The West “discovered” sex from the East. Two books that contributed to this discovery are Vatsyayana’s ‘Kamasutra’ and ‘One Thousand and One Nights,’ (The Arabian Nights) a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales written in Arabic, by various authors.

Both the texts are products of a refined erotic tradition that was alien to the Christian West.

While Kamasutra is a scientific treatise on erotic love that also talks about sex, among many other things, for a sophisticated living, the tales of Arabian Nights too is a product of pre-Colonial past when sex was sin-free.

It may be more than just a coincidence that both the texts were written during the “Golden Ages” of their respective cultures, Indian and Islamic, that spanned from third century to 13th century. Some of the earliest tales in Arabian Nights bears influence to ancient Sanskrit fables.

But what made the texts subversive in the eyes of many Europeans, was its underlying themes on female sexual pleasure and autonomy.

Kamsutra is perhaps the only text in the ancient world that allowed a sexually unhappy woman to walk out of a relationship, rather than telling her to serve her husband like god, which was the norm. Its attitude to adultery is also striking and egalitarian. “A woman desires any attractive man she sees, and in the same way, a man desires a woman,” writes Vatsyayana at a time when adultery was punished by death, often brutally, in almost all cultures.

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