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Redeeming the Kamasutra
The Kamasutra , composed in the third century CE, is the world's most famous textbook of erotic love. There is nothing remotely like it even today, and for its time it was astonishingly sophisticated. Yet it is all but ignored as a serious work in its country of origin-sometimes taken as a matter of national shame rather than pride - and in the rest of the world it is a source of amused amazement and inspires magazine articles that offer "mattress-quaking sex styles" such as "the backstairs boogie" and "the spider web".
In this scholarly and superbly readable book, one of the world's foremost authorities on ancient Indian texts seeks to restore the Kamasutra to its proper place in the Sanskrit canon, as a landmark of India's secular literature. She reveals fascinating aspects of the Kamasutra as a guide to the art of living for the cosmopolitan beau monde of ancient its emphasis on grooming and etiquette (including post-coital conversation), the study and practice of the arts (ranging from cooking and composing poetry to coloring one's teeth and mixing perfumes), and discretion and patience in conducting affairs (especially adulterous affairs). In its encyclopedic social and psychological narratives, it also displays surprisingly modern ideas about gender and role-playing, female sexuality, and homosexual desire.
Even as she draws our attention to the many ways in which the Kamasutra challenges the conventions of its time (and often ours) - in dismissing procreation as the aim of sex, for instance - Doniger also shows us how it perpetuates attitudes that have continued to darken human passages that twin passion with violence, for example, and those that explain away women's protests and exclamations of pain as ploys to excite their male partners. In these attitudes, as in its more enlightened observations on sexual love, we see the nearly two- thousand-year-old Kamasutra mirror twenty-first-century realities.
In investigating and helping us understand a much celebrated but under-appreciated text, Wendy Doniger has produced a rich and compelling text of her own that will interest, delight, and surprise scholars and lay readers alike.
In this scholarly and superbly readable book, one of the world's foremost authorities on ancient Indian texts seeks to restore the Kamasutra to its proper place in the Sanskrit canon, as a landmark of India's secular literature. She reveals fascinating aspects of the Kamasutra as a guide to the art of living for the cosmopolitan beau monde of ancient its emphasis on grooming and etiquette (including post-coital conversation), the study and practice of the arts (ranging from cooking and composing poetry to coloring one's teeth and mixing perfumes), and discretion and patience in conducting affairs (especially adulterous affairs). In its encyclopedic social and psychological narratives, it also displays surprisingly modern ideas about gender and role-playing, female sexuality, and homosexual desire.
Even as she draws our attention to the many ways in which the Kamasutra challenges the conventions of its time (and often ours) - in dismissing procreation as the aim of sex, for instance - Doniger also shows us how it perpetuates attitudes that have continued to darken human passages that twin passion with violence, for example, and those that explain away women's protests and exclamations of pain as ploys to excite their male partners. In these attitudes, as in its more enlightened observations on sexual love, we see the nearly two- thousand-year-old Kamasutra mirror twenty-first-century realities.
In investigating and helping us understand a much celebrated but under-appreciated text, Wendy Doniger has produced a rich and compelling text of her own that will interest, delight, and surprise scholars and lay readers alike.
184 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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October 6, 2017
The Mare's Trap also known as Redeeming the Kamasutra is a critique and commentary on Vatsyayana's Kamasutra. Wendy Doniger has added immense value to the study of this 3rd century CE text by combining insights from The Arthashastra, Manu's Dharmashastra or Manusmriti (The Laws of Manu) as well as a 13th century commentary on the text called Jayamangala by Yashodhara and comparing them with Kamasutra.
Doniger explains how Arthashatra and Manusmriti borrows from each other and in turn Kamasutra borrows from both of them. Although Kamasutra evidently goes agiast Manusmriti in matters of sex, pleausre, adultry etc. And every step of the way Doniger complements Kamasutra with Yashodhara's Jayamangala. She explains how contrary to popular belief, Kamasutra is much much more than just positions. It is about a complete way of life, how a man is supposed to live, how to dress, what to eat, what arts and skills to learn, albeit all in the pursuit of women.
My favourite chapter of this book is one called 'Women in Kamasutra'. While most of the text is aimed at a man about town as in a respectable and well to do man in Kamasutra, there are large parts and a few chapters in Kamasutra entirely dedicated to women. Author says that as women's pleasure has slowly started to take precedence in modern culture, Kamasutra emphasizes on women's pleasure. It teaches men to put their partners' satisfaction first, explains why and how to go about achieving it. It is astonishing to know that Kamasutra had detailed G-spot and female ejaculation almost two millennia ago, which have been discovered by modern scietists barely a few decades ago and their existence is debated still today. Doniger points out that compared to other contemporary Indian texts which prohibited women from reading any sort of texts calling them feeble minded, Kamasutra actually insists women to read, understand and practice its advice.
Next chapter details 'Third Nature' by which she argues that Kamasutra means homosexuality and bi-sexuality. Although not as openly as it has become today, but it elaborates how to practice it both to men and women. And it is much forgiving and accepting than other contemporary texts.
Doniger also discusses comparisons of sizes of genitals of men and women with that of animals in the eponymous chapter. Male fascination (or should I say insecurity) with penis size prevalent in popular culture all over the world today, Kamasutra elucidates remedies including medicines and surgery.
Throughout the book, Doniger appreciates the efforts and sheer guts of Richard Burton and his co-authors in successfully translating Kamasutra for the first time from original Sanskrit to English during Victorian period but she also criticizes Burton translation for being inaccurate and perverting the actual meaning in several places.
