When the wheel of sexual ecstasy is in full swing, there are no textbooks and no order. The Kamasutra is the oldest surviving Hindu textbook on erotic love. It is about the art of living – the search for a partner, power in marriage, infidelity, life as or with a courtesan, the use of drugs – and also about positions in sexual intercourse. It was written in Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India, sometime in the third century AD. It combines an encyclopedic coverage of all conceivable aspects of sex with a keenly observed sexual psychology and a dramatic, novelistic narrative of seduction, consummation, and unraveling. The text is most famously known in English through the highly mannered, inflated, and inaccurate 19th-century translation by Sir Richard Burton. Here, the text is presented in a completely new translation into clear, vibrant, and sexually open English, along with three commentaries: translated excerpts from the earliest and most famous Sanskrit commentary (13th century) and from a 20th-century Hindi commentary, as well as explanatory notes by the two translators. About the series: For over 100 years, Oxford World's Classics has offered the widest range of literature from around the world. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship and provides the most accurate text along with a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading scholars, helpful notes for clarifying the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.