In Our Time - The Kama Sutra

Episode Date: February 2, 2012

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Kama Sutra, one of the most celebrated and often misunderstood texts of Indian literature. Probably composed during the reign of the Gupta dynasty around 1800 years ago, the work is a collection of writings about the art of love and sensual pleasure. Although it is best known today for a single chapter devoted to sexual pleasure, this important Sanksrit collection contains much besides. In particular it teaches the attainment of Kama (pleasure), one of the central goals of Hinduism. The Kama Sutra is a manual to a life of fulfilment, offering advice on such subjects as finding a spouse and how to behave in marriage; it has had a profound influence on Indian culture and thought. With:Julius LipnerProfessor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion at the University of CambridgeJessica FrazierLecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent and Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu StudiesDavid SmithReader in South Asian Religions at the University of Lancaster.Producer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, the Kama Sutra is a book whose origins are uncertain, but which may have been composed as early as 2,000 years ago. Written originally in Sanskrit,

it's one of the most important works of India's golden age of literature. The Kama Sutra is a handbook to pleasure, covering every aspect of love and relationships. Divided into seven sections, it examines in turn the questions of social life, courtship and marriage, extramarital relationships, courtisans and their behaviour,

advice for improving one's attractiveness, as well as a thorough and systematic examination of sexual techniques. While some commentators think of this as the work's keystone, others regarded as merely its most popular section. With me to discuss the Kama Sutra Adjurius Lipner, Professor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of, of religion at the University of Cambridge. Jessica Frazier, lecturer in religious

studies at the University of Kent and Research Fellow at the Oxford Center for Hindu Studies, and David Smith, former reader in South Asian religions at the University of Lancaster. Julius Knau, opinions differ as to when this book was written, but the idea is around 200 AD,

about 2,000 years ago. Can you tell us about the state of Indian civilization at that time? It's a big ask, but a brief intro, please. Yes. Yes. Yes, I think the Khamashutra was written perhaps a little later than 200, about maybe about 100 years later. But why that is important is because at that time,

certainly the north of India, where the Kama Shutra's belief to have been written, was coming into its own as a civilization, as a culture, that had reached a high, point. By this time you would have had the caste system established, though the Khamashutra is not particularly caste specific. You would have had architecture, art, the refined arts, particularly cosmetic arts, ornamental arts, well developed. And it was just on the cusp of the famous Gupta period, which came into being about 50 to 100 years later, which was really the

point. So even from the literary point of view, the culture of that time would have been very developed. And it is at this time that you get this text, the Khamushutra, which is a sort of summary. It's not the start of a tradition. It's the summary of a whole tradition that had built up and developed over generations probably. And the author of the Kama Shutra says that he is summarizing, distilling what actually has been built up over time on this subject. There's some doubt about the author, so we need to spend a great deal of time on it.

It declares himself to be a celibate scholar, so sure we just leave it at that and move on to what was his overall purpose of the book? The overall purpose of the book is to describe, in summary form, the meaning and purpose of karma. And we must distinguish between karma, which is sensual pleasure and satisfaction from karma,

which some of your hearers may confuse, which means action. So we're talking about karma. Sexual desire and sensualness and pleasure. Yes, but the broader context of karma is really desire that is based on the senses. So it is sense-based desire. And early on in the text, the author says that the various sense, tense organs and their particular objects and the relationship between them are the basis and subject of what he's actually going to discuss. So sex, this becomes an important part of this, but by no means the whole thing.

Now, by now means we know that. What's the purpose of the book, Julius? The purpose of the book is to tell the basically the man about town who is the... It's written for rich young men, basically. It's written basically for Rich Hanmen, but not exclusively. I mean, you do have sections that can... It's really for people who can read Sanskrit, which was even then an elitist language.

