Vātsyāyana

Vatsyayana was an Indian religious scholar and writer, best known for the Kama Sutra, a treatise on pleasure, love and social life. He is traditionally placed in the age of the Gupta Empire, but his exact dates are unknown. Scholars have proposed a range from the 1st to the 6th century CE, based on a few indirect clues. His family name was Vatsyayana, and his personal name may have been Malla Naga or Mallanaga.

According to the scant traditional accounts, he was the son of a learned Brahmin and lived the life of a religious student, devoted to contemplation. At the end of his book he explains that he drew on earlier treatises, especially those of Babhravya, and that his aim was to guide people toward a well-ordered life rather than to offer a mere manual of techniques. Some traditions link him with Benares. A story that he spent his childhood in a brothel, where an aunt worked, is legendary and cannot be verified.

The Kama Sutra treats pleasure (kama) as one of three aims of life, alongside duty (dharma) and wealth (artha). Its central point is that pleasure must be balanced with the other two and should never make a person a slave to his passions. The work covers the education of the citizen, courtship, marriage and conduct in urban life, written in the brief, rule-based style typical of the sutras.

Two clues help place him in time. In one passage he mentions King Satakarni of Kuntala, who is said to have killed his wife during lovemaking with a blade called a katari; Vatsyayana cites the case as a warning against harming women in the heat of passion. Since that king is usually dated to the 1st century CE, the author must have lived later. In the other, the astrologer Varahamihira, writing around the 6th century, discussed the science of love and seems to have borrowed heavily from the Kama Sutra, which sets a later limit.

His influence can be seen in later Indian writing on love and eroticism. He should not be confused with another Vatsyayana, the author of an early commentary on the Nyaya Sutra, although it is unlikely that one person wrote both works.