In the twentieth century, Freud reiterated the antediluvian idea that a woman can only achieve orgasm through regular sex with a man (an idea that the Kama Sutra had discarded almost 2,000 years ago) - any other kind of orgasm was of no real significance in his words it was ‘immature’. However, as the centuries passed, the Kama Sutra got lost in the fog of prevailing attitudes and the mire of mistranslations. This belief was so controversial at the time that it created a huge stir more importantly, it put the book on the map for all time.
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The Kama Sutra stated that not only do women have an independent source of pleasure but that a man is not even necessary to the process.
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For centuries religious belief had held that a woman did not have an independent source of pleasure, that her pleasure depended on that of the man - in other words, a woman’s orgasm was the result of a man’s orgasm. What makes the Kama Sutra stand out from other similar texts is that in compiling the book, Vatsyayan did what no one had ever done before - he broke the ultimate gender myth.
#Vatsyayan kamsutra photo manuals#
Marriage was the path to heaven and sex was the vehicle to get you there, and therefore the Kama Sutra - and its fellow manuals - were considered works of divine instruction.* And it wasn’t just momentary physical pleasure - ancient Eastern cultures believed that a stable society depended on a stable marriage and the secret to a stable marriage was extremely good sex. After all, we as humans are the only species on earth capable of consciously creating and enjoying mutual pleasure. It offers every permutation of every act of foreplay and lovemaking. The Kama Sutra goes deep into the art of making love, and shows how it can be sophisticated and hugely enjoyable. The Kama Sutra, compiled by Vatsayayan some time in the third century, is the oldest and most notable of a group of texts on erotic love from ancient India known generically as the Kama Shastras. In order to elevate our animal instincts to a more refined form of pleasure, I turned to the Kama Sutra, which remains a groundbreaking work thousands of years after it was written. Yes, it is possible to throw yourself on top of your partner and hammer your way to an ejaculation in a matter of seconds but, as journalist and author Yasmin Alibhai Brown says, ‘there is a difference between a fu*k and experience’. When a lion has sex the female knows it…’ Except, we are not animals. Someone recently said to me, ‘All this seduction stuff is crap. Simon Raven’ wasn’t alone in his way of thinking.
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One good reason for doing so is that there are still people in our culture who find sex an overrated sensation lasting a bare ten seconds.’ Simon Raven finds sex an “overrated sensation which lasts a bare ten seconds” - and then wonders why anyone should bother to translate the erotic textbooks of medieval India. My motivation in writing this book is best summed up by this response by Dr Alex Comfort (translator of the Ananga Ranga) to a reader in the New Statesman: ‘Mr. It seeks to transform what has largely been reduced to instant gratification into a rather more sensuous experience. This book is a guide to having great sex in the twenty-first century.