Sanskrit even then was an elitist language, and it is written for the Nagarika, the man about town, basically, but not exclusively. And it's there to tell him a leisure person who lives in an urban environment what karma is all about, what is its scope, what's available but not necessarily

what should be done. So that's an important distinction. Yes, the scholar says at the end of the various sections, I'm outlining what could happen but I'm not recommending that you should take advantage of it. Precisely, exactly. Jessica Frazier, can you tell us a little more about the literary culture and tradition

to which of work belongs? Yeah, I mean, as Julia said, it's coming from a culture which is flourishing, it's thriving, and the arts and sciences are really finding their feet. in this world of India at that time. And there's a real sense in the culture that it's time to take all of this knowledge and understanding

and put it down in writing, to collect the wisdom of the period and pass it forward into the future for future generations and to disseminate it for the use of people. So there's a real sense that what people want to do is to collect all of this understanding into one place. And that's what happens in the genre of which the Karma Sutra is a part, the Sutras.

Sutra means something like a third. thread or a string of aphorisms, little bits of knowledge that are easily passed on, a bit like pearls of wisdom. And at this time, sutras are being written on a wide range of topics. We've got sutras on astronomy, we've got sutras on medicine, we've got sutras on aesthetics, social ethics, politics, all of the different areas of understanding and knowledge at the time are being put into this form. And the Kama Sutra is part of that. I kind of see the sutras as a kind of an early form of Wikipedia in a way. It's, yeah, well, you know, but think of it this way.

It's information spontaneously collected by the intellectual culture of the time into accessible bite-sized pieces of knowledge that can then be passed easily throughout the culture for the use of people at large. So you're creating a kind of a knowledge base which lots of people can tap into. Vatsyaana himself, the man who said to be the author of the Karma Sutra, is said to have written a sutra on pleasure, but also a sutra on logic. And the point here is that he's interested in knowledge on the broader scale, not particularly prurient interest in sex itself. Can you describe the overall structure of the work? Julius gave us a very clear idea of what karma, K-A-M-A, not karma, karma stood for,

which was desires. And you've talked about the sutras. So we've got the two together now. Can you just go through the overall structure of the seven books that it is made up of? Well, the very first chapter starts by saying, okay, this is a sutra on pleasure. The word, as Julie said, can be translated in different ways in enjoyment, but it's certainly not just lust. It's pleasure of a wide range of kinds. And this is important. At the time, there was an intellectual movement called the lociatas, which means the worldly ones. And they had said, look, there's no God, there's no afterlife, there's just pleasure.

So let's just do that. And the calmer suture says, yes, there is pleasure, and we're going to talk about this now, but it's the only thing, there are other goals in life. Just a second, sorry to interrupt, but at the same time, Buddhism is very strong, and Buddhism is saying be chased, and the early stirrings of Christianity are being repelled, and they're told to be chased as well. Their leader, Jesus Christ, was chased, and so it is against those grains that it is implanting its flag of pleasure inside religion. Does that make any sense? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the bigger picture of all of this, you know, I talk about a knowledge

culture of the time. In our culture there's no particular goal for knowledge. You can do what you like with it. At that time there's a goal for everything and that goal is Dharma. The notion of an overall order and proper functioning of social life and human nature, a fulfillment of all our capacities in the proper way. So what's this book

about? We've got the introduction and then the other says. Could you tell us what they're about? Well it wants to say, okay, pleasure in the context of Dharma, in the context of the broader picture is what we're looking at here. And having set that contextual understanding of what the activity in the book is, it goes straight into the nitty gritty of things. The second chapter looks at sex itself,

sexual positions, sexual capacities, also foreplay and also the bigger picture setting the scene. Now, most people only know the Kama Sutra as this section on sex, but that's only the second of seven chapters. So what it then does in the third chapter is to talk about courtship, really important, before you can get to sex. And the fourth chapter, it starts to talk about marriage, which is the context of most of the sex that's happening in culture at that time. And then it goes on to talk about, gosh, you know, if problems with the marriage, you might have trouble with your own partner, you might want to woo someone else's partner. So it does talk but extramarital affairs. And it then goes on to say, if that doesn't work, well, there's a

