Kamasutra (Oxford World's Classics) Paperback – May 15, 2009

This is such a great book. The Kama Sutra was never meant to be pornographic in nature but sort of like a reference guide on how to conduct oneself in life. This is a great rendition of Vatsyayana's version of the Kama Sutra. There are very little to almost none of images, but the descriptions are worth enough to remedy that.

It is a manual, not a novel nor a pornographic compendium of sexual positions.Good edition for study as a historian

A scholarly presentation of an indian classic by a scholar who is at least as interested in demonstrating the breadth of her vocabulary as she is in communicating something of of substance to the reader. I have a PhD in one of the humanities and got a bit tired of dragging my dictionary around in order to translate phrases that could have been easily and effectively put into plain English.

I bought the book for an Anthropology course. Usually I would donate it to the school library but this book I am keeping. I love the diversity of Humankind.

No pictures, and the translation is very confusing. Outdated ideas such as a girl showing her love by never looking the man in the face, looks abashed when he notices her... a woman is unworthy of marriage if she has an ill sounding name, has a depressed nose or turned up nostrils, has fully arrived at puberty. If she becomes jealous of another woman she should tear her hair out, strike her lover, throw herself on the ground... and if he should console her she should tear his hair, kick at him... Yeah. My bf and I did have a good laugh making fun of it though. Lots of secret jokes between us have come from this crazy book.

A classic work on sexuality and love.

I'm giving it one star. First, Doniger inserted FRENCH words like "de luxe" into the translation. I had to use google to find out what that even meant. She also used the Victorian word "courtesan " for "prostitute" which nobody outside Oxford University would know.

Paperback, handy, and light weight. The price was cheap. The translation was very good, yet some parts were not clear to me. It's worth reading the book, and read it again - for further understanding.The book is not the one translated by Sir Richard Francis Burton, but of Wendy Doniger and Sudhir Kakar. What made me bought this book is that, it allows me to read the contents of this Hindu text with no pictures - yes, no illustrations, only the treatise and commentaries, as this is my primary requirement before.The treatise has a very good flow of sentences. It is justifiable that this book is not a pornographic work, but a very good literature, a classic to be read - ars erotica and scientia sexualis.Nothing good happens to a man who does nothing. - Vatsyayana