In the last chapter, Doniger charts the history of sexual attitudes of people in India till present day. She criticizes Hindu attitudes of typically blaming Muslim invasion and British 'Victorianism' for prudish attitudes towards sex in India. She states that people who blame muslims & british and refuse to even gaze invards for their own society's attitudes forget about contribution of Muslim rulers to erotic traditions of India. Lodi dynasty of 16th century had commissioned the last great Sanskrit erotic work called Anangaranga. Mughals, especially Akbar and Dara Shikoh, had Sanskrit erotic and religious works translated to Persian and had them illustrated with persian paintings. How progressive or at least different Indian society could have been, had it adopted Kamasutra & Arthshastra as a way of life instead of following Manusmriti to attain one of dual goals of asceticism and material-domestic life stipulated in Upanishads?
This is my second time reading this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you are interested in ancient Indian culture or in knowing more about sex or Kamasutra in particular, then you should read this first before you graduate to Kamasutra. And if you really want to get maximum out of Kamasutra, read Kamasutra translated by Wendy Doniger (Oxford Univeristy Press). It is the only version you will find in any language without a single illustration. Complete text.
Doniger explains how Arthashatra and Manusmriti borrows from each other and in turn Kamasutra borrows from both of them. Although Kamasutra evidently goes agiast Manusmriti in matters of sex, pleausre, adultry etc. And every step of the way Doniger complements Kamasutra with Yashodhara's Jayamangala. She explains how contrary to popular belief, Kamasutra is much much more than just positions. It is about a complete way of life, how a man is supposed to live, how to dress, what to eat, what arts and skills to learn, albeit all in the pursuit of women.
My favourite chapter of this book is one called 'Women in Kamasutra'. While most of the text is aimed at a man about town as in a respectable and well to do man in Kamasutra, there are large parts and a few chapters in Kamasutra entirely dedicated to women. Author says that as women's pleasure has slowly started to take precedence in modern culture, Kamasutra emphasizes on women's pleasure. It teaches men to put their partners' satisfaction first, explains why and how to go about achieving it. It is astonishing to know that Kamasutra had detailed G-spot and female ejaculation almost two millennia ago, which have been discovered by modern scietists barely a few decades ago and their existence is debated still today. Doniger points out that compared to other contemporary Indian texts which prohibited women from reading any sort of texts calling them feeble minded, Kamasutra actually insists women to read, understand and practice its advice.
Next chapter details 'Third Nature' by which she argues that Kamasutra means homosexuality and bi-sexuality. Although not as openly as it has become today, but it elaborates how to practice it both to men and women. And it is much forgiving and accepting than other contemporary texts.
Doniger also discusses comparisons of sizes of genitals of men and women with that of animals in the eponymous chapter. Male fascination (or should I say insecurity) with penis size prevalent in popular culture all over the world today, Kamasutra elucidates remedies including medicines and surgery.
Throughout the book, Doniger appreciates the efforts and sheer guts of Richard Burton and his co-authors in successfully translating Kamasutra for the first time from original Sanskrit to English during Victorian period but she also criticizes Burton translation for being inaccurate and perverting the actual meaning in several places.
In the last chapter, Doniger charts the history of sexual attitudes of people in India till present day. She criticizes Hindu attitudes of typically blaming Muslim invasion and British 'Victorianism' for prudish attitudes towards sex in India. She states that people who blame muslims & british and refuse to even gaze invards for their own society's attitudes forget about contribution of Muslim rulers to erotic traditions of India. Lodi dynasty of 16th century had commissioned the last great Sanskrit erotic work called Anangaranga. Mughals, especially Akbar and Dara Shikoh, had Sanskrit erotic and religious works translated to Persian and had them illustrated with persian paintings. How progressive or at least different Indian society could have been, had it adopted Kamasutra & Arthshastra as a way of life instead of following Manusmriti to attain one of dual goals of asceticism and material-domestic life stipulated in Upanishads?
This is my second time reading this book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you are interested in ancient Indian culture or in knowing more about sex or Kamasutra in particular, then you should read this first before you graduate to Kamasutra. And if you really want to get maximum out of Kamasutra, read Kamasutra translated by Wendy Doniger (Oxford Univeristy Press). It is the only version you will find in any language without a single illustration. Complete text.
September 12, 2018
Wendy Doniger has provided a clear and concise overview of the Kamasutra's structure, themes, and historical background. She navigates the ambiguity of the text with skill, showing how on one hand, the Kamasutra was highly progressive for its time (allowing for extramarital affairs from women as well as men, not condemning homosexual relations, and even subtly acknowledging the presence of bisexuality, etc.), and on the other hand perpetuating a rape mentality (for example, taking a woman's protests and screams as an attempt at arousing her partner, rather than something genuine).
She illustrates how the Kamasutra draws on older works such as the Arthashastra and the works attributed to the mythological Manu) and plays on their themes. She also looks a bit further in history, bringing the tale to the period of British imperial rule and modern day instances of puritanism and censorship. She makes a strong case for the ascetic and anti-erotic traditions having always been a part of India's history and culture, rather than as being the sole product of Muslim and British occupations; it is only in the aftermath of the latter occupation that (primarily upper class) India has privileged the ascetic and anti-erotic and sought to revise history, trying to make the erotic streams of culture and spirituality appear as aberrations (most recently caused by the West).
If you're interested in seeing a tiny piece of India's erotic history, then you could do worse than Redeeming the Kamasutra. Hopefully, Doniger's work will take things at least one step further against the tides of censorship and puritanism.
On the downside, do not go into this book expecting a conventionally "entertaining" book, like many popular histories. Doniger remains a scholar and despite her humor, the book remains in that mode. The text is lively, undoubtedly, but still formal to a degree. It is a short and quick read, however, so this may balance out for some readers.
She illustrates how the Kamasutra draws on older works such as the Arthashastra and the works attributed to the mythological Manu) and plays on their themes. She also looks a bit further in history, bringing the tale to the period of British imperial rule and modern day instances of puritanism and censorship. She makes a strong case for the ascetic and anti-erotic traditions having always been a part of India's history and culture, rather than as being the sole product of Muslim and British occupations; it is only in the aftermath of the latter occupation that (primarily upper class) India has privileged the ascetic and anti-erotic and sought to revise history, trying to make the erotic streams of culture and spirituality appear as aberrations (most recently caused by the West).
