The classic textbook on erotics, the "Kama Sutra," was written or compiled around the 5th century and is attributed to a sage, Vatsyayana, about whom little else is known. This Hindu treatise, written in Sanskrit, is usually classed among those didactic manuals known as shastra, of which there are many. These teach the proper execution and interpretation of whatever their subject is.
In doing just that, the "Kama Sutra" has become the most famous book on sex ever written. Here Kama, the Hindu "god of love," the Vedic personification of cosmic desire, appears in most of his various forms, and directs the student to a proper understanding.
The text is thus a universal allegory and, at the same time, a kind of recipe book, one that advises on postures, on techniques, on distinguishing all of the 64 sexual positions, and -- oddly to the Western eye -- on propriety. It becomes not only a celebration of ecstatic union, but at the same time a do-it-yourself manual, which is to sex as Emily Post was to etiquette and Martha Stewart to housekeeping.