huge culture of courtisans that you can go to. And it gives advice both to the man going to a courtisan and to the courtesan herself. In the very last section, it says if that's not going to work out, then there are all kinds of other love charms, other aids to sexuality that you might want to take recourse to. At the very end of the text, it says, now all of this information is there for you to use if you want. Use your judgment. That's the important thing and selecting which advice is right for you. Again, David Smith, Julius alluded to this in his opening remarks about the overall purpose or idea, context of Hinduism. Can you just say a little bit more about about the four goals of life in Hinduism

and how the Karma Sutra fits into that? Yes, in addition to karma and Dharma, there is, of course, that Erta, which is material prosperity. So you have Erta, you have karma, we've heard about, you have Dharma, religion, maintaining proper order, behaving well, worshipping the gods. All these three goals are worthwhile, and they're not necessarily in conflict.

They form a hierarchy with karma, at the bottom and then Erta, material advantage, and then Daama. Karma is immediate and doesn't... Erta, you have to plan ahead, and Dharma you may not get the results until after your death in heaven. But, of course, there is then a fourth end, Mokshah, freedom from rebirth, which quite possibly has its origin in Buddhism and Jainism, as you were mentioning. And in a sense, Mokshar is in opposition to the other three.

Then again, these four aims are incorporated into the order of life of a man within Hinduism, so that in one's youth, one studies the Veder, and then one earns one's living. And finally, in old age, one can devote oneself to Moksha to release from rebirth. and all during that time you should, well certainly until you go for Moksha you should also be bearing in mind Dharma but where Vatiyayana differs from this pattern is that he makes almost no mention whatsoever

to Mokshah. He begins the text by saying all hail to the other three to Dharma, Erta and Karma and he constantly refers to them Mokshah he has only one mention, and then when he divides up these life stages within the course

of a man's life, he says that when a man is in boyhood, one should study Erta, which is actually quite unusual as regards the religious text, but he says when you're a boy, you should study Erta, material advantage.

When you're in your youth, you should study calmer, and then not until your old age, should you concern your with Dhrma and Moksha. Can we stick to Karma for this programme, please? For us in this programme, it's the most, it is an important goal.

Do you think it's the most important of the four goals? And how does this book flag its importance? Well, to go back to what I just said, the main part of one's life, according to Vatsyana, should be devoted to karma. And the commentator, actually, the first commentator is only a thousand years later. but it's very interesting that he says that

this period devoted to karma should be from the end of boyhood to the age of 16 until old age and old age not until 70. So you study desire from 16 to 70? Yes. Is this part of Hinduism from its beginning and is this unusual in the great religions that pleasure, the art of pleasure,

desire, essential pleasure, is part of the steps towards wisdom, liberation, and part of the whole religious structure. Yes, Hinduism, even in its earliest manifestations in the Vedah, accepts the totality of life. So there isn't the kind of cut off between the body and the spirit. All aspects of human life are significant. The interesting thing is how significant,

for people in the West, what a significant part pleasure has in this organisation of steadiness. Yes, well, it's only Vatsyayana and this tradition of erotics that puts the primary stress on it. There is a later school of religion called Tantra, which does use sex for religious ends, but that probably comes into being after the time of Vatsyayana. So would you like to say more about karma before we move on? I mean, have we explained enough to talk about it in another context?

Well, at one point I just would make is that karma is also a god within the Hindu tradition. And there's one brief passing mentioned by Batsyaayana that a courtesan, when her lover comes back from a journey, she goes and worships the god karma. That's the one and only reference Batsyayana makes, whereas later literature goes on and on about the Hindu cupid. The god karma has a flower, a bow made of sugar cane, and he shoots flower arrows of people to make them fall in love. But there's nothing of that.

in Vatshyaana. Julius Lippner, we've talked about the first section. Would you want to develop that? What's the author telling that the reader what they're about to receive? Yes, well, I think

so much about the purpose of the Kama Shutra and the significance of karma you find in the opening section of the Kama Shutra. And there, it's interesting that Watsyayana, the author, lists

the four goals of human existence. And he actually starts with Dharma. And then he goes to Arthana, then karma, and then and then Moksha. And he says that karma should only be understood in the context of Dharma. Can you just unrued? I think quite a few of us are throwing the Dharma not around, leaving a few of us behind. Well, Dharma is, as David says, said right order.