If you're interested in seeing a tiny piece of India's erotic history, then you could do worse than Redeeming the Kamasutra. Hopefully, Doniger's work will take things at least one step further against the tides of censorship and puritanism.
On the downside, do not go into this book expecting a conventionally "entertaining" book, like many popular histories. Doniger remains a scholar and despite her humor, the book remains in that mode. The text is lively, undoubtedly, but still formal to a degree. It is a short and quick read, however, so this may balance out for some readers.
July 3, 2024
A fascinating collection of articles by Wendy Doniger that I picked up at a funky occult bookstore in London. The book breaks down the stereotypes that are common in the West regarding the Kamasutra (that smutty book of impossible sex positions, right? 😳) and delves deep into the cultural and social importance of the book, its basis in Hindu mythology, how surprisingly liberal the text is both for both ancient India and for modern times, and how modern Indian politics and the cleansing of eroticism from Hinduism has villainized the text. Definitely an eye opener and a really interesting read.
August 8, 2025
#Reviewing my previous reads, #Overrated Books To Roast:
Wendy Doniger’s Redeeming the Kamasutra sets out to rescue an ancient Indian classic from the shackles of prudish misunderstanding, but the end product feels less like a scholarly redemption and more like a tawdry remake of a work that never needed “saving” in the first place.
She claims to unearth the Kāmasūtra’s sophistication, its cultural layering, and its embedded aesthetics, but what she actually delivers is a projection—a Freudian, postmodern shadow play in which ancient Indian voices are drowned under Western academic noise. It’s like promising to restore an old temple and instead graffitiing your own manifesto on its walls.
From the first chapter, the sales pitch is clear: Doniger’s here to challenge the myth that the Kāmasūtra is just an ancient sex manual. Fair enough—that’s a valid mission.
The trouble is, she then proceeds to double down on the very stereotype she claims to dispel. Her interpretive framework is so skewed toward sexual politics, Western moral anxieties, and postcolonial identity battles that the text becomes a prop for her own ideological theater. Vātsyāyana’s original—a treatise grounded in the Purusharthas, the four goals of human life (dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa)—was never about raw indulgence. Kāma here is cultivated pleasure, aesthetic enjoyment, and refinement of senses woven into a larger ethical fabric.
Doniger, however, repeatedly severs kāma from its dharmic roots, treating it like a stand-alone libertine doctrine that can be freely reframed through the lenses of Freud, Foucault, and third-wave feminism.
She presents herself as a decoder of ancient wisdom, but the operation is more like a dissection—cutting away everything that doesn’t fit her thesis. The Kāmasūtra’s links to rasa theory, its integration of eroticism into the artful experience of life, and its subtle play of śṛṅgāra rasa within ethical boundaries—all of this is either skimmed over or reframed to serve a narrative of repression and liberation that belongs more to 20th-century American campus politics than to Gupta-era India. The result is a misreading so persistent it starts to feel deliberate.
One of Doniger’s favourite selling points is her claim to “recover the female voice” in the Kāmasūtra. She frames herself as a champion of women silenced by history.
In reality, the text itself never erased women—the nāyikā, the ganikā, and the vidagdhā nāyikā are all written with agency, intelligence, and even power to subvert social expectations. These figures are embedded in a cultural matrix where women’s pleasure and consent are integral to erotic refinement. But Doniger sidesteps this cultural context, recasting these women as “proto-feminists” anticipating the ideological battles of modern gender studies.
The result is an anachronism: rather than letting the text speak in its own historical register, she overlays a 21st-century activist vocabulary, which feels like academic imperialism disguised as liberation.
Her scholarship suffers from a deeper flaw: a selective, sometimes careless handling of the source material. Sanskrit, with its layered meanings, technical terms, and aesthetic nuances, resists reduction into neat English equivalents.
A sensitive translator navigates these layers; Doniger often bulldozes through them. Mistranslations creep in—sometimes subtle shifts of emphasis, sometimes flat-out distortions.
She cherry-picks verses to support her thesis, ignoring sections that complicate her narrative. It’s like flipping through the Bhagavad Gita, ignoring all of Arjuna’s ethical struggles, and announcing it’s a manual for military recruitment.
The most jarring aspect of Redeeming the Kamasutra is its voyeuristic undertone. She criticises colonial and orientalist scholars for exoticising Indian sexuality, yet her own prose sometimes mirrors that gaze. Vātsyāyana’s careful placement of eroticism within an ethical and aesthetic frame is stripped away, leaving titillating fragments that play well in a Western publishing market hungry for “exotic” yet digestible sexual wisdom. This is where Doniger’s work becomes dangerous — not because of its irreverence, but because it masquerades as authoritative scholarship while perpetuating a flattened, sexualised image of Indian culture.
Her detachment from indigenous interpretive traditions is telling. The medieval commentator Yaśodhara’s Jayamaṅgalā, for example, offers a deeply philosophical reading of the Kāmasūtra, situating it within dharma and aesthetics.
Doniger dismisses such commentaries as tedious, preferring instead to weave in Foucault’s power dynamics or Freud’s repression theories. By sidelining these indigenous voices, she repeats a familiar colonial pattern: claiming to “give voice” while talking over the very tradition she claims to defend.
This tendency to overwrite rather than illuminate creates passages where the Kāmasūtra is reframed almost beyond recognition. For Vātsyāyana, kāma was never a free-floating pursuit; without dharma, kāma collapses into chaos. Doniger’s version is chaos celebrated — as though the absence of ethical constraint were itself the redeeming feature. In her hands, the Kāmasūtra becomes a justification for libertinism, which is a bit like reading the Art of War as a guide to bar fights.
