Written By Giselle Gulik

Edited By Carly Rabie

You might’ve heard of the Kamasutra as a series of elaborate and near-impossible sex positions that will fill you and your partner with pleasure. However, this is not what the original author, Vatsayana, intended for the text. The original Sanskrit text, believed to be written around 3 C.E., explores not only sex but also lifestyles, class, power, and drug use—elements largely omitted from English translations until the late 20th century. Since Western scholars became aware of the text in the 19th century, the Kamasutra’s true content was deliberately altered by the West, with authors rewriting narratives of desire, power, and sexuality, thereby erasing the complex societal contract described in the text that shaped ancient India. 

Vatsayana, the author of the Kamasutra, remains an elusive figure, with little known about him beyond his work. The text was meant as a guide to achieving a fulfilled life through behavior, especially sexual behavior. Its core values – Dharma (religious law), Artha (worldly wealth), and Kama (pleasure or sensual satisfaction) – formed the foundation of a prosperous existence¹. Although it explores each of these values, its main focus is on the pursuit of Kama, while other texts called the Dharmasutra and Arthasutra focus on Dharma and Artha respectively. In these titles, sutra means thread that holds together, in this case holding knowledge together in the form of a book². The Kamasutra consists of 1,250 verses, over 36 chapters, and 64 sections, structured into seven books³. As a work of dramatic fiction, it explores topics such as adultery, regional sex customs, lovers’ quarrels, courting, seduction, courtesans, queerness, and the “Third Nature” (gender category of individuals who express both or neither masculine and feminine traits), as well as sex positions⁴. Though primarily intended for upper-class, urban, educated men in South Asia⁵, the text held remarkably progressive views on women’s sexual freedom, education, and queer sex acts⁶. Vatsayana argued for female pleasure, desire, and agency, teaching women how to seduce a man and maintain her own sexual satisfaction.

The Kamasutra has gained worldwide recognition since its conception in 3 C.E. In 1883, Sir Richard Burton wrote an English translation that instigated over a century of misinterpretations due to its colonial fixation on erotica, reducing it to the world’s foremost textbook on exclusively sex. He crafted it for his Victorian peers⁷, marking the beginning of the profound misunderstandings that reshaped the text’s global perception. His egregious mistranslations and omissions distorted the original work⁸, reducing it to a manual of sex positions. Even small misinterpretations had significant consequences. For instance, his translation of “lingam” and “yoni”⁹—originally symbols of divine union between the god Shiva and the goddess Parvati—were altered to mean male and female genitalia,¹⁰ stripping them of cultural context. Additionally, Burton erased entire sections that contradicted his rigid Victorian views on gender and sexuality, including discussions affirming the female orgasm¹¹. His translation reinforced colonial narratives that exoticized and “othered” Eastern cultures, portraying Indian sexuality as inherently explicit and hedonistic¹². Until the late 20th century, when Burton’s translation started getting revisited, the West largely knew the Kamasutra as a book of erotic poses, contributing to the erasure of South Asian cultural and sexual identities and exoticizing the East to adhere to his Orientalist views¹³. 

A shift in the West’s understanding of the Kamasutra emerged with Alain Danielou’s 1994 translation, which aimed to depict a period of high civilization and cultural liberty¹⁴. His work restored some of the context Burton had stripped away, but it also introduced its own inaccuracies. Daniélou exaggerated the prominence of queer relationships in ancient India by applying modern Western terms like “lesbian,” which not only misrepresented the original texts’ nuanced portrayals of sexuality but also imposed contemporary Western identities onto a vastly different cultural and historical context. Scholar Michael Sweet later clarified that the text’s references to same-sex intimacy described sexually uninhibited women rather than an established queer identity¹⁵. While Danielou’s translation was a step toward restoring the Kamasutra’s depth, it still contributed to its sensationalized and exoticized Western interpretation of South Asian culture.

