7.1.27 Presumably this powder is used in the same way as the one in 7.1.26.
7.1.32 There is a pun here: the demigods are Gandharvas (fertility deities that validate love-marriages; see 3.5.18) who like an ointment made with a special perfume (gandha, in Sanskrit).
7.1.33 Another pun: the acacia tree is called the Naga tree, and the semi-serpents are nagas (a word that also means ‘cobra’ and ‘elephant’), serpents from the waist down and human-like from the waist up. The panic-seed plant (priyangu) is said to put forth blossoms at a woman’s touch, a play on the word priya, which means ‘love’ or ‘pleasure’.
7.1.34 The marigold plant is the bhringaraja, literally ‘king of the bees’. These eye-salves (which are also described at 5.6.24–5) work by projection: you put them on your own eyes, like eyeshadow or eyeliner, and they distort the vision of the people that you look at or that look at you.
7.1.43–4 The ‘and so forth, as above’, is in the text.
7.1.45 The exact amounts of the measurements given in the text are uncertain, though their relative size is generally agreed upon: 1 prastha = 32 palas, and 1 pala = 4 karshas. If we accept one educated guess that a karsha weighs 11 grams, or approximately half an ounce (and, therefore, that a pala = 44 grams, or 2 ounces, and a prastha = 64 ounces, or 4 lb.), this mixture consists of 4 ounces each of butter, honey, sugar, and licorice, half an ounce of wine-palm hemp, and 64 ounces of milk.
7.1.46–7 Spring is the season that begins when the moon is in the constellation of Paushya.
7.1.48 Here we are guessing that the two palas that the text prescribes weigh 2 ounces apiece.
7.1.49 The Veda of Long Life is the Ayurveda, the general science of medicine that is expounded in several texts; and the Veda is the Atharva Veda, the fourth Veda, a specific text, which deals with magic.
7.2.2 This passage, like most of this section with the exception of 7.2.3, seems to refer to the kindling of the woman’s passion when the man cannot satisfy her.
7.2.4 Sex tools include dildos (used instead of a penis), bracelets or rings (put on a penis), sheaths (put over and around a penis), and objects inserted through a hole pierced in the penis. Dildos are described in 5.6.2 and elsewhere in the Kamasutra where women use them with other women. Passages 7.2.4–7 may apply to either dildos or bracelets; passages 7.2.8–11 describe bracelets; 7.2.12 describes a sheath; 7.2.13 describes dildos; and passages 7.2.14–24 describe the piercing and its accoutrements.
7.2.6 The adjective used here for ‘violent’, dhrishnu, is derived from the verb connoting sexual violence or rape.
7.2.9 The word for ‘wraparound’ is also used for the robe of a Buddhist monk, perhaps one of V’s jokes about religion.
[Y] 7.2.12 Y assumes that the size of the penis is what determines the force with which this sheath is employed, but V might have had in mind the size of the vagina, as Y does in 7.2.24. Y also assumes that the ‘balls’ are tiny bumps that provide friction, as in 7.2.8; but here the ‘balls’ appear to be the testicles.
7.2.16–17 N. N. Bhattacharya’s comment on these two passages is telling: ‘A man with some commonsense must admit that by keeping the perforated organ under water the wound can only be made poisonous in which pus will be formed and that it is impossible to make sexual intercourse in such a condition on the very day when the perforation is made. There is no reason to believe that the ancient peoples did not know such simple things.’ (History of Indian Erotic Literature, 91).
7.2.24 The devices may be soft or hard, and they may be rough or smooth.
7.2.25 In his translation of the Anangaranga, Burton remarks on ‘the application of insects, as it is practised by some savage races; and all Orientalists will remember the tale of the old Brahman, whose young wife insisted upon his pudendum being again stung by a wasp’ (p. 47).
7.2.33 Who smears these substances on the woman? The woman herself? Her lover who wants to destroy a rival lover? Or the man who wants to break out of her thrall? In the first two cases, though not in the last, the woman must acquiesce in this project. In 7.2.34, however, the woman must surely be the one who knowingly bathes in the magic substances and so must be the one who wants to destroy the man’s passion for her.
7.2.36–7 Presumably these ointments, like the one in 7.2.33, are smeared on the woman’s vagina, to make it contract or expand, as in 2.6.1–2.
7.2.38–40 Presumably you put this mixture on your own hair; but it might be used in some other way to affect the hair on someone else’s head. The same applies to the lip in 7.2.41–2.
7.2.54 Here V makes starkly explicit what he has in fact done at the end of most of the other books, too: rescinded the apparent licence given by the rest of the book.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Editions of the Kamasutra (in chronological order)
1891 Edited by Pandit Durgaprasad. Bombay.
1912 Kamasutra of Vatsyayana, with the commentary of Yashodhara. Edited by Sri Damodar Lai Goswami, Varanasi: Kashi Sanskrit Series, 29.
1934 Kamasutra of Vatsyayana, with the commentary of Yashodhara. Edited with the Hindi ‘Purushartha’ commentary by Madhavacharya, Bombay: Lakshmivenkateshvara Steam Press.
1964 Kamasutra of Vatsyayana, with the commentary of Yashodhara. Edited with the Hindi ‘Jaya’ commentary by Devadatta Shastri. Kashi Sanskrit Series, 29. Varanasi: Chaukhambha Sanskrit Sansthan.
