation sometimes more accurate than Schmidt’s, though never as readable.
The most recent full translation into English (1994) is an English rendering of Alain Daniélou’s 1992 French edition, complete with excerpts from both Yashodhara and Devadatta Shastri. This translation is sometimes ingenious (as we saw in Daniélou’s reading of the genders in the passage about women playing the roles of men) but often departs too far from what the Sanskrit will allow.94 Whatever its flaws, almost every translation has some ideas that open up a piece of this intriguing text, and in working on it a translator is privileged to stand on the shoulders of giants and pygmies alike, to be able to consult a number of friendly spirits: Vatsyayana/Yashodhara (with the help of various Sanskrit dictionaries); Devadatta Shastri (and a Hindi dictionary or Hindi-speaking friend); Indrajit-Bhide-Arbuthnot-Burton; the many Indian translators, especially Upadhyaya; Schmidt (and the Latin dictionary); Mylius (and the German dictionary); Syrkin (and the Russian dictionary), and even Daniélou.
The Present Translation
The translators of this edition bring complementary skills and backgrounds to the project: a woman and a man, an American and an Indian, a historian of religions and a psychoanalyst, a Sanskritist and a Hindi-speaker. The basic division of labour was that Wendy Doniger prepared a draft of the Sanskrit text, relevant parts of the Sanskrit commentary, and parts of the explanatory notes; Sudhir Kakar prepared a draft of the relevant parts of the Hindi commentary, shed Hindi insight on Sanskrit dilemmas, and supplied other parts of the explanatory notes. Each of the authors then made suggestions for revisions in the other’s work. Similarly, Kakar drafted ‘Psychology and Culture in the Kamasutra’ in the Introduction, Doniger the rest of the introduction, and again each responded to the work of the other.95
The first task was to decide on a text to translate, for there is no critical edition of the Kamasutra. Burton and Arbuthnot put together manuscripts to establish their text (which we do not have), Schmidt reconstituted his, and we, too, have combined several printed versions, principally those of Shastri and of Goswami, for our own text.96 We have generally used Shastri’s readings of Vatsyayana, and his system of numbering the passages,97 but occasionally Goswami’s readings make better sense, and then we have used them (but continued to follow Shastri’s numbering).98 We have chosen Goswami’s readings of Yashodhara more often, though not invariably.99
Our aim was to produce a clear, readable English translation that did not commit the besetting sin of our predecessors, moving the commentary up into the text. In general, we have left the text plain and given the reader the commentator’s reading as one among possible options. Occasionally, however, we did have to expand a pronoun in the text with a noun, sometimes a noun taken from the commentary. Vatsyayana’s non-sexist language,100 for example, here poses a challenge for the English translation. Where Vatsyayana’s pronouns lacked clear referents, we have supplied them; and where the passage assumes that a word or phrase is to be carried over from an earlier line, we have repeated it. For instance, throughout Book Two, especially in Chapters six and seven, it is clear that the woman’s body is the one being manipulated, but it is not always so clear that she, rather than the man, is the one doing the manipulation, since Sanskrit verbs often lack subjects.101 Yet the commentary suggests the gender of the subject in many verses, the author specifies it in others, and the context often strongly suggests a male agent or a female agent in passages adjacent to those that are ambiguous.102 Vatsyayana assures us, for instance, that the basic pattern is for the man to slap and the woman to moan [2.7.23], and where there are pronouns or gendered noun-endings, they confirm this pattern, as does the commentary.103 We have therefore supplied pronouns or possessive pronomial adjectives, in keeping with this pattern, to make sense of certain passages.104 With these exceptions, however, we strove to keep the bare bones of the text separate from the commentary that fleshes it out.
Though the text often uses subjunctive or optative forms, we have generally translated the verbs in the indicative, which conveys the flavour of a novel or a play better than the subjunctive appropriate to a manual of instruction. (Burton usually uses an optative ‘should’, making the text sound moralistic where it is descriptive.) For Vatsyayana’s ‘should’ is often lodged on an assumption of ‘is’, as if to say, ‘If you decide to do this, you should do it like this … but you may not want to do it at all.’
We translated every Sanskrit word into English (if you count Brahmin as an English word), and this decision invariably involved some compromises. The English names of the more obscure plants, flowers, and drugs are very approximate indeed; as in a game of telephone, we moved first from the Sanskrit to Monier-Williams’s Latin approximation, and then, since the rough Latin equivalents would hardly have any more meaning for most readers than the Sanskrit originals, we co
nsulted botanical dictionaries to find English names by which the plants were known. The slippage at both points of transition effectively doubled the margin of error, giving the reader only an impressionistic, rough idea of the substances involved. But we thought that even that blur was preferable to the only alternative, which was to leave the words in incomprehensible Sanskrit or Latin. (Readers who want to know the original Sanskrit terms can find them in the Glossary.) We therefore warn the reader that ointments made following the recipes in this book will probably not have the same effects that were achieved by people who used the Sanskrit recipes in ancient India.