Right. So karma, the karma is understood in terms of Dharma. And he says in the text that you have these various goals of life. And the preceding one is always superior to the one that follows. And he starts in the first and second chapter by saying, Dharma comes first, then you get Arthan, then you get karma. So you start with Dharma. It is superior to Arthartha, which is the,

collection of wealth, and then you get karma, which is the least of all. But karma is very important, as Dr. Smith said, in a certain stage of life, which you follow. Well, if you relegates it to three, why does he start with it? Because it was his task to talk about, he took upon it himself to talk about karma. And he starts the book by saying, all branches of knowledge have got instruction. about it. Karma was started off by the creator in the beginning

who wrote, who instructed about it. Then he speaks about a thousand chapters when karma was discussed. That was boiled down by a sage called Shwetaketu to 500 and so on and he says, now I'm

giving you the gist of the whole thing. Yes. Jessica and Jessica Frazier, can we come to a book two, which is the best known book in this part of the planet and brought to our attention vividly by Richard Burton who translated a few generations ago. It's the best known for its section on sexual pleasure.

It follows the introduction which would suggest that the author thought that it was the start of something rather than, well, it would suggest to me. Anyway, there you go, it's an introduction. It's chapter one. Can you tell us what that says and give us some detail about what he is saying there? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just to put this in context, this is really important, that it's not that he's totally focusing on karma and pleasure is the only thing in life, but there are already sutras on social order, on ethics, on the other goals.

So he's just adding in to make sure we have a rounded view of everything. And he's made that clear in the introduction. And now we get to the second chapter where he's going to actually talk about the sexual side of things. And I think in terms of understanding the attitude to sex in the Karma Sutra, context is everything. It starts really in the previous chapter by saying, think about setting. You should have a lovely home. It should be a garden nearby. There should be flowing water. There should be flowers.

There should be talking birds in the garden. You know, make sure your setting is good. You can't just jump into this. And in that chapter, it then goes on to say you're going to have to take into consideration a whole range of different factors. What kind of man and what kind of woman that you have here, what their physical capacities are, whether they have intense desire or really not all that strong? What time, day is it? All these different factors determine what kind of sex you're going to want to have together. It then goes sort of more into the details and it starts with foreplay and again you remember that it's not just about

the act, it's about the mood, it's about creating the right feeling in the people. So it starts with embracing, simply ways of holding each other and looks at a range of different things. A woman may embrace a man like a creeper around a tree asking to be kissed. Or a woman, they may embrace each other like, I think the phrases like milk and water mixing together. They love each other so much. They're trying to link into one person. You get a range of embraces, a range of different kisses, a range of different things that you can do to just increase the mood, biting. It says, you know, if you get drawn away like a horse running away into your passion, you may do things, you may shout, you may do all sorts of things.

So it brings all of this into the picture. He's talking about biting, slapping and scratching there, isn't he? Yeah, he's talking about biting, slapping and scratching. And interestingly, it always says whatever your partner does to you, you get to do back. There's no domination by one person of the other. And that's really important here. So if you have nibbling here and you have, I think the slapping here, I think the slapping here isn't meant to be painfully, he says explicitly don't do anything that harms anyone. That's

not the point of what we're doing. But whatever you do, great, fine. That's not a problem. And both people can do it to each other. And it goes from the foreplay sections into a consideration of positions. And again, context does everything here. You can't simply say, that sounds like a cool position. I want to do that. You have to assess the capacities of the man and the woman. A bit like in Ayurveda where you judge... Was it illustrated when it first came out? When it first came out in the Sanskrit, no. So when he's talking about these positions, what's he saying? What's he saying?