1997 Kamasutra of Vatsyayana, with the commentary of Yashodhara. Edited with the Hindi ‘Jaya’ commentary by Ramanand Sharma, Bitthaldas Sanskrit Series, 4, Varanasi: Krishnadas Academy.
Translations of the Kamasutra (in chronological order within each language)
Into English
[1883] The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. Translated by Sir Richard Burton and F. F. Arbuthnot. Foreword by Santha Rama Rau, Introduction by John W. Spellman, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1962.
—— ed., with a preface, W. G. Archer, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1963.
—— ed. John Muirhead-Gould, Introduction by Dom Moraes, London: Panther Books, 1963.
—— ed., with a preface, W. G. Archer, Introduction by K. M. Panikkar, New York: Berkeley Books, 1966.
1921 K. Rangaswami Iyengar, Lahore: Punjab Sanskrit Book Depot.
1943 B. N. Basu, The Hindu Art of Love, rev. S. L. Ghosh, Calcutta: Medical Book Company.
1946 Santosh Kumar Mukherji, Calcutta.
1946 Umendra Verma, Complete and Unexpurgated: The Most Comprehensive Manual ever written on the Hindu Art and Techniques of Love, special illustrated edition, Lahore.
1961 S. C. Upadhyaya, Bombay: Taraporevala’s Treasure House of Books. Illustrated.
1963 Vipin Shastri, Delhi.
1982 M. R. Anand and L. Dane, Delhi.
1994 From the [1992] French edition. Alain Daniélou, The Complete Kama Sutra, Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press.
Into French, German, Italian, and Russian
1883 Isidore Liseux. Kama Sutra de Vatsyayana. Manuel d’Erotologie Hindoue, Paris: Georges-Anquetil, 1925 (Varanasi, 1883).
1891 Pierre Eugène Lemairesse, Paris (repr. 1952).
1992 Alain Daniélou, Kama Sutra. Le Bréviaire de l’Amour. Traité d’érotisme de Vatsyayana. Commentaire Jayamangala en sanskrit de Yashodhara. Extraits d’un commentaire en hindi de Devadatta Shastri, Paris: Editions du Rocher.
1897 Richard Schmidt. Das Kamasutram des Vatsyayana. Die indische ars amatoria, nebst dem vollständigen Kommentare (Jayamangala) des Yasodhara. Aus dem Sanskrit übersetzt und herausgegeben von Richard Schmidt, Leipzig; 2nd edition Leipzig, 1900; rev. Berlin, 1907, 1912, 1920, 1922 … 1956.
1987 Klaus Mylius. Mallanaga Vatsyayana: Das Kamasutra, übersetzt von Klaus Mylius, Verlag Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig, 1987.
1945 Antonio Velini. I kamasutra, codice indiano dell’ amore; nella traduzione integrale di Antonio Velini. Rome: De Carlo, 1945.
1993 Alexander Y. Syrkin. Vatsyayana Mallanaga Kamasutra, perevod s sanskrita, vstypitelnaya statya i kommentarii, Moscow: Nauka.
Ot
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Amarushataka, with the commentary of Arjunavarmadeva, Bombay: Nirnayasagara Press, 1954.
Anangaranga of Kalyanamalla, Delhi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Pratishthana, 1988.
Arthashastra of Kautilya, critical edition, ed. R. P. Kangle, Bombay: University of Bombay, 1960.
Baudhayana Dharmasutra, in Dharmasutras, trans. Patrick Olivelle.
Dharmasutras: The Law Codes of Apastamba, Gautama, Baudhayana, and Vasistha, trans. Patrick Olivelle, World’s Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Kathasaritsagara, Bombay: Nirnara Sagara Press, 1930. English translation: The Ocean of Story, ed. N. M. Penzer, trans. C. W. Tawney, 10 vols, London: Chas. J. Sawyer, 1924.
Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa, in The Complete Works of Kalidasa, ed. V. P. Joshi, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976.
Laws of Manu (Manusmrti), ed. Harikrishna Jayantakrishna Dave, Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Series, 29 ff., 1972–91.
Laws of Manu, trans. Wendy Doniger, with Brian K. Smith, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991.
Manu. See The Laws of Manu.
Natyashastra of Bharata Muni, ed. M. M. Batuk Nath Sharma and M. M. Baldeva Upadhyaya, Varanasi: Chaukhamba, Kashi Sanskrit Series, 60, 1929.
Ocean of Story. See Kathasaritsagara.
Rig Veda, with the commentary of Sayana, 6 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1890–92. See also Griffith.
—— trans. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda: An Anthology, 108 Hymns Translated from the Sanskrit, Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1981.
Shiva Purana, Varanasi: Pandita Pushtakalaya, 1964.
Shakuntala (Abhijnanashakuntalam) of Kalidasa, in The Complete Works of Kalidasa, ed. V. P. Joshi, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976.
Shatapatha Brahmana, Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, 1964.
Skanda Purana, Bombay: Shree Venkateshvara Steam Press, 1867.
Upanishads. In Upanisads, trans. Patrick Olivelle, World’s Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Vasishtha Dharmasutra, in Dharmasutras, trans. Olivelle.
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