Sexually Explicit Vocabulary
A basic and pervasive problem was the translation of the words for sex, because, just as Eskimos are (apocryphally, apparently) said to have many more words for snow than we Anglos do, Sanskrit certainly has far more words for sex. The challenge is compounded by English’s lack of a register corresponding to the matter-of-fact terminology of the Sanskrit text, a register midway between the obscene and the medical. The obscene will jar the English-speaking reader in an inappropriate way, and in any case, in this post-rap-and-David-Mamet age, the people who do use the word ‘fuck’ seldom use it to designate the sexual act. The medical is equally inappropriate for this imaginative and elegant text; though the use of ‘glans’ and ‘foreskin’ was unavoidable in the highly explicit description of fellatio, we have relegated the terms ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’ to the commentaries (and to Book Seven, which has a very different tone from the rest of the book); in the text proper, we have used terms like ‘pelvis’, ‘sexual organ’, or ‘between the legs’. The Kamasutra itself notes [2.1.32] that there are numerous synonyms for both the sexual act and sexual pleasure. This is also true, if less true, of English, and in both languages, a single term may have different connotations. We hope that the text’s own awareness of this problem justifies our practice of, on the one hand, translating several different Sanskrit nouns and verbs by one English word (such as ‘sex’ or ‘pleasure’) and, on the other hand, using several different English words to translate a single Sanskrit word (such as priti). For Sanskrit intermingles concepts of passion, love, and pleasure, which English tends to hold separate. Moreover, just as dharma is context-sensitive in Manu, requiring many different translations, so the words for sex/love/passion are context-sensitive in the Kamasutra, requiring many different English words.
Kama sometimes signifies ‘pleasure’, sometimes ‘desire’, sometimes ‘a sexual affair’, sometimes ‘sexual pleasure’, and sometimes just ‘sex’, thus overlapping with other terms such as priti (also pleasure, but also, sometimes, love, satisfaction, erotic joy, affection, or orgasm), anuraga (love for someone) and rata (the sexual act, sexual pleasure, or climax). We have generally used the English terms ‘sex’ or ‘making love’ or, sometimes, ‘in bed’, to translate several different Sanskrit terms for the sexual act (primarily surata and samprayoga). Abhiyoga means ‘making advances’ or, occasionally, ‘wooing’; the person who does it is a ‘suitor’. Sanskrit employs the same basic verb [yunj, ‘to join’, cognate with the English ‘yoke’ and ‘yoga’] for both this word and the word for sex (samprayoga), but with the preposition ‘to’ [abhi] for preliminary wooing, and with the prepositions ‘with’ and ‘for’ [sam and pra] for the actual physical act. (A related form, pra-yoga, means ‘practices’ or ‘techniques’ and as a gerundive—prayogya—denotes the woman or man whom someone intends to enjoy sexually, which we have translated as ‘the man [or woman] she [or he] wants’.) Bhava sometimes means ‘emotion’, sometimes ‘orgasm’, sometimes ‘true feelings’ or ‘inclination’; occasionally (as in the title of 2.1 and in 2.1.33) it replaces vega, ‘sexual energy’. Sukha can mean ‘happiness’, or ‘sensual pleasure’, or ‘bliss’, depending on the context. The verb ranj and its derivatives (raga, anuraga, etc.) sometimes means ‘to experience pleasure’ and sometimes ‘to fall in love’ or, in the causative, ‘to give pleasure’ or ‘to make someone fall in love’ or ‘to charm’; sometimes [as in 7.2.1], it is best approximated by the old-fashioned euphemism, ‘to pleasure’.