What's he saying is, first of all, you have to assess the capacities of the two people. So you have to say, what are their physical capacities, and match the positions to the people themselves. So if the man is very large and the woman is very small, certain positions will work better than others. If the woman, vice versa, is very large, is said to be, quote, unquote, an elephant woman, that's the category she falls into,

and the man is very small, he said to be quote unquote a rabbit man, then again you have to choose certain positions that will work for them. And the assumption here is that you can't fetishize sex. You can't take a certain thing and just do it. You have to always make sure you've got the right people in the right situation to create the maximum amount of pleasure. And having given all this detail at the end, it says when the wheel of love gets moving, you won't pay any attention to the order of things.

You'll have to follow a spontaneous moment of passion at that time. On the other hand, it is a book of instructions. So when it all merges and you don't pay any attention, you'll be given instructions and therefore you're being in help. They're taking it for granted that pleasure, enjoying pleasure fully, can be taught, you can be instructed in it, you can learn about it. And this carries on through the book in other areas. Is that right?

No, I mean, other types of pleasures are referred to, but there's no instruction given in them. So the man about town has a life of pleasure. So he's given no instruction about managing his wives, for instance. I thought he was from the notes I've read. Well, managing, but that's not, I wouldn't put that necessarily down under pleasure. In the sense of managing. It's interesting the wife does all the work.

I mean, the wife, not only does she look after the house, but she looks after the fields and the carts and everything, whereas he just devotes himself to pleasure. It is, of course, in many ways, presenting a totally unreal and ideal set of circumstances which may actually bear very little relation to reality. So can we develop this idea of pleasure? Because I was rather stumped by the fact that you said there wasn't much after Section 2. Well, it's the way you phrased it in respect of pleasure.

I mean, of pleasure other than karma. So there's lots of different aspects of karma, but not pleasures other than sexual deline. When you mention it's a man's book, it is very much in Man's book, when they're talking about, as I understand it, as Jessica is saying about four planes, it's no mention of the clitoris. That's true. Oh, that's not true. Isn't it? Well, one of you said so, very emphatically in your notes. If I can continue on that.

Why does the girl end up altering on this? And yet, so it goes. It actually, first of all, it says in various points, has a discussion of whether men and women have equal amounts of capacity. for pleasure and equal amounts of sexual desire. And it says, yes, we feel, in fact, in this text, that both men and women have equal sexual desire. And at various points, it doesn't mention the clitoris, but what it does say is you're going to have to stroke the woman's,

the word is yoni, which can mean all sorts of things, vagina vulva, various certain things. But at certain points, if, for instance, you've married a virgin and you've tried to kiss her, but she's really not interested, then don't force yourself upon her. Stroke her yoni with your hand until she softens until she starts to respond and then you can proceed.

So there's actually quite a lot of instruction about how to make a how to arouse a woman and make her interested in having sex as well. There's some very sound stuff. They talk about marriage. If basically the woman shy, I spent two or three days just walking around hand in hand and liking about, that sort of thing.

I love it where it says, yeah, don't have sex at first. You know, it'll be a disaster if you've never done it before. Start by touching each other occasionally, embracing each other. There's a lovely bit where it says, you're not allowed to have had sex yet, but you can bathe each other, give each other a bath but no sex. I mean, by the time you've gone through the extended program of preparing yourself, they must be absolutely desperate for it.