Even when Doniger turns her gaze toward contextual history — Gupta-era urban life, courtly culture, the economics of courtesanship—the analysis is filtered through her overarching obsession with subversion. The broader philosophical currents of the period, the relationship between eroticism and the sacred, and the integration of love-play into a dharmic life — these take a back seat to modern preoccupations with “resistance narratives” and “queering the text.” While such approaches can be illuminating when handled with balance, here they overwhelm the text’s own voice.
The irony is that Doniger’s book could have been an actual bridge between cultures.
A more faithful engagement with the Kāmasūtra’s own categories—kāma as art, pleasure as discipline, eroticism as aesthetic rasa—could have revealed how advanced and humane its vision was compared to both Victorian repression and modern commodification. Instead, she treats the Kāmasūtra as an object to be deconstructed and repurposed, rather than a living work to be understood on its own terms.
This isn’t to deny her erudition. Doniger has read widely, and her footnotes sometimes open fascinating doors—into folk motifs, cross-cultural parallels, and obscure textual variants. But this is the frustration: she has the tools to do justice to the Kāmasūtra, yet chooses to wield them in service of an agenda that treats the text as a cultural Rorschach test. You end up learning as much about late 20th-century Western academic fashion as about Gupta-era India.
The Kāmasūtra’s preface (1.2.1) famously states, “This work is not written with the aim of promoting sexual indulgence… but to provide a guide for those who seek refinement in pleasure.” A traditional reader sees this as ethical intentionality—pleasure framed by restraint. Doniger reads it as hypocrisy, another male smokescreen for domination.
The difference lies in interpretive humility: a willingness to enter the text’s own moral universe. Without that, “redemption” becomes a kind of cultural vandalism—stripping away context until only a skeleton remains, which can be dressed up to suit whatever narrative you want to sell.
The verdict? Redeeming the Kamasutra is less a scholarly engagement than a rebranding exercise, one that sells the Kāmasūtra back to the West as an exotic fetish object, freshly wrapped in the language of liberation.
It reminds me of colonial administrators gawking at the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho—lingering on the sensual poses, ignoring the surrounding spiritual iconography, and returning home to declare they’d seen the sum total of “Hinduism.” That same tunnel vision runs through this book: a fixation on sexual spectacle at the expense of philosophical substance.
If you genuinely want to understand the Kāmasūtra, you’re better off starting with Vātsyāyana himself — ideally in translation by someone like A.L. Basham or Indra Sinha, who preserve the text’s nuance. Or explore works by Kapila Vatsyayan, Alain Daniélou, or Devdutt Pattanaik, who, despite their differing styles, grasp that Indian eroticism is inseparable from its aesthetic and ethical context.
And for those who want to dive deep, the commentaries of Yaśodhara are indispensable — not “boring,” as Doniger glibly claims, but layered, learned, and alive to the text’s metaphysical underpinnings.
In the end, Wendy Doniger redeeming the Kāmasūtra is like an arsonist writing a memoir titled How I Saved the Library. What she offers isn’t rescue; it’s repackaging for an audience already primed to see India as a land of mystical sensuality and subversive liberation.
The damage isn’t in her irreverence but in her certainty—the confidence with which she misreads and misframes a work whose dignity lies in the very balance she discards.
It’s not just that she doesn’t give the Kāmasūtra back to the world in the form she found it; it’s that she insists her altered version is the real thing. And that, more than any mistranslation or misreading, is the real betrayal.
To conclude, I’d like to give a personal message to the author:
Dear Wendy Doniger,
Indology isn’t a playground for dilettantes. We’re talking about a civilization with seven millennia of depth, complexity, and lived tradition—not some weekend hobby you can skim through and slap your half-baked theories on.
If you can’t be bothered to read deeply, grapple with nuance, and approach it with genuine respect, then stay out of the conversation.
Strutting in like an arrogant upstart only exposes the shallowness of your scholarship and the size of your ego.
From.
An irritated Sanatani.
Wendy Doniger’s Redeeming the Kamasutra sets out to rescue an ancient Indian classic from the shackles of prudish misunderstanding, but the end product feels less like a scholarly redemption and more like a tawdry remake of a work that never needed “saving” in the first place.
She claims to unearth the Kāmasūtra’s sophistication, its cultural layering, and its embedded aesthetics, but what she actually delivers is a projection—a Freudian, postmodern shadow play in which ancient Indian voices are drowned under Western academic noise. It’s like promising to restore an old temple and instead graffitiing your own manifesto on its walls.
From the first chapter, the sales pitch is clear: Doniger’s here to challenge the myth that the Kāmasūtra is just an ancient sex manual. Fair enough—that’s a valid mission.
The trouble is, she then proceeds to double down on the very stereotype she claims to dispel. Her interpretive framework is so skewed toward sexual politics, Western moral anxieties, and postcolonial identity battles that the text becomes a prop for her own ideological theater. Vātsyāyana’s original—a treatise grounded in the Purusharthas, the four goals of human life (dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa)—was never about raw indulgence. Kāma here is cultivated pleasure, aesthetic enjoyment, and refinement of senses woven into a larger ethical fabric.
Doniger, however, repeatedly severs kāma from its dharmic roots, treating it like a stand-alone libertine doctrine that can be freely reframed through the lenses of Freud, Foucault, and third-wave feminism.
She presents herself as a decoder of ancient wisdom, but the operation is more like a dissection—cutting away everything that doesn’t fit her thesis. The Kāmasūtra’s links to rasa theory, its integration of eroticism into the artful experience of life, and its subtle play of śṛṅgāra rasa within ethical boundaries—all of this is either skimmed over or reframed to serve a narrative of repression and liberation that belongs more to 20th-century American campus politics than to Gupta-era India. The result is a misreading so persistent it starts to feel deliberate.
One of Doniger’s favourite selling points is her claim to “recover the female voice” in the Kāmasūtra. She frames herself as a champion of women silenced by history.