By the late 20th century, American popular culture had further commercialized these misinterpretations, marketing the Kamasutra to female audiences as a tool for “spicing up” their sex lives. Magazines like Cosmopolitan popularized the notion that the text was merely an illustrated sex manual. A 1995 Cosmopolitan issue condensed the extensive work into a simplistic illustrated guide to erotic positions, reinforcing misconceptions of Eastern sexuality as hypersexualized and devoid of cultural complexity¹⁶. In 2024, nearly three decades later, the magazine continued to misinterpret the text, publishing “3 Kama Sutra Sex Positions That’ll Level Up Your Connection.”¹⁷ While the article acknowledged some of the text’s broader content¹⁸, it still prioritized sex positions and casual humor, undermining the original work’s depth and seriousness as a cultural artifact. Beyond media, the commercialization of the Kamasutra extended to products like an Indian condom brand named after the text that uses humorous memes to market their product. This further trivializes the text’s significance, reinforcing the sexually explicit aspects and undermining the rest of the work. 

Western-produced interpretations claimed that its many sexual positions are what enhance pleasure, yet Vatsayana emphasized that true desire and intimacy, and ultimately pleasure, stem from personal relationships rather than mechanical sex. His philosophy underscored the interplay of passion and emotion, recognizing that Kama cannot be fully experienced without deeper human connection. The reduction of the text to mere physical technique stripped it of the cultural and philosophical insights Vatsayana sought to convey.

For Vatsayana, a loss of power, agency, and desire diminishes the depth of human intimacy. He viewed sex as more than a biological impulse, advocating for its integration into a refined and pleasurable life. His work warned against unchecked lust, emphasizing the need for passion and emotional connection to cultivate genuine pleasure. This perspective stands in stark contrast to Burton’s portrayal, which reduced the text to a compilation of sex positions, stripping it of its ethical and social dimensions. If Western audiences engaged with the full text rather than its eroticized fragments, they might recognize Vatsayana’s sophisticated understanding of passion and intimacy.

Since Danielou’s translation, scholars such as Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar have worked to restore the original meanings of the Kamasutra. Their 2003 translation, the most accurate to date, highlighted Burton’s profound mistranslations and omissions. Doniger, in her article “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex,” argued that Burton’s distortions stemmed from Victorian purity culture and patriarchal values, which suppressed female agency and erased depictions of queer relationships. Victorian England criminalized homosexuality and restricted women’s pleasure, making Vatsayana’s emphasis on female desire and agency incompatible with Burton’s worldview. In Burton’s time, women’s pleasure was taboo and if a woman stepped outside of societal rules, she would be punished severely including in the most extreme cases, being hanged¹⁹. Unlike the Victorians, Vatsayana knew that the ability to desire, to lust and be lusted after, without fear or restraint, gives a person power over their life. By selectively omitting these themes, Burton reinforced colonial stereotypes that dismissed Eastern cultures as exotic and uncivilized and imposed Victorian values on the text.

Omitting the romantic, emotional, intellectual, and imaginative elements of life and human connection shrinks the world of sensuality–it becomes a bore²⁰. Vatsayana includes a holistic view of life and behavior because he understands the need for depth in human relationships to create excitement and intimacy, and thus passion and desire. He also includes it because he knows the consequences of operating entirely on primal, biological instinct. It would be sex without seduction, drained of excitement and pleasure²¹. Acknowledging pleasure is Vatsayana’s main value, for that reason he named his book after it.

After centuries of mistranslations and misinterpretations, Vatsayana’s Kamasutra is finally beginning to be recognized for its original intent. He illuminated ancient Indian perspectives on desire, pleasure, and societal norms—teachings that Burton deliberately omitted to exoticize the East and undermine the culturally and socially sophisticated dimensions of the text. Though Danielou’s translation sparked interest in reclaiming the Kamasutra’s full scope, it too contributed to its Western sensationalization. The proliferation of gimmicky versions, such as Cosmopolitan’s reproductions, further eroded its original message and cultural significance. Thanks to scholars like Doniger, Kakar, and Jyoti Puri, efforts are underway to restore dignity to the text and challenge the colonial narratives that have overshadowed the richness of the text for centuries.

Bibliography

Adut, Ari. “A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde.” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 1 (July 2005): 213–48.

Doniger, Wendy. “God’s Body, or, The Lingam Made Flesh: Conflicts over the Representation of the Sexual Body of the Hindu God Shiva.” Social Research 78, no. 2 (2011): 4850508.

