Doniger's Kamasutra

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independent.co.uk

Kama Sutra back with a bang for new generation

By John Walsh

16 March 2002

The Kamasutra of Vatsyayana – the book on sexual athletics and

protocol which generations of British schoolboys passed from hand to

sweaty hand until the pages fell out – is back, reinvigorated.

 

The oldest Hindu textbook of erotic love, first published 1,700 years

ago, will be available in the Oxford World Classics series from 28

March, alerting a new century of imaginative lovers to the Seven Types

of Kissing, the eight stages of oral sex and the Advances That May Win

a Virgin.

 

The book is newly translated by Wendy Doniger, a religious historian,

and Sudhir Kakar, a psychoanalyst. Their new version of the Sanskrit

text reveals the shortcomings of the only previous translation, made

by Sir Richard Burton, the legendary British explorer, in 1883.

 

For years, schoolboy readers were puzzled to find, in Burton's

translation, the male and female genitalia described as, respectively,

the "lingam" and the "yoni". Though they are Sanskrit words, they do

not appear in the original work – they were Burton's attempt to make

the accounts of sexual calisthenics more exotic and orientally

inscrutable.

 

Burton, a prototypical chauvinist pig, plays down the book's emphasis

on the importance of a woman being gratified in sexual encounters; he

also says that a wife should never scold her husband for infidelity,

even though the book explicitly recommends that she does exactly that.

 

For those who best remember the Kamasutra for its eye-opening

itemisation of scores of copulatory "positions", the new edition

offers only a disappointing four pages of, among others, "the crab",

"the squeeze" and "the elephant cow". But there are compensations –

especially the chapters on "Modes of Slapping and the Accompanying

Moaning", "Ways to get Money Out of Him" (for courtesans only) and

"Methods of Increasing the Size of the Male Organ".

 

The last-named technique involves ground cherry juice, sweet potatoes,

water leeches, deadly nightshade, buffalo butter and heliotrope, and

yes, youare advised to try this at home...

 

New position on the Kamasutra is revealed: it's all wrong

By Jonathan Thompson

30 December 2001

Long derided as unimaginative exponents of the sexual arts,

Anglo-Saxon men will now be able to claim an excuse for their poor

performance.

 

The English version of the Kamasutra, the oldest and most influential

of all erotic manuals, was mistranslated at the first attempt on 1883

– and the mistakes were never corrected.

 

The errors have left generations holding the wrong end of the stick,

and much else besides, according to Professor Wendy Doniger of the

University of Chicago, who has just completed a new, updated version

of the classic text.

 

The first English Kamasutra by the 19th-century explorer and scholar

Sir Richard Burton completely ignored crucial aspects of female

sexuality, she says, including the existence of the zone later

identified as the G-spot. Meanwhile, in Britain, censors played their

part by progressively removing "the dirty bits" of the third-century

original.

 

Next March, Professor Doniger publishes the first major revision of

the Kamasutra since Burton's version, claiming it should help us

improve our understanding, if not our performance.

 

"There are a lot of mistakes," she said last week. "Burton's text is

padded out and makes a lot of assumptions. He often fudges elements of

the original. Things were added to make it easier to understand, but

sometimes they were wrong." In fact she believes that much of Burton's

work was not strictly the Kamasutra at all, but a translation of a

commentary by Yashodhara written 1,000 years later.

 

"The text knows all about the G-spot. It was always there in the

Sanskrit, but a combination of misunderstanding from Yashodhara's

13th-century commentary and Burton himself means that his translation

gets further and further away from it," said Professor Doniger, who

co-wrote the new edition with Professor Sudhir Kakar of Harvard

University. "Not until the 1980s did modern science agree upon the

G-Spot, but the Kamasutra wrote about it almost 2,000 years ago."

 

Burton's greatest failing, she argues, was to downgrade the role of

women: "Women have all sorts of privileges in the original that have

been eroded from the Burton translation. Burton muted the importance

of women's pleasure, he blurred it, chipped away at it. He changed the

colour of the text – but the truth is a lot sexier."

 

She claims he also failed to translate accurately the ingredients for

what appears to be a primitive form of Viagra. According to her

version, the juices of "a ground cherry, sweet potato, water leech,

fruits of the nightshade, fresh buffalo butter, 'elephant's ear' (teak

tree leaves) and heliotrope" are supposed to induce an "enlargement"

which will last for a month.

 

The Kamasutra, which, roughly translated, means "the book of desire",

was written in the 3rd century AD by a scholar known as Vatsyayana

Mallanaga.

 

In the new translation, which will be published by Oxford University

press in March, Professor Doniger argues that the book's accuracy also

suffered from its illegal status under the Obscene Publications Act

for nearly 80 years. "Although Burton first published his translation

in 1883 it only became legal in London and New York in 1962.

 

"For over 80 years, people just kept reprinting it, making changes and

cleaning up the dirty bits."