The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment in life. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the Kama Sutra is neither exclusively nor predominantly a sex manual on sex positions, but rather was written as a guide to the art of living well, the nature of love, finding a life partner, maintaining one's love life, and other aspects pertaining to pleasure-oriented faculties of human life. It is a sutra-genre text with terse aphoristic verses that have survived into the modern era with different bhāṣyas. The text is a mix of prose and anustubh-meter poetry verses. The text acknowledges the Hindu concept of Purusharthas, and lists desire, sexuality, and emotional fulfillment as one of the proper goals of life. Its chapters discuss methods for courtship, training in the arts to be socially engaging, finding a partner, flirting, maintaining power in a married life, when and how to commit adultery, sexual positions, and other topics. The majority of the book is about the philosophy and theory of love, what triggers desire, what sustains it, and how and when it is good or bad.
Two folios from a palm leaf manuscript of the Kamasutra text (Sanskrit, Devanagari script)
A Kamasutra manuscript page preserved in the vaults of the Raghunath Temple in Jammu & Kashmir
Kama-related arts are common in Hindu temples. These scenes include courtship, amorous couples in scenes of intimacy (mithuna), or a sexual position. Above: 6th- to 14th-century temples in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Nepal.
Image: Richard Burton's edition of Kamasutra 1883 edition
Sutra in Indian literary traditions refers to an aphorism or a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text. Sutras are a genre of ancient and medieval Indian texts found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
A Sanskrit manuscript page of Lotus Sutra (Buddhism) from South Turkestan in Brahmi script
A manuscript page from Kalpa Sūtra (Jainism)
A 17th-century birch bark manuscript of ancient Panini Sutra, a treatise on grammar, found in Kashmir