In reality, the text itself never erased women—the nāyikā, the ganikā, and the vidagdhā nāyikā are all written with agency, intelligence, and even power to subvert social expectations. These figures are embedded in a cultural matrix where women’s pleasure and consent are integral to erotic refinement. But Doniger sidesteps this cultural context, recasting these women as “proto-feminists” anticipating the ideological battles of modern gender studies.
The result is an anachronism: rather than letting the text speak in its own historical register, she overlays a 21st-century activist vocabulary, which feels like academic imperialism disguised as liberation.
Her scholarship suffers from a deeper flaw: a selective, sometimes careless handling of the source material. Sanskrit, with its layered meanings, technical terms, and aesthetic nuances, resists reduction into neat English equivalents.
A sensitive translator navigates these layers; Doniger often bulldozes through them. Mistranslations creep in—sometimes subtle shifts of emphasis, sometimes flat-out distortions.
She cherry-picks verses to support her thesis, ignoring sections that complicate her narrative. It’s like flipping through the Bhagavad Gita, ignoring all of Arjuna’s ethical struggles, and announcing it’s a manual for military recruitment.
The most jarring aspect of Redeeming the Kamasutra is its voyeuristic undertone. She criticises colonial and orientalist scholars for exoticising Indian sexuality, yet her own prose sometimes mirrors that gaze. Vātsyāyana’s careful placement of eroticism within an ethical and aesthetic frame is stripped away, leaving titillating fragments that play well in a Western publishing market hungry for “exotic” yet digestible sexual wisdom. This is where Doniger’s work becomes dangerous — not because of its irreverence, but because it masquerades as authoritative scholarship while perpetuating a flattened, sexualised image of Indian culture.
Her detachment from indigenous interpretive traditions is telling. The medieval commentator Yaśodhara’s Jayamaṅgalā, for example, offers a deeply philosophical reading of the Kāmasūtra, situating it within dharma and aesthetics.
Doniger dismisses such commentaries as tedious, preferring instead to weave in Foucault’s power dynamics or Freud’s repression theories. By sidelining these indigenous voices, she repeats a familiar colonial pattern: claiming to “give voice” while talking over the very tradition she claims to defend.
This tendency to overwrite rather than illuminate creates passages where the Kāmasūtra is reframed almost beyond recognition. For Vātsyāyana, kāma was never a free-floating pursuit; without dharma, kāma collapses into chaos. Doniger’s version is chaos celebrated — as though the absence of ethical constraint were itself the redeeming feature. In her hands, the Kāmasūtra becomes a justification for libertinism, which is a bit like reading the Art of War as a guide to bar fights.
Even when Doniger turns her gaze toward contextual history — Gupta-era urban life, courtly culture, the economics of courtesanship—the analysis is filtered through her overarching obsession with subversion. The broader philosophical currents of the period, the relationship between eroticism and the sacred, and the integration of love-play into a dharmic life — these take a back seat to modern preoccupations with “resistance narratives” and “queering the text.” While such approaches can be illuminating when handled with balance, here they overwhelm the text’s own voice.
The irony is that Doniger’s book could have been an actual bridge between cultures.
A more faithful engagement with the Kāmasūtra’s own categories—kāma as art, pleasure as discipline, eroticism as aesthetic rasa—could have revealed how advanced and humane its vision was compared to both Victorian repression and modern commodification. Instead, she treats the Kāmasūtra as an object to be deconstructed and repurposed, rather than a living work to be understood on its own terms.
This isn’t to deny her erudition. Doniger has read widely, and her footnotes sometimes open fascinating doors—into folk motifs, cross-cultural parallels, and obscure textual variants. But this is the frustration: she has the tools to do justice to the Kāmasūtra, yet chooses to wield them in service of an agenda that treats the text as a cultural Rorschach test. You end up learning as much about late 20th-century Western academic fashion as about Gupta-era India.
The Kāmasūtra’s preface (1.2.1) famously states, “This work is not written with the aim of promoting sexual indulgence… but to provide a guide for those who seek refinement in pleasure.” A traditional reader sees this as ethical intentionality—pleasure framed by restraint. Doniger reads it as hypocrisy, another male smokescreen for domination.
The difference lies in interpretive humility: a willingness to enter the text’s own moral universe. Without that, “redemption” becomes a kind of cultural vandalism—stripping away context until only a skeleton remains, which can be dressed up to suit whatever narrative you want to sell.
The verdict? Redeeming the Kamasutra is less a scholarly engagement than a rebranding exercise, one that sells the Kāmasūtra back to the West as an exotic fetish object, freshly wrapped in the language of liberation.
It reminds me of colonial administrators gawking at the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho—lingering on the sensual poses, ignoring the surrounding spiritual iconography, and returning home to declare they’d seen the sum total of “Hinduism.” That same tunnel vision runs through this book: a fixation on sexual spectacle at the expense of philosophical substance.
If you genuinely want to understand the Kāmasūtra, you’re better off starting with Vātsyāyana himself — ideally in translation by someone like A.L. Basham or Indra Sinha, who preserve the text’s nuance. Or explore works by Kapila Vatsyayan, Alain Daniélou, or Devdutt Pattanaik, who, despite their differing styles, grasp that Indian eroticism is inseparable from its aesthetic and ethical context.
And for those who want to dive deep, the commentaries of Yaśodhara are indispensable — not “boring,” as Doniger glibly claims, but layered, learned, and alive to the text’s metaphysical underpinnings.
In the end, Wendy Doniger redeeming the Kāmasūtra is like an arsonist writing a memoir titled How I Saved the Library. What she offers isn’t rescue; it’s repackaging for an audience already primed to see India as a land of mystical sensuality and subversive liberation.
The damage isn’t in her irreverence but in her certainty—the confidence with which she misreads and misframes a work whose dignity lies in the very balance she discards.
It’s not just that she doesn’t give the Kāmasūtra back to the world in the form she found it; it’s that she insists her altered version is the real thing. And that, more than any mistranslation or misreading, is the real betrayal.
