1. Authorship and Date of the Kāmasūtra

As an oldest extant Indian text book on erotic love, Kāmasūtra finds a foremost place in our cultural tradition. There is a misconception that Kāmasūtra is a work which entirely deals with various postures of sexual intercourse and purely a pornographic text. This is because of the absence of proper textual analysis of Kāmasūtra. This chapter is an attempt to explore the content of Kāmasūtra for a better understanding of the readers on its contents without reading the original Sanskrit text. The backdrop of the formation of a text like Kāmasūtra appears to be a period in which most people were thinking that renunciation was an essential part and aim of human life. Thought on eroticism depends upon the technique of control of the body called yoga (Doniger Wendy & Sudhir Kakar, 2009: xi).

The Kāmasūtra of Vātsyāyana is not only an amusing and legible work; it is also one of India’s most prominent original works, giving an insight into the history, politics, secular life and social customs of early India. In Sanskrit, the term “Kāma” means desire, affection, love, lust, sensual pleasure and the like. “Sūtra”, in this context, refers to the style of writing used by the author. This style consists of the use of aphorisms, short rules, or percepts. Thus, this work is called “Kāmasūtra” owing to its subject and style (Burton Richard Francis, 2009: 10).

Historical validity about the authorship of Kāmasūtra is a point of dispute. There have been several other Kāmasūtras and the work by Vātsyāyana is admittedly a compendium of previous texts written by authors lost in the haze of legends. There are many mutually contrary arguments upon the authorship of the work Kāmasūtra. The identity of Vātsyāyana has been exposed through myths and there is no unanimous opinion regarding it. But there are several references from early Sanskrit sources on the authorship of Kāmasūtra. It is believed that Kāmasūtra was composed by a Vātsyāyana named Mallanāga. So, undoubtedly it is argued that Vātsyāyana is the name of a community or Gotra. Subandhu, in his prose-romance called Vāsavadattā refers to Mallanāga as the author of Kāmasūtra^[1]. The most authentic commentary on Kāmasūtra called Jayamaṅgalā also states the name of the author of Kāmasūtra is Mallanāga and the term Vātsyāyana represents name of the community in which Mallanāga belongs to^[2]. These are the two sources which mainly confirm the identity of Vātsyāyana.

The upper limit of the date of Vātsyāyana from the authors quoted by him and the lower limit of the date of Vātsyāyana from references to Kāmasūtra in later literature are the two ways used by Haran Chnadra Chakladar While discussing the date of Kāmasūtra. Through a detailed analysis, the earlier limit to the composition of the Kāmasūtra has been assigned on the basis of Vātsyāyana’s quotations from the Gṛhyasūtras, Dharmasūtras, Arthaśāstra and Mahābhāṣya and so the lower limit fixed as 400 CE. There are strong reasons to believe that Kāmasūtra was known in the third century CE. based on the dates of Kālidāsa and Subandhu. On the evidences from the historical data about the date of Vātsyāyana, Prof. Jolly’s opinion is generally accepted since it is trustworthy to an extent. It states that Arthaśāstra was composed in the third century CE. and the Kāmasūtra which was modeled upon it, in the fourth century CE. (1990: 12-29, 33).

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

kāmasūtravinyāsa iva mallanāgaghaṭitakāntārasāmodaḥ | (vāsavadattā, pṛ. 83)

[2]:

vātsyāyana iti svagotranimittā samākhyā, mallanāga iti ca saṃskārikī | (jayamaṃgalā, 1. 2. 19)