And what a lovely way to start a marriage. That's what the advice is intended for. Julius Lippner, do you want to add to that bit, or do we move to marriage? Well, there are different kinds of women that are mentioned in the Karmish Sutra. And what Jessica is saying is really the newly married girl who is hopefully a word. and the younger one who's shy, modest, and all the rest of it. Of course, and then it's very sensitive to the woman and her feelings. She needs to be made confident. They say that after marriage, the text says,

wait for three days before, you know, you take it further and get to know each other. So they are actually thoughtful from that point of view and reflective. But there are other kinds of women also who are mentioned, the courtesan, women who are widows who have been married before, other kinds of women, and I suppose then they're supposed to be much more forward. What's the key advice about marriage? In my view of looking at it, marriage lies at the heart of the book.

I mean, it's in Chapter 4, which is towards the middle, and there's a whole section on, there was a custom of more than one wife at that time. But the impression is given to me that having one wife is the ideal. And there was round about that time a concept that developed called the Sahadharmini, the woman who accompanies me in my Dharma, in my right living. And she is my main partner in discharging the obligations of life. and this chapter actually spells out what that woman should do. And it's really quite remarkable.

I'm not sure it would commend itself to the feminists of today, but she cooks food that he likes and avoids food he doesn't like. She cooks healthy food. She dresses herself well for him. She waits at the door for him when he comes and she welcomes him. Then she says, now what else can I do? she wakes up before him, she goes to bed after him, etc. And then she looks after the household and tidies it and keeps it wonderful.

Fine. David Smith, the book also deals with extramarital relationships. What does the author say about that? Yes, this is a complex issue even in the text. To begin with, right at the beginning, he mentions adultery and says it's wrong, although it's okay if the woman is already of loose behavior. But then we are given several examples of committing adultery for economic benefit. And then there are a series of cases given, including just one example, if there's a rich man, so the would-be adulterer might think,

if I were to make love to this woman, I would be able to, in a position to kill her husband and get his money. And I'd rather will ought to have his money. and there are a series of instances like this, this is bringing out the Erta, the material prosperity. But when we get to the section devoted to this topic in book 5, the mood changes completely, and we get the notion of falling in love

and actually the notion of unrequited love. Batsyaeana here says, okay, there are ten stages of unfulfilled love. He just calls them karma. And these begin with falling in love at first sight, and you go through a series of loss of weight, loss of sleep, ending up in madness and death, in fact. And so it is, although it's against Dharma,

the would-be adulterer can think to himself, well, I might well die if I don't attain my aim. So he then proceeds. And then you get a very interesting section where Vatsyayana shows himself really to be quite sympathetic to the woman's point of view and he gives a whole list of reasons why the woman

might not want to commit adultery and which the would-be lover has to argue against. In this list he begins with she may love her husband still or she's concerned about her children. He has a long list

each of which is the kind of situation for a woman, almost the kind of the basis of the plot for a novel ending on on an almost humorous note, or she might be crossed with him because he's got grey hair, or she might be afraid that actually he's been set up by her husband to test her, or finally, in the last of this long list,

or she might be worried about Dharma, she might be worried about religion, but it's just put at the end as an afterthought. Can we briefly refer to something Julius Rose, the idea of courtisans, Jessica, Jessica Frazier? Well, the penultimate chapter, looks at the situation of the cortisans. And this is, for me, one of the most fascinating chapters. You're not going to hear about courtisans in the ancient Hindu scriptures,

but here you get a window onto the reality of these women and their lives. And it starts by saying, okay, in theory, this is for men. You may go to a cortisans, but actually most of it is advice for the cortisans. It shows us a picture of women who, it says, might have become a courtisan because of misfortune. They might have been bullied out of their family life. They might have been thrown out. misfortune might have hit the family and they have to support them financially.

So all these difficult situations that women are in might push them into this kind of a context. They're distinguished very firmly from prostitute. Prosecutor is a distinctly lower class and courtesans are distinctly upper class. That's fair, isn't it? Yeah, I think that's right. And also prostitute. So what courtesan is supposed to do then? Well, prostitute is partly just focused on the sex, whereas a cortisone is an artist, as it were, of pleasure.

