an exalted and even chaste friendship, whereas eroticism is a science and art related to

yoga, and learned treatises explain its various forms and methods. These works form part of
the education of every student in traditional schools. The best known is the Kama Sutra,
but there are many others, and many chapters of the Puranas are also dedicated to the
erotic sciences.
The texts on eroticism envisage seven kinds of attraction (rata): attraction arising
from love, attraction arising from the performance, attraction arising from the occasion,
indirect or imaginary attraction, self-seeking attraction, brute desire, and particular
attractions.
According to Pandit Madhavacharya, when two lovers who are deeply in love have
intercourse, their attraction is born of love (ragavata)the attraction of true lovers that not
everyone is given to know. This is the act of love with the most savor.
When a partial attraction is gradually built up during various attempts, it begins as a
game, entwining and embracing and gaining an increasing intensity. This attraction arises
from performance (aharya).
When two persons with different interests meet for some purpose, any intercourse
they may have arises from the occasion (kritrima). Feelings on both sides may be
pretended at first, but a certain attraction develops as particular qualities are discovered
during the intercourse.
Each is enamored of another person, and only chance has made them meet. When
they unite, each seeks in the other the image of the beloved, so that their attraction for each
other is indirect (vyavahita), played as it were by proxy.
Water-carriers, servants, and women of low birth have a reputation for rapacity,
desiring their wage immediately and never being satisfied. The tradeswoman seated in her
shop is there for her merchandise and nothing else. These women have the same spirit as
the whore, in that their desire, born of cupidity (pota-rata), leaves no place for genuine
erotic feelings but is merely a question of work and pay. That is why this kind of pleasure is
called "neuter" (kliba).
When a woman who is well versed in the arts of love gives herself to a peasant, such
intercourse is termed rough (khala) or bestial pleasure, inasmuch as she cannot employ her
arts, her partner being brutish. A man skilled in love who has intercourse with a
shepherdess or an uncultivated woman finds himself in the same situation.
Particular attractions (aniyantrita rata) cover all other variations of love. In mystic
love, every human being is androgynous and is both active and passive, lover and mistress
at the same time, wholly penetrated by pure, immense, total sensuality. In his desire for
limitless pleasure, the Creator formed women who love women and men who prefer men.
At the time of Akbar, the men who belonged to the sect of the anubbashyas were
considered women and lived and spoke as women. Their master was Krishna, who was
depicted as a virile man. Mystic cults devoted to Krishna have often encouraged states of
sexual ambiguity in which all their adherents cultivate their feminine nature, in order to
draw closer to the divine lover
According to the Rasa Panchadhyayi, a man who at his death abandons his gross but
completely feminized body, which has forced him to live separated from Krishna, because of
his devotion acquires a body of pleasure (ananda-maya deha). By its means he will enjoy
endless delight in the arms of Krishna, skilled in all the arts of love.
In ancient times, many men lived as women, dressed as women, and shared the life of
the harem.
The mutual feelings of people who have known each other for a long time and trust

one another entirely are influenced by each other. They form an indivisible unity in which
contrasts no longer exist on the external level. It is at this point that friendship turns into
love. Many homosexuals belong to this category, in which friendship, trust, and intimacy
are also sources of love.
Complete trust in someone involves a simultaneous attraction or attachment, a
relationship in which fear does not exist. The distrust and ignorance of mutual
reactions that often separate the two sexes is absent, and pleasure becomes mutual and
indivisible, like all life's other activities.
(Pandit Madhavacharya, Sakala Purusharthon ka sara-Kama, in Siddhanta, pp.
267-268)
According to architectural treatises, a love chamber (rati mandala) should be
constructed at the top of the house, with a large bed and flowers and the walls decorated
with erotic paintings, to which the master of the house will withdraw for amorous dalliance.
All the old houses of Benares still have a room of this kind. The love chamber is sometimes
a pavilion in a garden, which is better suited for passing adventures.
The Puranas and the Kama Sutra speak of eight forms of the erotic act: thinking of it,
speaking of it, flirting (keli), looking at each other, speaking in secret, deciding to do it, the
attempt, and consummation.
The contrary of these eight acts is called chastity.
(Agni Purana, 372)
Erotic postures correspond to the related yoga positions, whose use is important for
rich and poor alike. Only among adolescents can acts be easily improvised or technique be
of little importance.?
According to the Kama Sutra, women of the doe, mare, and elephant types couple well
with men of the rabbit, hare, and horse types respectively, due to the corresponding size of
their organs.
Temperament may be of three sorts: lively, sweet, and average. Although badly
matched temperaments can be adjusted to a certain extent, the same is not possible with
physical types.
In love as in mystic union, unless orgasms are synchronized, the feeling of
identification which is the true consummation of physical love is not achieved.
(Pandit Madhavacharya, in Siddhanta, p. 273)
Bihari speaks of sixty-four elements constituting the erotic act, which are hugging,
kissing, scratching, biting, penetrating, sighing, inversion (ranging from virility in
women to male homosexuality), oral coitus, making eight forms, each with eight
variations.
The eight types of hugging are divided into two groups, according to whether they
can be performed in public or only in private.
The first serve to show affection, and are known as touching, stroking, rubbing, and
embracing, whereas those which cannot be performed in public are the creeper, the
tree-climb, oil in the rice, and the churn.
According to the Kama Sutra, "the creeper" is based on the Vedic text "Hug me as the
creeper wraps itself around the tree," the act comprising the man's pressing against
the woman and taking her lips with his.
In the "tree-climb," one of the woman's legs slides along the man's, and the other
encircles his waist, her body pressed against his, lips against lips.
The last two forms of hug comprise the uniting of the sexual organs, the latter being
the symbol of infatuation and passion.

(Pandit Madhavacharya, in Siddhanta, p. 273)

Suvarnanabha adds to these last two the squeezing of the thighs, the squeezing of the
pubis, the squeezing of the forehead, and labored hugging.
Of the kisses, the first three, according to Kalidasa, are "those in which the lips are not
parted" and are known as causal (nimittaka), blooming (sphuritaka), and widening
(ghattitaka). The others are called equal (sama), inclined (tiryaka), illusory (ud-bhranta),
pressed (avapidita), and drawn in (akrishta). Games are sometimes played with kisses for
stakes. Stealing a kiss by taking advantage of drunkenness or sleep is considered a
punishable offense.
Sighs are part of sexual approach, and are also used in the extreme expression of
pleasure, during penetration, and in hugging. Sighs are mingled with scratching and
biting, taking in all sixteen variations.
(Pandit Madhavacharya, in Siddhanta, p. 273)