Doniger, Wendy. “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex.” The Kenyon Review, New Series, 25, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 18–37.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. 1st American ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.

Hamilton, Jill. “3 Kama Sutra Sex Positions That’ll Level Up Your Connection,” March 27, 2024. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/positions/g60321106/kamasutra-sex-positions/.

Kamasutra Condoms. “Imagine Being Named after a Sexual Wellness Brand [Image of Kamasutra Text].” Instagram. Kama Sutra Condoms, July 17, 2023. https://www.instagram.com/p/CuzE04Vo-cQ/?hl=en.

Nin, Anaïs. “Letter to the ‘Collector,’” 1969.

Puri, Jyoti. “Concerning Kamasutra s: Challenging Narratives of History and Sexuality.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 3 (March 2002): 603–39. https://doi.org/10.1086/337937.

Sweet, Micheal. Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. Edited by Ruth Vanita. New York, NY: Routledge, 2002.

Vātsyāyana, and Alain Daniélou. The Complete Kama Sutra The First Unabridged Modern Translation Of The Classic Indian Text By Alain Danielou. Rochester, Vt: Park Street Press, 1994. https://archive.org/details/the-complete-kama-sutra-the-first-unabridged-modern-translation-of-the-classic-i.

Vātsyāyana, Wendy Doniger, Sudhir Kakar, and Vātsyāyana. Kamasutra: A New, Complete English Transl. of the Sanskrit Text ; with Excerpts from the Sanskrit “Jayamangala” Commentary of Yashodhara Indrapada, the Hindi “Jaya” Commentary of Devadatta Shastri, and Explanatory Notes by the Translators. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003.

Williams, Monier. Sanskrit English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1899. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.31959/page/n1279/mode/2up.

Footnotes

¹ Wendy Doniger, “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex,” The Kenyon Review, New Series, 25, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 21.

² Williams, Monier. Sanskrit English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1899. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.31959/page/n1279/mode/2up.

³ Vātsyāyana et al., Kamasutra: A New, Complete English Transl. of the Sanskrit Text ; with Excerpts from the Sanskrit “Jayamangala” Commentary of Yashodhara Indrapada, the Hindi “Jaya” Commentary of Devadatta Shastri, and Explanatory Notes by the Translators, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003).

⁴ Doniger, “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex,” 27.

⁵ Micheal Sweet, Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, ed. Ruth Vanita (New York, NY: Routledge, 2002).

⁶ Doniger, “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex” 18.

⁷ Doniger, “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex” 18.

⁸ Vatsyayana and Burton, The Vatsayana Kama Sutra – The Classic Translation of 1883.

⁹ Wendy Doniger, “God’s Body, or, The Lingam Made Flesh: Conflicts over the Representation of the Sexual Body of the Hindu God Shiva,” Social Research 78, no. 2 (2011): 485.

¹⁰ Doniger, “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex” 35.

¹¹ Doniger, “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex” 30.

¹² Jyoti Puri, “Concerning Kamasutra s: Challenging Narratives of History and Sexuality,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 3 (March 2002): 603–39, https://doi.org/10.1086/337937.

¹³ Sweet, Queering India, 78.

¹⁴ Vātsyāyana and Alain Daniélou, The Complete Kama Sutra The First Unabridged Modern Translation Of The Classic Indian Text By Alain Danielou (Rochester, Vt: Park Street Press, 1994), https://archive.org/details/the-complete-kama-sutra-the-first-unabridged-modern-translation-of-the-classic-i.

¹⁵ Sweet, Queering India, 80.

¹⁶ Puri, “Concerning Kamasutra s,” 604.

¹⁷ Jill Hamilton, “3 Kama Sutra Sex Positions That’ll Level Up Your Connection,” March 27, 2024, https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/positions/g60321106/kamasutra-sex-positions/.

¹⁸ Hamilton, “3 Kama Sutra Sex Positions That’ll Level Up Your Connection.”

¹⁹ Ari Adut, “A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde,” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 1 (July 2005): 213–48.

²⁰ Anaïs Nin, “Letter to the ‘Collector,’” 1969.

²¹ Anaïs Nin, “Letter to the ‘Collector,’” 1969.