So she also may create the whole mood. She may be a poet. She may be a musician. And in fact, that was kind of the second thing about courtisans is that they may be pushed into it by misfortune, but they may also choose to do it for the wealth, it says, and for the independence that it gave them. We know from history that there were courtesans who, it was one of the only ways in society. You could become an independent woman. They became quite wealthy.

Some even endowed temples and became patrons of the arts. So it's a very special situation to be in. Can I come at the end of this section, David Smith. The final section of work deals with unorthodox aids to love. What are they? Can you give us some idea of what they are? Well, this is the Viagra section, although it has the highfaluting title of the secret mystery.

It begins by saying the Kama Sutra has now been told in full. But if these teachings haven't worked for you, here are some secret recipes, smearing one's penis with all sorts of, with pepper and white thorn and honey or, again, and getting bull-like virility by having actually what sounds quite palatable, a rice pudding with rice prepared from the juice from a sparrow's egg, and you pour honey on it and butter and eat as much as you want,

and you can satisfy endless women. Or again, one can make use of a dildo, and there's some academic discussion here. The followers of Barbravia recommend dildos made of tin or lead, but Vatyaan ad differs. He says wooden ones are more realistic, and we might remember here that he actually says when talking about the man about Towns' house

that he should have a place in his house set aside for carpentry. The penis may be enlarged by rubbing it with hairy caterpillars and not much is said in respect of things being done to women but if you sprinkle powdered thorns mixed with hogweed, monkey shit and lily roots over a wood, woman, she will not desire any other man. Yeah, Julius, can you brief, there seems to be a perception that although its books are written for men, it's the women who are the, in sexual terms, the elephants and the men

who are merely the bulls, that the women's are have to be satisfied and so on. Is that correct? Just briefly, because I want to go to religion now. Yeah, well, the general view is, the general book, the book is written from the point of view of a, of the man, right? And therefore, for the object of desire is the woman. And there were people from this time were drawing really from the same pool of ideas that Vatsayana drew from.

And just about 100 years later, perhaps, you have perhaps the greatest Sanskrit poet called Kalidasa. And this is how he describes the ideal woman, which is probably drawn from the same pool. and she would be delicate, not too dark, with sparkling teeth, lips as red as a ripe bimber fruit, narrow-wasted and deep-nabled, with glances like a frightened doe, she'd have a languid walk from the weight of her hips

and be slightly bent by the weight of her breast. Now this was the classic picture of a woman that he drew, and that I think is in the background, the ideal woman of the Kama Shutra. Can we move to the relationship between the Kama Sutra and Hinduism, which is fascinating? Inside this great religion, which is growing at this time, is taking on a new phase, a new leap and will grow massively,

is the idea of pleasure, and part of that is explained in the Kama Sutra. Now that's fascinating for Westerners who think that that sort of pleasure and religion are, to a certain extent, separate things. Anyway, let's leave it at that. It's unusual and it's powerful. Now what's going on there? What's going on is again and again the emphasis. You see, if you look at it in terms of concentric circles,

you've got the outermost circle of the culture and so on of the time. Then you've got an inner circle of the four goals of life, of which karma is one. And if you look at chapter one, section two, or the first section and the second chapter of verses one to five, 14, it says again and again in those chapters that Dharma is the overall context of karma. At the same time, we had the Gita, the Bhagavad Gita, which we had a program previously. And in Gita 7-11, Krishna says, I am karma that doesn't oppose Dharma or right order or right living.

Now, this is the large concentric circle. There are many more books written on Dharma than there are on karma and on Moksha, which is liberation. discussing Karmatam. And it's fascinating that this is part of it. That's what I'm trying to seize hold of. Jessica, do you want to talk of it about that? About the, where is it in Hinduism? It seems such a natural living part.

