A classical Sanskrit treatise on kama — the cultured pursuit of pleasure and the art of living well — attributed to Vatsyayana Mallanaga and composed around the third century CE. Organized in seven books, it covers desire, courtship, marriage, the refined life of the city gentleman, the world of courtesans, and the emotional lives of women and lovers; the famous sexual positions occupy only one part of one book. It reached the West largely through a loose Victorian translation by Richard Burton and F. F. Arbuthnot.
The Kama Sutra is probably the most misunderstood book in the world. Across the West it is known as an ancient manual of exotic sexual positions, the gift-shop guide to acrobatic love. It is in fact a sophisticated treatise on kama, the cultured pursuit of pleasure and the good life, of which the famous positions fill only one part of one of its seven books. The rest is about how to court, how to marry, how to keep a household, how to live as a person of taste, and how women feel and choose. Its real subject is not sex. It is how to live well, love well, and find happiness.