Unlike Doniger’s previous book, “The Hindus,” which notched up over 1000 pages, her latest offering is a slim 184-pager. Every page is rich in insights and Doniger’s characteristic wit, as she unravels the book that has become synonymous with sexuality.
This is exactly the kind of stereotype that Doniger is out to break in the book. She explained, “Only one out of the seven books in the Kamasutra is about the sexual act. The Kamasutra isn’t nearly as sexy as people think it is, and the rest of India is much more sexy than people think it is.” Doniger portrays a book as a representation of the social milieu in India at the time. It is a guide to living for “the man about town.”
Doniger points out in her book that the Kamasutra was not an outlier in India’s canon of historical literature. India had a rich tradition of appreciation for the erotic art, epitomized in the popular temples of Khajuraho and Konark. In fact, she treats the Kamasutra not as a single text, but as part of a troika, which also includes the Dharmashastra and Chanakya’s Arthashastra. Scholars have previously commented on the fact that the Arthashastra, a book on economics, seems to bear close resemblance to the Kamasutra, in terms of language and content. Doniger takes this point and explores it even further.
Doniger also takes a dig at early translations of the Kamasutra, especially the one by Richard Burton, an English army man who wrote of his travels around the world and the many adventures he had. Burton’s English and Hindi version — “Kamsutra” — is the most popular translation today among the general public, primarily because it is among the oldest and also freely available on the Internet.
All things considered, Doniger’s book is a refreshing take on a widely misunderstood book. Such a study was long overdue, and will serve to get the Kamasutra out of the gutter press and back onto everyone’s book shelves.
The book is published by Oxford University Press, and was published in March 2016.
