Complete Illustrated Kama Sutra

The erotic sentiments described in the Hindu love classic the Kama Sutraconstitute the most famous work on sex ever created. Written almost 2,000 years ago, the Kama Sutra deals with all aspects of sexual life, including the principles and techniques of sexual pleasure and how to best achieve ecstatic expression of life’s beauty. In this complete and illustrated guide Lance Dane accompanies the Kama Sutratext with 269 illustrations and great works of art that encompass coins, palm leaf manuscripts, sculptures, ancient toys, jewelry, architecture, ivory combs, birch bark, cloth, paintings, frescoes, and scrolls. Gathered from museums and private collections around the world—as well as the author’s own collection of over 300,000 photographs—these rare images clearly illustrate all 64 sexual positions and the erotic instructions set forth in the Kama Sutra. The result is a dazzling and sensuous reading experience through which the teachings of the Kama Sutraspring to life.

"Gives us the dazzling artwork from museums and private collections worldwide... fascinating...sex has not changed in over 2,000 years.", "A new, gorgeously illustrated edition of the famous Hindu Classic.", "It is not, in fact, a pornographic work, but a book depicting the art of living for the civilized and refined citizen, finding its expression in the sphere of love, eroticism, and the sensual pleasures of life. . . . Rather than calling the Kama Sutra pornography and hiding it on the highest shelf of their bookcases, Western readers should see it as the expression of a refined, sophisticated people on the art of love."

Lance Dane is a writer, photographer, renowned scholar, and the founder of the Sanskriti Museum of Every Day Art in Delhi. He has dedicated over five decades to researching and archiving all aspects of the Kama Sutra and other pre-Vedic and Vedic classical erotica. His private collections of over 9,000 books on Indian art and architecture and his 300,000 archival photographs are housed in the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts in New Delhi. He lives in India.