Coltrane, Scott (1998). Gender and families. Rowman & Littlefield. p.36. ISBN 9780803990364. Archived from the original on 30 April 2016 . Retrieved 15 November 2015. Rocher, Ludo (1985). "The Kāmasūtra: Vātsyāyana's Attitude toward Dharma and Dharmaśāstra". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 105 (3): 521–523. doi: 10.2307/601526. JSTOR 601526. According to the Indologist De, a view with which Doniger agrees, this is one of the many evidences that the kamasutra began in the religious literature of the Vedic era, ideas that were ultimately refined and distilled into a sutra-genre text by Vatsyayana. [45] According to Doniger, this paradigm of celebrating pleasures, enjoyment and sexuality as a dharmic act began in the "earthy, vibrant text known as the Rigveda" of the Hindus. [48] The Kamasutra and celebration of sex, eroticism and pleasure is an integral part of the religious milieu in Hinduism and quite prevalent in its temples. [49] [50] Epics

The Early Upanishads. Oxford University Press. 1998. p.149, context: pp. 143–149. ISBN 0-19-512435-9. Earning his trust, knowing the man and his advances, how a woman can make advances, winning the heart; utilizing confidants of your lover, types of marriage, formalizing marriage, eloping Same-sex relationships are discussed, and not – as one might superficially assume – in a disapproving way. While some early translations have rendered the practices as being unsavory, the original text does not condone same-sex relationships.The Kamasutra manuscripts have survived in many versions across the Indian subcontinent. While attempting to get a translation of the Sanskrit kama-sastra text Anangaranga that had already been widely translated by the Hindus in regional languages such as Marathi, associates of the British Orientalist Richard Burton stumbled into portions of the Kamasutra manuscript. He commissioned the Sanskrit scholar Bhagvanlal Indraji to locate a complete Kamasutra manuscript and translate it. Indraji collected variant manuscripts in libraries and temples of Varanasi, Kolkata and Jaipur. Burton published an edited English translation of these manuscripts, but not a critical edition of the Kamasutra in Sanskrit. [52]

Jyoti Puri, who has published a review and feminist critique of the text, states that the " Kamasutra is frequently appropriated as indisputable evidence of a non-Western and tolerant, indeed celebratory, view of sexuality" and for "the belief that the Kamasutra provides a transparent glimpse into the positive, even exalted, view of sexuality". [115] However, according to Puri, this is a colonial and anticolonial modernist interpretation of the text. These narratives neither resonate with nor provide the "politics of gender, race, nationality and class" in ancient India published by other historians and that may have been prevalent then. [116] Burton "wanted to create a fantasy for his English-speaking audience by portraying people of the East as hypersexual and unchanging, without history," notes Mitra. But, she adds, "Unfortunately, people still use these reductive, racist ideas to think about Indian sexuality in the past and present." It is a given, in the Kama Sutra, that feelings towards a partner will change over time, on either side. Women, having given birth, might not be interested in sex anymore, whether short term or long term. Men, as they age, might lose their fiery libido, leaving their female partner high and dry. Therefore, the text details ways of breaking up with an unsatisfactory lover.Y. Krishan (1972). "The Erotic Sculptures of India". Artibus Asiae. 34 (4): 331–343. doi: 10.2307/3249625. JSTOR 3249625. Getting married in ancient Hindu society was no simple love match. Rather, the right woman had to be found, with not only her family, temperament and looks to be taken into account, but also such minutiae as her age which ‘should be three years or more younger than his own age.