Contemporary Pleasures of the Text
In India as in Europe, once the Kamasutra became available in English, it was first regarded as pornography masquerading as Orientalism masquerading as literature and then became the object of prurient mockery and satire. Even the 1966 (Berkeley) edition of the Burton translation proclaims, on its cover, ‘Still shocking after 15 centuries! Now complete and unexpurgated!’ Once available only ‘for private circulation’ or ‘for medical use’, the Burton translation is now available online. One website offers The Kamasutra of Pooh, posing stuffed animals in compromising positions (Piglet on Pooh, Pooh mounting Eeyore, and so forth); a later website posed Kermit the Frog in action on an unidentified stuffed animal.105 Lee Siegel offers us a board game, ‘Kamasutra: The Game of Love’, for 2 players, with 6 pawns (the 6 basic sexual sizes, elephant-cow, mare, etc.) and 64 cards. Since there is no patented ‘Kamasutra™’, the title is used for a wide array of products. In India it is the name of a condom. In America it is the name of a wristwatch that displays a different position every hour. The Red Envelope company advertises a ‘Kama Sutra Pleasure Box’ and ‘Kama Sutra Weekender Kit’, collections of oils and creams packaged in containers decorated with quasi-Hindu paintings of embracing couples. An anonymous fourteenth-century Catalan book about sex was published (in 1995) as Le Kamasutra Catalan.106 A cartoon depicts ‘The Kamasutra Relaxasizer Lounger, 165 positions’.107 Cosmopolitan magazine published two editions of its ‘Cosmo Kamasutra’, offering ‘12 brand-new mattress-quaking sex styles’, each with its numerical ‘degree of difficulty’, including positions called ‘the backstairs boogie’, ‘the octopus’, ‘the mermaid’, ‘the spider web’, and ‘the rock’n’ roll’.108 There are numerous books of erotic paintings and/or sculptures called Illustrated Kamasutras,109 including one, by Georges Pichard, in which the woman is attacked with an actual needle, pincer, and scissors.110 (In the film Urban Legend (1998), some giggling girls gleefully discover ‘an early edition of the Kamasutra, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS!!!’) There are cartoon Kamasutras, in which the god Shiva plays a central role.111 The Palm Pilot™ company has made available a pocket Sutra, ‘The Kama Sutra in the palm of your hand’, consisting of a very loose translation of parts of Book Two. A book called The Popup Kamasutra failed to take full advantage of the possibilities of this genre; the whole couple pops up.
The Onion ran a satire about a couple whose ‘inability to execute The Totally Auspicious Position along with countless other ancient Indian erotic positions, took them to new heights of sexual dissatisfaction … Sue was unable to clench her Yoni (vagina) tightly enough around Harold’s Lingam and fell off …’112 Another satire proposes ‘a Kama Sutra that is in line with a postpatriarchal, post-colonial, postgender, and perhaps even postcoital world’.113 Here are some high points:
If the man feels that the Bull Elephant embrace is inappropriate—if it, for example, represents a macho stereotype that he is trying to transcend—he should express this perspective and explain why the Howler Monkey embrace would make him feel more comfortable …. When the lovers decide to join in any of the Animal Embraces mentioned above, and in others such as The Vulture Has Second Thoughts, The Mule Escapes Exploitation, and The Antelopes Form a Support Group, they first enter into deep meditation, facing one another, breathing deeply, and … then call into question the very idea of using animal names to describe human sexual activities. Rejecting this subtle mode of domination of the natural world, they separate, enter once again into profound meditation, and fall asleep. … As the moment of union approaches, however, their awareness grows that … vows that suggest that Shiva and Shakti are ‘primordial’ or ‘universal’ may be deeply offensive to members of other faith communities. In a spirit of profound respect for religious pluralism, they draw apart, and the man’s lingam withers.114
Feminism, ecology, and religious pluralism, all nobl
e causes, can be tacked onto the sexist, ecologically innocent, and narrowly Hindu text; but the lingam withers.
What use is the Kamasutra? In our time, when sexually explicit novels, films, and instruction manuals are available everywhere, the parts of the Kamasutra that have previously been most useful are now the least useful: the positions described in Book Two. Today they can inspire only a few reactions: ‘I already do that’ or ‘I’ve thought of doing that’ or ‘I never thought of that, and wouldn’t want to try it now’ or ‘I never thought of doing that, and I think I’ll try it now.’ Book Seven, too, is hardly practical. Yashodhara’s comment on 7.1.25 (‘Do this in such a way that the woman you want does not realize, “A man with something spread on his penis is making love to me” ’) has inspired at least one reader to remark, ‘Any woman who would let you make love to her with all that stuff smeared on you would have to be madly in love with you already.’ Some of it, like the magic formulas, remains truly foreign to us, or accessible only through rather distant analogies. Betel, for instance, such a basic part of the erotic scene in ancient India, can best be understood by analogy with the overtones that champagne has in Europe, or the postcoital cigarette. It evokes the cigarette foreplay of Bogart and Bacall in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep or the cigarette sublimation shared by Bette Davis and Paul Heinreid in Now Voyager. Betel, the life in the harem, the world of courtesans—these parts of the text make you think, ‘How very different these people are from us.’
But then you come across the passage in which the boy teases the girl when they are swimming together, diving down and coming up near her, touching her, and then diving down again [3.4.6], and you are in familiar personal territory. You must surely also recognize the man who tells the woman on whom he’s set his sights ‘about an erotic dream, pretending that it was about another woman’ [3.4.9], and the woman who does the same thing [5.4.54]. Sometimes the unfamiliar and the familiar are cheek by jowl; the culture-specific list of women the wife must not associate with (including a Buddhist nun and a magician who uses love-sorcery worked with roots [4.1.9]) is followed in the very next passage by the woman who is cooking for her man and finds out, ‘This is what he likes, this is what he hates, this is good for him, this is bad for him’, a consideration that surely resonates with many contemporary anglophone readers.
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