To conclude, I’d like to give a personal message to the author:
Dear Wendy Doniger,
Indology isn’t a playground for dilettantes. We’re talking about a civilization with seven millennia of depth, complexity, and lived tradition—not some weekend hobby you can skim through and slap your half-baked theories on.
If you can’t be bothered to read deeply, grapple with nuance, and approach it with genuine respect, then stay out of the conversation.
Strutting in like an arrogant upstart only exposes the shallowness of your scholarship and the size of your ego.
From.
An irritated Sanatani.
September 17, 2015
Every Doniger book reads like a lover letter to ancient India, a brilliant read that too.
In this book she tracks the conversation that happened between 'Kamasutra' and the other two major ancient Indian texts - 'Arthashastra' and 'Manusmriti', giving a wonderful glimpse in to the urban life of ancient India. She wants to restore Kamasutra to its original place - mainstream Hindu culture that, owing to the 19th century revisionism and propagation of only the ascetic part(that still continues in the form of 'sanatana' nonsense), has completely forgotten the erotic side of it.
The first time I read kamasatura as a young curious guy, I was thoroughly surprised that it wasn't a book of 'positions' as it is popularly known for. It offers a thorough evaluation of the art of pursuing pleasure, partly answering the old western philosophical question, "what is a good life?" Doniger, taking help from Yashodara's 11th (or 13th?) century commentary on kamasutra, provides a context and setting to better understand the great book that was quite liberal for its age. She also points out Richard Burton's (the man who first introduced kamasutra to the west) mistranslations of Kamasutra's sanskrit and his orientalist tendencies that robbed the text of its narrative on homosexuality and agency of women.
Like all of her books, she has a playful way of writing that can make a lay reader interested in her, very, academic works. A joyful read!
In this book she tracks the conversation that happened between 'Kamasutra' and the other two major ancient Indian texts - 'Arthashastra' and 'Manusmriti', giving a wonderful glimpse in to the urban life of ancient India. She wants to restore Kamasutra to its original place - mainstream Hindu culture that, owing to the 19th century revisionism and propagation of only the ascetic part(that still continues in the form of 'sanatana' nonsense), has completely forgotten the erotic side of it.
The first time I read kamasatura as a young curious guy, I was thoroughly surprised that it wasn't a book of 'positions' as it is popularly known for. It offers a thorough evaluation of the art of pursuing pleasure, partly answering the old western philosophical question, "what is a good life?" Doniger, taking help from Yashodara's 11th (or 13th?) century commentary on kamasutra, provides a context and setting to better understand the great book that was quite liberal for its age. She also points out Richard Burton's (the man who first introduced kamasutra to the west) mistranslations of Kamasutra's sanskrit and his orientalist tendencies that robbed the text of its narrative on homosexuality and agency of women.
Like all of her books, she has a playful way of writing that can make a lay reader interested in her, very, academic works. A joyful read!
August 21, 2018
Love this! Doniger's urbane, convivial tone carries the book for me. What could so easily have been another bloodless piece of scholarship is turned into a sophisticated, well-informed, and mildly irreverent report on an endlessly fascinating text.
Having nailed the tone, she then proceeds to take apart the received opinions that have built up around the Kamasutra. Again, this is done with great wit and style. Doniger knows the text and the historiography inside out, but she wears her learning lightly.
The entire book can be read in short bursts. Each chapter took me no more than 20 minutes. But the length is deceptive. Doniger packs a lot in this relatively short book. So much to ponder and, ahem, take in. :)
Finally, if I were forced to point to just one thing, I'd say the focus on gender fluidity in general and women's voices in particular sets this book apart.
Having nailed the tone, she then proceeds to take apart the received opinions that have built up around the Kamasutra. Again, this is done with great wit and style. Doniger knows the text and the historiography inside out, but she wears her learning lightly.
The entire book can be read in short bursts. Each chapter took me no more than 20 minutes. But the length is deceptive. Doniger packs a lot in this relatively short book. So much to ponder and, ahem, take in. :)
Finally, if I were forced to point to just one thing, I'd say the focus on gender fluidity in general and women's voices in particular sets this book apart.
March 13, 2023
Here’s Doniger equating Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra with Kautilya’s Arthshastra and, at times, with Manu’s Dharamshastra, validating her arguments on the basis of the perceived similarities between the two – like structure and form of the prose and verse, and the essential message of human interaction. The message being that war and love-making are different expressions of human libido/bravado. She presents convoluted arguments – coming up a zany thesis to write a book.
Incidentally, this is what the title means
Incidentally, this is what the title means
There is also a variation with the woman on top: ‘When she grasps him in the “mare’s trap” position and draws him more deeply into her or contracts around him and hold him there for a long time, that is the “tongs” – she uses the lips of the vagina as a tongs.’
May 4, 2018
Interesting discussion of the Kamasutra-- its social context, the ways it interacts with earlier Indian texts, its portrayal of women, its discussions of sex and finally its tendentious place in contemporary Indian society.
May 2, 2022
I have never read Kamasutra, yet this book makes its meanings and possible intentions accessible to lay readers. The book explores the historical background in which Kamasutra was written. It also describes its relevance in our contemporary world where we still battle for women's rights and LGBT rights against our patriarchal society.
October 3, 2018
My rating is a bit unfair, because honestly, I enjoyed Doniger's style and presentation. What I didn't like is the fact that the title ends up being untrue, at least to me. "Redeeming" would mean that the Kamasutra is already in the wrong and vilified. On the contrary, its reputation is quite positive and is often represented as a guide to sexual (and to a degree, emotional) fulfillment. This book uncovers a different version from pop culture. We learn about the "guide" texts available before the Kamasutra, and it's revolutionary messages compared to it's predecessors. But, we also learn that it is not nearly as "feminist" as we are lead to believe. It's fascinating to read how positively Doniger spins the content, and yet she is a banned author in India. Frankly, some of the things I learned about the Kamasutra disgusts me - but I still respect its historical and social influences. I guess I just have to take the good and ignore the bad.
