|
Description
The Kamasutra is the oldest extant Hindu textbook of erotic love, and one of the oldest in the world. It is not, as most people think, a book about the positions in sexual intercourse. It is a book about the art of living--finding a partner, maintaining power in a marriage, committing adultery, living as or with a courtesan, using drugs--and also about the positions in sexual intercourse. It was composed in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India, probably sometime in the second half of the third century of the Common Era, in North India, perhaps in Pataliputra (near the present city of Patna, in Bihar).
Virtually nothing is known about the author, Vatsyayana Mallanaga, other than his name and what little we learn from the text. Nor do we know anything about Yashodhara, who wrote the definitive commentary in the thirteenth century. But Vatsyayana tells us something important about his text, namely, that it is a distillation of the works of a number of authors who preceded him, authors whose texts have not come down to us. Vatsyayana cites them often--sometimes in agreement, sometimes in disagreement--though his own voice always comes through, as ringmaster over the many acts he incorporates in his sexual circus.
The Kamasutra was therefore certainly not the first of its genre, nor was it the last. But the many textbooks of eroticism that follow it eliminate most of the Kamasutra's encyclopedic social and psychological narratives and concentrate primarily on the sexual positions, of which they describe many more than are found in the Kamasutra.
Conspicuous by its absence, however, is what Europeans call the 'missionary' position, which the Kamasutra mentions briefly but without enthusiasm: "In the 'cup,' both partners stretch out both of their two legs straight. There are two variants: the 'cup lying on the side' or 'the cup supine.'" (2.6.16-17) The commentator, too, scorns this position: "How does he penetrate her in this position? It is so easy that there is nothing to worry about!" So much for what Europeans generally regarded as the default position.
By contrast, the default position for ancient Indian men and women--overwhelmingly favored in illustrations of the Kamasutra--is something entirely different, as Monty Python used to say. The Kamasutra describes three variants:
Her head thrown down, her pelvis raised up, she is "wide open." Without lowering her thighs, suspending them while spreading them wide apart, she receives him in the "yawning" position. Parting her thighs around his sides, at the same time she pulls her knees back around her own sides, in the "Junoesque" position, which can only be done with practice. (2.6.8, 10-11)
Some variants of these positions are more complex. In some, her thighs are bent back so far that, in effect, he enters her from the rear even though she is facing him: "When he raises her pelvis and thrusts into her from below, violently, it is called 'grinding down.'" (2.8.24) Significantly, this is the position that the Kamasutra advises a man to use when the woman's genitals are much smaller than his.
Size, and its importance, becomes apparent from the very start of the part of the text describing the sexual act:
The man is called a "hare," "bull," or "stallion," according to the size of his sexual organ; a woman, however, is called a "doe," "mare," or "elephant cow." And so there are three equal couplings, between sexual partners of similar size, and six unequal ones, between sexual partners of dissimilar size. (2.1.1)
And when the text describes the possible positions, it uses these sizes keyed to animal types as its basic referents:
At the moment of passion, in a coupling where the man is larger than the woman, a "doe" positions herself in such a way as to stretch herself open inside. A "doe" generally has three positions to choose from: the "wide open," the "yawning," or the "Junoesque." (2.6.1, 7)
The man's fear that his penis is not big enough--the recurrent leitmotif of spam on the Internet today--had apparently already raised its ugly head in ancient India. As a result, the doe became the favored woman, the ideal erotic partner.
The initial passage defining the three sizes continues: "The equal couplings are the best, the one when the man is much larger or much smaller than the woman are the worst, and the rest are intermediate. Even in the medium ones, it is better for the man to be larger than the woman." (2.1.1, 3-4) Thus two different, conflicting agendas are set forth from the start: ideally, equal is best, but in fact the man has to be bigger, because women are by nature bigger. The biggest woman (the elephant cow) is much larger than the biggest man (the stallion).
The problem of satisfaction posed by the greater size of women is not easily solved, in part because it is not physical but mental. No proto-Kinsey went around in ancient India measuring women's vulvas. It is a matter of fantasy, apparently a cross-cultural human fantasy, and it is not about physiology (for which the Kamasutra offers physical correctives) but about desire. And desire is affected not merely by size but also by intensity and duration:
A man has dull sexual energy if, at the time of making love, his enthusiasm is indifferent, his virility small, and he cannot bear to be wounded, and a man has average or fierce sexual energy in the opposite circumstances. The same goes for the woman. And so, just as with size, so with temperament, too, there are nine sorts of couplings. And similarly, with respect to endurance, men are quick, average, and long-lasting. (2.1.5-8,30-31)
The passage then concludes that the woman should reach her climax first. Why? The commentator explains:
The best case is when the man and woman achieve their sexual pleasure at the same time, because that is an equal coupling. But if it does not happen at the same time, and the man reaches his climax first, his banner is no longer at full mast, and the woman does not reach her climax. Therefore, if the coupling is unequal rather than equal, the woman should be treated with kisses, embraces, and so forth, in such a way that she achieves her sexual pleasure first. When the woman reaches her climax first, the man, remaining inside her, puts on speed and reaches his own climax.
So the problem of fit is merely one aspect of the greater problem of satisfaction. Just as mares are bigger than hares, the logic goes, so, the commentator points out in the context of an argument about female orgasm, women have far more desire than men: "Women want a climax that takes a long time to produce, because their desire is eight times that... |
More articles from Daedalus
Kafka & sex.(Austrian writer Franz Kafka), March 22, 2007
Looking for additional articles?
Click here
to search our database of over 3 million articles.
|
