The Kama Sutra is an ancient Sanskrit text, composed by the fourth-century Hindu sage Vatsyayana, that provides guidance and insight into the art of love. Because the text grew out of an oral tradition, it consists of aphoristic verses (sutras), which were easily memorized but difficult to understand without the addition of explanations and images. First translated into English by Sir Richard Burton at the end of the nineteenth century, this text is available in many editions, none of them illustrated as lavishly as this volume and none providing such a rich survey of nearly two thousand years of Indian sensual art.
These diverse visual interpretations of the text, which depict explicit instructions regarding correct and incorrect sexual behavior during courtship and marriage - and other, more illicit situations - range from temple architecture and bronze sculpture to medieval court painting and cave frescoes. The examples presented here are brilliantly reproduced and accompanied by explanatory text discussing the context in which these images were created. Alongside the reproductions are relevant Sanskrit verses and ancient commentaries, with new translations by Andrea Marion Pinkney and excerpts from the Burton translation.
This elaborate presentation of the Kama Sutra not only provides visual illustrations of the world's most famous erotic text, but it also reveals the dramatic beauty of Indian erotic art and the range of artistic response to the Kama Sutra through the centuries.