And that is very attractive. And a new way, me, being such a powerful implant, can you develop that? I think the Kama Sutra isn't a Hindu text, but what it indicates is a culture that isn't scared of sex, and that sees sex as part of the natural flourishing of humans and something that has to be sort of integrated into life. And the way that you can see this is in the difference between the Christian concept of an incarnate God

and the Hindu concept of an incarnate God, where in Christianity you have a God who takes human form, but is a celibate God. We can't, it's very hard for people to imagine Jesus as a sexually active person. Whereas in Hinduism, what you have is gods who do engage in sex, the god Shiva has a family and children, and that's a big part of his identity. The god Krishna is an incarnation of the god Vishnu,

and Krishna is a handsome, beautiful young man. When women see him, they draw breath, and he's deeply in love with his love, Arada. And half the poetry of medieval India was about the ecstatic beauty of their relationship. So it's a very different picture of how sex is really integral to human life. Julius. If I can carry on from that, that's a very important thing.

that Jessica's made, because the Kama Shutra, in my way of seeing things, has to do, in terms of that description of the ideal woman, has to do with the love of possession. She's there as a luscious fruit, if you wish, and she's someone to be possessed. It's the love of possession. But exactly as Jessica's saying, when you go into the religious dimension, that erotic love is sublimated. And taking Krishna, that very same person, a few centuries later you had a famous text called the Bhagabata Purana.

And in book 10, chapters 19 to 23, you will get this famous dance where Krishna dances with a number of his goopies or milkmaids in the light of the autumn moon. And there the erotic love that you can see in the Kama Shutra has been sublimated into a love for God in erotic terms, erotic base, but which transcends that.

David, I was going to come to you anyway. Can I just, besides what you in a second, I throw in something else. Is this attitude to the erotic reflected elsewhere in Hindu culture? Yes, though, could I just go back to Julius' point and to make the point that actually Krishna makes love to lots of cowgirls and they are in fact married. So that's a complex moral issue.

and a whole theology is built up about this love. It's not meant to be, humans shouldn't follow in Krishna's footsteps, but Krishna does make love to married women. So that's an important point to make, I think. And then elsewhere, you were asking? Yeah, well, I was thinking of temples and away we go. Yes, yes. So, of course, the temple, the famous temple at Cajarajaro and elsewhere,

in India have a great number of copulating couples on the outside. It's important to note that these aren't the gods making love. You never get statues showing the gods making love, but these representations of men

making love to courtisans or divine cortisans are an very striking part of the temple, very prominent. Can we come in towards end of the program now, unfortunately. Congratulations on steering us all through it. Jessica Frasier, can you give us some idea of the influence that the Kama Soutra had then and since on Indian texts and elsewhere? On Indian texts, I think in India it simply made it clear that love

and romance, and the text is really about love and romance are absolutely part of culture. You can write about them in the literature, and you can write about them in the context of the gods and their lives as well. So that was really important. And it still may be used now for young couples who maybe don't know each other that well, but are starting off in sexual life to make sure that they have some guidance

in that area. In the West, of course, it was more complicated. When it first came to the West, first people were very reluctant to translate the sexual bits. So you had a kind of a censored Kama Sutra and then things flipped and people translated only the sexual bits and that's all you could find on the internet

and elsewhere. And they didn't get the context. And I think maybe that's an important message to take away is that in the Kama Sutra sexes, part of the context of life itself, that you use your judgment, you choose the right person, time, setting, position, everything has to be part of a bigger picture. Whereas in the West, we've isolated that in many ways. And it's become sort of a hidden thing. In India, it was personal, it was private, and yet it was totally affirmed. I think we have got to draw to a close, unless you have a final two sentences, Julius, to send us all into the morning hour. Well, the final two sentences is exactly that, that karma is part of life, part of nature.

It should be affirmed, but in proper context and in the context of right living. And if we do that, whatever is possible need not be always to be followed. It's what you have to do, you have to use. your common sense and your sense of right order and rectitude. Thank you very much. Next week we will be talking about Erasmus. Thank you for listening to this Radio 4 podcast. If you've enjoyed it, you might like to try others like it, such as Start the Week or Thinking Aloud,

which are both available from the Radio 4 website.