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It’s important that a sexologist or a sex-cousellor should be non-judgemental in his/her approach.
Vatsyayan, the ancient Indian sexologist and compiler of Kamasutra, the fourth century erotic treatise on sex, is the best example on how to be non-judgemental, when it comes to talking about sexuality.
There have been debates among a section of scholars on whether Vatsyayan has actually approved of anal sex or not. Some even went to extent of saying that Vatsyayan regarded anal sex as bad.
Much of this confusion arises from the faulty translation of Kamasutra into English from Sanskrit. Many researchers like Richard Burton, who first translated Kamasutra into English in 1883, have unfortunately translated some of the sutras (aphorisms) in the wrong way, because they did not know Sanskrit or understood it properly in the context in which it was written.
One unique thing about Kamasutra is that its compiler Vatsyayan never imposes his own moral values on his clients. What he mentions about anal sex is that it’s athhoratham, meaning one that’s down below. “Ratham” in Sanskrit means intercourse, and anus is below the vagina. Atho has two meanings: bad and below. What Vatsyayan meant was below, not bad. But the West went on to interpret it as bad.
Vatsyayan also talk about the importance of paying attention to the sexual needs of one’s partner especially, if one person is left unfulfilled. Some of the techniques he recommends are hastamaithun (hand masturbation) or oral sex and apadravya, artificial penis, which is the modern dildo.
He also notes that for a woman being multi-orgasmic is an inbuilt thing, while for a man it’s an acquired art. It’s the same conclusion, which sex researchers Masters & Johnson arrived at after decades of research.
So sometimes it appears that what we call research today is “re-search” and what we prescribe today had been “pre-scribed” centuries ago.
(Continues)
(Dr Prakash Kothari is India’s pioneering sexologist. In conversation with Sangeeth Sebastian, writer and founder, Vvox, a sextech platform. The biography is a part of an AKADialog initiative to capture the lives of newsmakers.)