While many Boston University students gathered around small television screens and adjusted their antennas to watch scrambled images of “Friends” last night, a handful of students gathered in the College of Arts and Sciences to talk about sex and social conduct.
Arthi Devarajan, a graduate student from Harvard Divinity School, led a group of BU students in a discussion about the ancient Hindu text, the Kama Sutra.
Jaagriti, a BU student group dedicated to raising awareness of South Asian cultures, sponsored the discussion. The group, in its second year, gets its name from the Hindi word for “awakening.”
According to Shilpa Srinivasan, a Jaagriti member and College of Engineering junior, said the event was “basically the first program to get people interested in Jaargriti.”
The group holds four discussions a semester with guest lecturers focusing on “South Asian issues, politics and culture that you don’t normally learn in a classroom,” Srinivasan said.
Despite the popular Western belief that the text is solely descriptions and diagrams of fornication, the book actually served as a code of social conduct with chapters focusing on kissing, embracing, intercourse, biting and scratching, according to materials provided by Devarajan.
The text is organized into descriptions of the interactions between the sexes, using poetic imagery when appropriate, Devarajan said.
She said the book outlines the conduct one would follow in the presence of “other men’s wives, other women’s husbands and women from other countries.” The book includes a compilation of guidelines from many different authors, however the person most often credited as the author is Mallanaga Vatsyayana, about whom little is known.
The ancient text was first introduced to the West when British explorers found the Khajuranto Temple with its sexually shocking statues. After seeing the figures, the explorers condemned the temple, yet they did not see the encoded scriptures hidden on them, Devarajan said.
The scriptures were placed in the temple due to the belief enemies would not catch them because of their shock after witnessing the graphic scene on the statue.
Since then, the Kama Sutra has been taken by the West and made into what Devarajan called “a symbol of Asian culture.”
“[The book has] taken on a life of its own in the modern age,” Devarajan said. “A person may not know anything about South Asia, but they will have heard about the Kama Sutra.”
Many Westernized versions of the text were brought up in the discussion, including Cosmo Magazine’s monthly Kama Sutra article, which is the most closely linked to the original version in style, Devarajan said.
Rupa Jayagopal, a College of General Studies sophomore, who went to learn about her heritage, said she wasn’t very familiar with the ancient text.
“I don’t really know too much about it, and being from the Indian culture, it’s hard to imagine how such a sexual text could come from our culture,” Jayagopal said.
After the event, Jayagopal said she felt differently about the text.
“It’s more about something between two people rather than just a lustful moment,” Jayagopal.
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