This book explores a number of ancient Indian erotic texts that take the reader through the terrain of the beautiful, the sensual, and the most desirable. The Kama Sutra, Kokashastra, Geeta Govinda, Panchcayala, Anang Ranga, Kama Sambhav and Rasik Priya are all treatises on erotic love, a subject the author explores with grace, subtlety and a generous appreciation of the basic human urge to desire and be desired.
Think Of The Erotic Literature From India And What Immediately Comes To Mind Is Vatsyayana S Kamasutra. This Was Indeed Not The First Study In Erotology Nor Was It The Last. Beginning With The Rig Veda (Written Some 5000 Years Ago) Right Up To The Seventeenth Century, Indian Literature Is Marked By Diverse Genres Replete With Unabashed Eroticism In Which Love, Lust And Life Are Explored To Their Fullest Extent& Today, The Philosophical Acceptance Of Desire And The Erotic Sentiment Has Been Asphyxiated By A Hypocritical Morality That Has Much For Too Long Equated Sex With Sin And Desire With Guilt. The Purpose Of This Anthology Is To Provide Enough Evidence Of An Alternative Vision, So That Readers Can Get A Glimpse Of The Sense Of Maturity And Honesty That Animated Our Ancestors. In This Comprehensive Anthology, The Authors Forcefully Drive Home The Point That The Fascination With Eroticism Is Age-Old. The Absence Of Inhibition And Guilt And The Candour And Boldness With Which Society Set About Seeking Its Pl Easures Find Expression Repeatedly In Writings Over The Past Ages. The Literature Of India, Both Religious And Secular, Is Full Of Sexual Allusions, Sexual Symbolisms And Passages Of Such Frank Eroticism The Likes Of Which Are Not To Be Found Elsewhere In World Literature. For Example, Some Sections Of Ancient Texts Like The Vedas, The Upanishads, The Epics (The Mahabharata And The Ramayana), The Brahmins, The Puranas And Devotional Hymns Like The Saundarya Lahiri (By Adi Shankaracharya) Are Studded With Graphic Sexual Imagery. The Sacred And The Sensuous Were Thus Seen As Integrated Elements Of Human Existence. In This Medieval Period, Writers, Poets, Dramatists, Painters, Sculptors And Artists, Whatever Be Their Language And Idiom, Gave Full Vent To Their Creative Talents, Suffused With The Sexual Metaphor. Kalidasa And Jayadev Stand Out As Exemplars Of This Genre. It Was Basically The Evangelical Fervor Of The Victorian Era That Imposed Severe Structures On The So-Called Heathen Amorous Degradation And Sought To Cleanse The Indian People By Propagating Western Morality And Values . And The Victorian Hangover Still Persists. The Underlying Themes Of This Volume Are That, In The India Tradition, The Relevance Of Desire, With Eroticism As Its Natural Attribute, Was Pragmatically Accepted And That Women Were Given Equal Status As Men In The Pursuit Of Pleasure.
Same-Sex Love in India presents a stunning array of writings on same-sex love from over 2000 years of Indian literature. Translated from more than a dozen languages and drawn from Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and modern fictional traditions, these writings testify to the presence of same-sex love in various forms since ancient times, without overt persecution. This collection defies both stereotypes of Indian culture and Foucault's definition of homosexuality as a nineteenth-century invention, uncovering instead complex discourses of Indian homosexuality, rich metaphorical traditions to represent it, and the use of names and terms as early as medieval times to distinguish same-sex from cross-sex love. An eminent group of scholars have translated these writings for the first time or have re-translated well-known texts to correctly make evident previously underplayed homoerotic content. Selections range from religious books, legal and erotic treatises, story cycles, medieval histories and biographies, modern novels, short stories, letters, memoirs, plays and poems. From the Rigveda to Vikram Seth, this anthology will become a staple in courses on gender and queer studies, Asian studies, and world literature.
This study attempts to determine how the ancient Indian medicinal and sexological texts would answer a non medical question but also social and religious relevance namelyl: what happens in a woman`s body at the time of conception? To this end, numerous relevant texts were exhausitively analysed, along with several secondary sources and other traditional medicinal systems.
Classical Sanskrit literature boasts an exquisite canon of poetry devoted to erotic love. In Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit, noted translator and scholar R. Parthasarathy curates a selection in a new verse translation that introduces readers to Sanskrit poetry in a modern English vernacular. The volume features works by seventy-two poets, including seven women poets and thirty-five anonymous poets, primarily composed between the fourth and seventeenth centuries. It includes a detailed introduction that guides readers through Sanskrit poetic forms and explains how to read and appreciate the poems in English. Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit seeks to represent the breadth of Sanskrit poetry through the ages and to present a cohesive, thematically unified selection when read as a whole. The works in this volume depict licit and illicit love, speaking to the joys and sorrows of consummation and separation and a broader cultural celebration of the pleasures of the flesh. Often sexually explicit, they are replete with recurrent scenarios and striking tactile, visual, and olfactory images, whose resonance and use as motifs across eras are expertly explained. Parthasarathy shows that Sanskrit poets are our contemporaries despite the centuries that separate us, as they speak simply and passionately to a wide range of human experience. Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit offers English-speaking readers an enticing and tantalizing initiation into the riches and beauty of this venerable poetic tradition.
Originally published under the title Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva, this book traces the development of an Indian approach to an enduring human dilemma: the conflict between spiritual aspirations and human desires. The work examines hundreds of related myths and a wide range of Indian texts--Vedic, Puranic, classical, modern, and tribal--centering on the stories of the great ascetic, Siva, and his erotic alter ego, Kama.
This book chronicles the story of love which is considered an Indian creation. The first love story of the world was found in the Rig Veda and the first comprehensive work on love was written in India with Kamasutra becoming one of its offshoots. Love techniques were perfected over centuries and sculpted on the walls of temples of Khajuraho and Konarak. Since ancient times, rishis in India have believed that it was love which came first and then followed the world. The origin and evolution of love in India is traced by the author in an elaborate manner, providing invaluable insights which make this book a rare treasury in itself. The book draws from concrete sources including cave paintings, ancient archaeological findings and a mass of literature belonging to the Vedic and Buddhist eras to give a complete portrayal of love. Through love lyrics, humorous plays and erotic descriptions, Love in Ancient India takes you through a timeless saga of royalty and grandeur, beauty and infidelity, all of which are interspersed with the concept of the world’s most bewitching expression - love.
The product of many years of research, this unique book presents fascinating perspectives on contemporary lesbian life in India and unravels some of the history of lesbian desire from centuries past. Through detailed examination of mythology, cosmology, ancient art and artefacts and her exegesis of ancient Sanskrit texts, Thadani constructs a tapestry of feminine kinship, genealogy and sexual or erotic bonding between women (sakhiyani) in ancient India. The author offers an historical perspective on the effect of colonization upon lesbian identities in India, showing how women were viewed by Western imperialists either as soft victims or as sexually dangerous, possessing an overgrown clitoris and in need of heterosexual domestication. The second half of the book focuses on contemporary lesbian realities and issues, including lesbian marriages, suicide pacts, forging lesbian space, lesbian human rights, lesbophobia, sexual exile and the different construction of gender, family and possible kinship alliances.
