Amazon.com Review
"Sex is a good way to begin understanding another culture, just as it is a good way to begin understanding another individual," writes Charles Fowkes in his introduction to Sir Richard Burton's classic translation of the Eastern love texts. As many of the devotees of this popular book can attest, reading about the ancient sexual traditions of India is also a good way for contemporary readers to understand sex. Sir Burton, who is well known as the translator of
The 1001 Arabian Nights, condensed the three ancient love manuals of India (
Kama Sutra,
Ananga-Ranga, and
Perfumed Garden) into one book. What makes this a favorite of all the Kama Sutra titles are the unabashedly erotic texts and color illustrations from India, which offer specific suggestions, such as how to "Milita" kiss (the after-fight reconciliation kiss) as well as how to link a former life into current lovemaking.
--Gail Hudson
From the Back Cover
SEXUALITY / ART
Sexual frankness--without a hint of guilt or prurience--is the great legacy which the Eastern, and in particular Indian, traditions have given us. Here, for the first time, Sir Richard Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot's translations of three classic Eastern love texts have been published in one volume, illustrated in color with a dazzling and unique collection of Indian painting and sculpture.
These erotic treatises are not “sex manuals” in the modern sense--clinical collections of coital postures--but a more encompassing and sensitive exploration of Eastern sexual customs. The idea that something as natural as sexuality could be shameful in any way would have been incomprehensible to the old sage Vatsyayana who wrote
Kama Sutra as a religious duty nearly 2,000 years ago. Kalyana Malla wrote his
Ananga-Ranga with the worthy intention of preventing “separation of the married pair.” And even if Sheikh Nefzawi was a little less pious in intention, he can be forgiven for the poetry and humor in his
Perfumed Garden.
As an expression of human culture, and as a “pillow book” for the modern boudoir, the
Kama Sutra (the most famous work on sex ever written), the
Ananga-Ranga, and
Perfumed Garden set forth the principles of sexual pleasure with candor and grace, celebrating the science of love as an ecstatic expression of life's beauty.
SIR RICHARD F. BURTON (1821-1890) was one of the greatest traveler-explorers of history, whose life has recently been chronicled both in biography (Captain Sir Richard Burton) and film (Mountains of the Moon). Famous as the translator of The 1001 Arabian Nights, Burton also searched for the headwaters of the Nile and was the discoverer of the central lakes of Africa. Orientalist, prolific author, and member of the Royal Geographic Society, he was one of the most remarkable and controversial men of his century.