Overall, this is a scholarly read, not meant for titillating readers. For those who are interested in creating dialogue, this is a great book to begin conversation.
Overall, this is a scholarly read, not meant for titillating readers. For those who are interested in creating dialogue, this is a great book to begin conversation.
February 26, 2016
Finally I read a book by Wendy Doniger. The Marie's Trap is a detailed analysis of the famous Kamasutra by Vatsyanana. The book has different sections which deal with the following subjects- Comparison between Kamasutra, Arthshashtra and Manusmriti, presence of mythological tales within Kamasutra, women in Kamasutra, tones of queerness (presence of LGBT characters), the nature and culture of sex (where the author pin points various parts from texts which focusses on how and why "size" matters) and finally the rise and fall of Kamasutra.
I knew about Kamasutra very vaguely but this book opened my eyes acquainting me about the fact that this book is not only about "positions". Doniger, as we all know, is an expert in ancient Indian texts and she has done fair justice in this review of the book which keeps bewildering the Westerners till today.
I knew about Kamasutra very vaguely but this book opened my eyes acquainting me about the fact that this book is not only about "positions". Doniger, as we all know, is an expert in ancient Indian texts and she has done fair justice in this review of the book which keeps bewildering the Westerners till today.
March 28, 2023
March of 2023
Borrowed this book, from the library, by the great Sanskrit living Scholar Wendy Doniger.
A relatively quick savoury bite into the world of Wendy, compared to her other previous book, the 1400+ magesterial 'The Hindus' on the history of Sanskrit-language along-side the history of Indian states.
In this small, succiint book, the author makes the following great points:-
1) Dharma, Artha & Kama have always been the 3 desires of the Hindu life, reflected into the three books written around the same century DharmaShashtra (aka ManuSmriti) by Manu, AsthaShashtra by Kautilya & Kamasutra by Vatsayayan - the 4th desire of Moksha was added later on
2) KS (KamaSutra) borrows and expands heavily from ArthaShashtra, concepts of virginity, adultery, promiscuity, albeit much liberal tone (ManuSmriti is on the other extreme of being very conservative about sex, womens rights, minority rights)
3) While Manu is extreme rigit, AS is in the middle and KS is like the hip-liberal on same-sex congress, sex with wives of other men, fellatio act-- all taboo sexual acts.
4) KS has always been very well known, among the Mughals as well, who comissioned the translation to Persian with lavishly comissioned manuscripts.
5) KS was composed sometimes in the 3rd CE perhaps near Patliputra by Vatsayayan Mallanga
6) ManuSmriti is wriiten in verse (Shloka like meter) like the Ramayana & the Mahabharata while KS & AS are in prose, usually capped with a verse or two at the end of each chapter
7) KS narrates many mythological stories from the Vedas to illustrate its point, for example talking about Shakuntala & Dushyanta (for sex before marriage), Ahalya Gautam rishis wife & Indra (for sex with others wive)
As always its a pleasure & food for thought reading a book by the Indogolist Wendy!
Borrowed this book, from the library, by the great Sanskrit living Scholar Wendy Doniger.
A relatively quick savoury bite into the world of Wendy, compared to her other previous book, the 1400+ magesterial 'The Hindus' on the history of Sanskrit-language along-side the history of Indian states.
In this small, succiint book, the author makes the following great points:-
1) Dharma, Artha & Kama have always been the 3 desires of the Hindu life, reflected into the three books written around the same century DharmaShashtra (aka ManuSmriti) by Manu, AsthaShashtra by Kautilya & Kamasutra by Vatsayayan - the 4th desire of Moksha was added later on
2) KS (KamaSutra) borrows and expands heavily from ArthaShashtra, concepts of virginity, adultery, promiscuity, albeit much liberal tone (ManuSmriti is on the other extreme of being very conservative about sex, womens rights, minority rights)
3) While Manu is extreme rigit, AS is in the middle and KS is like the hip-liberal on same-sex congress, sex with wives of other men, fellatio act-- all taboo sexual acts.
4) KS has always been very well known, among the Mughals as well, who comissioned the translation to Persian with lavishly comissioned manuscripts.
5) KS was composed sometimes in the 3rd CE perhaps near Patliputra by Vatsayayan Mallanga
6) ManuSmriti is wriiten in verse (Shloka like meter) like the Ramayana & the Mahabharata while KS & AS are in prose, usually capped with a verse or two at the end of each chapter
7) KS narrates many mythological stories from the Vedas to illustrate its point, for example talking about Shakuntala & Dushyanta (for sex before marriage), Ahalya Gautam rishis wife & Indra (for sex with others wive)
As always its a pleasure & food for thought reading a book by the Indogolist Wendy!
January 20, 2024
Well worth reading, but this is a collection of originally separate essays on aspects of the Kama Sutra, rather than a tightly knit book. Doniger is a champion of India’s rich and complex cultural and intellectual history, and a believer in global, civilly liberal society. Reading this isn't a great way to prepare to read the Kama Sutra, but, if you’re already somewhat familiar with the book or its English translations - or aren't too worried about getting a cohesive account - this book provides a very readable take on the Kama Sutra in light of specific themes. Those themes are: the relationship of the Kama Sutra to two other ancient Hindu texts (the Laws of Manu and the Arthashastra); the way the book invokes Hindu gods and heroes; the way it portrays women; the way it portrays gender; and the way the book has been misread or devalued in the recent context of Hindu nationalism and fundamentalism. It’s not a magisterial read (which would, most likely, become incredibly tedious); rather, it’s stimulating and witty - par for the course for Doniger.
August 13, 2022
Confusion...
It seems author has done a lot of research, there is no question about it however confusion is there to blame Manu or Kautilya for inspiring Vatsyayana to write Kamasutra.
