The Kama Sutra

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2012

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Kama Sutra, one of the most celebrated and often misunderstood texts of Indian literature. Probably composed during the reign of the Gupta dynasty around 1800 years ago, the work is a collection of writings about the art of love and sensual pleasure. Although it is best known today for a single chapter devoted to sexual pleasure, this important Sanksrit collection contains much besides. In particular it teaches the attainment of Kama (pleasure), one of the central goals of Hinduism. The Kama Sutra is a manual to a life of fulfilment, offering advice on such subjects as finding a spouse and how to behave in marriage; it has had a profound influence on Indian culture and thought. With:Julius LipnerProfessor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion at the University of CambridgeJessica FrazierLecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent and Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu StudiesDavid SmithReader in South Asian Religions at the University of Lancaster.Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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0:46.5	the program. Hello the Kama Sutra is a book whose origins are uncertain but which may have been composed as
0:53.6	earliest 2,000 years ago. Written originally in Sanskrit, it's one of the most
0:57.9	important works of India's golden age of literature. The Kama Sutra is a
1:01.9	handbook to pleasure covering every aspect of love and
1:04.8	relationships divided into seven sections it examines in turn the questions of social life,
1:10.0	courtship and marriage, extramarital relationships,
1:13.4	cortisans and their behavior,
1:15.1	advice for improving one's attractiveness,
1:17.5	as well as a thorough and systematic examination
1:19.9	of sexual techniques.
1:21.6	While some commentators think of this as the works keystone,
1:25.0	others regarded as merely its most popular section.
1:28.0	With me to discuss the Kamosutra Adjurious Lipner,
1:31.0	Professor of Hinduism and the comparative study of Religion at the University of Cambridge.
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