2. Commentaries on the Kāmasūtra

It is very difficult to understand the meaning of Vātsyāyana’s sūtras without the help of a commentary. In Sanskrit, we find references to the following five major commentaries on Kāmasūtra:

i. Jayamaṅgalā of Yaśodhara
ii. Prauḍhapriyā of Bhāskara Nṛsiṃha
iii. Commentary of Malladeva
iv. Kandarpacūḍāmaṇī of Vīrabhadra
v. Commentary of unknown authorship

Kṣemendra is said to have written a gist of Kāmasūtra in the name Vātsyāyanasūtrasāra. But it is not available now. The only published commentary is Yaśodhara Indrapāda’s Jayamaṅgalā, which is supposed to be the most authentic and scholarly work composed approximately about thirteenth century CE.

Yaśodhara gives us an unusually intimate insight into his own motives, which he repeats as a colophon at the end of the first chapter of each of the first six books;

“Yaśodhara, whose guru gave him the name of Indrapāda, made this commentary, called Jayamaṅgalā, in one piece, because he was terrified of suffering a lover’s separation from sophisticated women”^[1].

This romantic motivation stands in striking contrast to Vātsyāyana’s claim that his own work was composed under an ambiance of chastity.

Moreover, since Yaśodhara lived about a millennium after Vātsyāyana, he may not have known what was in Vātsyāyana’s mind, and one cannot always take his advice, though one is always glad to have it. But Yaśodhara usually makes good sense of the text and is, in any case, also an original source. It is fascinating to know what someone thought about sex then and make a contrast of what the two authors say to see how ideas changed over the millennium. The commentary is many times the size of the text, and often tediously technical” (Doniger Wendy & Sudhir Kakar, 2009: xlvi).

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

iti śrīvātsyāyanīyakāmasūtraṭīkāyāṃ jayamaṃgalābhidhānāyāṃ vidagdhāṅganāvirahakātareṇa gurudattendrapādābhidhānena yaśodhareṇaikatrakṛtasūtravyākhyāyāṃ sādhāraṇe prathame'dhikaraṇe śāstrasaṃgrahaḥ prathamo'dhyāyaḥ |