After lot of efforts completed the book and couldn't understand the main objective of this book. Whether it is to blame Manu, Vatsyayana or Burton. Traditions, translation, Hindus, Nehru, British also take the blame.
Wish the flow and aim was well defined...
It seems author has done a lot of research, there is no question about it however confusion is there to blame Manu or Kautilya for inspiring Vatsyayana to write Kamasutra.
After lot of efforts completed the book and couldn't understand the main objective of this book. Whether it is to blame Manu, Vatsyayana or Burton. Traditions, translation, Hindus, Nehru, British also take the blame.
Wish the flow and aim was well defined...
October 19, 2024
"A Sugar Daddy's Guide to Sugar Babies"
There. I've simplified the content for you.
No shade to Wendy Doniger, but the content of the book is so outdated and backwards that I visibly cringed at some portion of the text. And when I thought that the worst had just about ended, Book Seven started with its tantra mantra nonsense.
If you're still curious about Kamasutra, just watch one of Seema Anand's interviews rather than go through this farce.
There. I've simplified the content for you.
No shade to Wendy Doniger, but the content of the book is so outdated and backwards that I visibly cringed at some portion of the text. And when I thought that the worst had just about ended, Book Seven started with its tantra mantra nonsense.
If you're still curious about Kamasutra, just watch one of Seema Anand's interviews rather than go through this farce.
April 14, 2024
This series of essays helped me to better understand and appreciate the Kamasutra in a way that I was not able to reading the text on my own. I particularly appreciated learning about the history of the Kamasutra's translations and how it has been dispersed throughout the centuries.
October 25, 2025
Feels more loose in general compared to the article, the history is helpful, the contemporary reflection is too immediate but also helpful
May 11, 2018
Mention the word ‘Kamasutra’ and the response would either be a raised eyebrow or nervous titters. In recent memory, the word ‘Kamasutra’ brings memories of a badly made film and a condom brand but suffice to say that when one associates reading and Kamasutra, the impression is about flipping through positions and crazy posture names and not one of scholarly engagement. But Wendy Doniger’s book not only states strongly that the Kamasutra ‘was an occasion for national pride, not national shame, that it was a great and wise book and not a dirty book’ but points out too that it is closely based on Kautilya’s Arthashashtra. Doniger draws out the parallels and examples by way of direct quotes from both the Arthashastra and the Kamasutra and the Political Science and Sociology student in me was utterly fascinated with the points raised by her.
The seven chapters in the book deconstructs the Kamasutra as having to do only with sex but examines with great care in each part its ties to class and caste (or the lack of these); the connect with the fundamental basis as mentioned in the Arthashashtra; the mythological background of Kamasutra; Women in Kamasutra as players and agency; The third nature or gender inversions; the nature and culture of sex and the rise and fall of Kama and the Kamasutra.
I first heard the name of Wendy Doniger when the brouhaha over her book ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’ made headlines for the various attacks that it was subjected to. But having read ‘Reading the Kamasutra: The Mare’s Trap and Other Essays on Vatsayayana’s Masterpiece’, all I know is that I would like to read ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’. I would strongly recommend ‘Reading the Kamasutra: The Mare’s Trap and Other Essays on Vatsayayana’s Masterpiece’ to serious readers and to students of Gender studies and Sociology.
The seven chapters in the book deconstructs the Kamasutra as having to do only with sex but examines with great care in each part its ties to class and caste (or the lack of these); the connect with the fundamental basis as mentioned in the Arthashashtra; the mythological background of Kamasutra; Women in Kamasutra as players and agency; The third nature or gender inversions; the nature and culture of sex and the rise and fall of Kama and the Kamasutra.
I first heard the name of Wendy Doniger when the brouhaha over her book ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’ made headlines for the various attacks that it was subjected to. But having read ‘Reading the Kamasutra: The Mare’s Trap and Other Essays on Vatsayayana’s Masterpiece’, all I know is that I would like to read ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’. I would strongly recommend ‘Reading the Kamasutra: The Mare’s Trap and Other Essays on Vatsayayana’s Masterpiece’ to serious readers and to students of Gender studies and Sociology.
February 10, 2016
I remember during the sixties going to a little book shop in my home town and discretely asking for and buying The Kamasutra and the Perfumed Garden (supplied in brown paper bag!).
I and my friends were just waking up to the so called facts of life, plus we'd just discovered boys!
We weren't that interested in why the books were written, only the immediate content.
Not that we had the opportunity to do anything about it, but they were an eyeopener!
Reading Wendy's account of the meaning and the advice given by the author, I find I am wanting to re read the book and understand more.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Oxford University Press via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
I and my friends were just waking up to the so called facts of life, plus we'd just discovered boys!
We weren't that interested in why the books were written, only the immediate content.
Not that we had the opportunity to do anything about it, but they were an eyeopener!
Reading Wendy's account of the meaning and the advice given by the author, I find I am wanting to re read the book and understand more.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Oxford University Press via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.
April 21, 2016
I wanted to read a commentary on the text of Kamasutra, and here I goṭ what I wanted. The book draws the evolution of it's text from the former writings of arthashastra, dharmashastra and even the rig Veda. To a naive person like me, this book opened a new perspective. We should appreciate the kind of culture and research went into kamasutra rather than be embarrassed of it. Wendy Doniger even pointed out that the previous translations do not exactly convey the meaning as was intended in the real sanskrit text.
April 30, 2020
The Kamasutra is so much more than sexual positions, it’s about life and getting fulfillment not just sexually but in other ways too and this book really outlines those points and breaks it down. I’m glad I read this book before I read the Kamasutra text because now I have such a better understanding of it and its purpose.
April 20, 2016
The Mare's Trap is a study of the Kamasutra and a peep into India - a scholarly peep into India's society and culture, mores and attitudes towards sex and so much more,
March 28, 2020
Pretty great book. Doniger is both respectful and rigorous.
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