A South Indian Treatise On the Kamasastra

A South Indian Treatise On The Kamasastra

by Norman Sjoman

The Rati-Ratana-Pradipika, a minor text on erotica written in South India by a member of the Wadiyar royal family, is translated and annotated here with scholarly apparatus and academic understanding of sexual mechanics by a member of the Wadiyar royal family 350 years later. While the original text is incomplete, the treatment of the text by Sivapriyananda will make it a welcome contribution to India’s very popular ancient erotica. Sivapriyananda has made a distinct departure from the traditional material. The art work accompanying the text is by ‘Ganjifa’ Raghupati Bhatta, perhaps India’s foremost contemporary erotic artist and complements both the ancient text and the very modern annotations to the text.

About The Author:-

The author Swami Sivapriyananda was born in 1939 into a royal family of a princely state in Gujarat. He studied Sanskrit and Pali at graduate and post-graduate levels at Pune University. He also studied for the traditional 'kavyatirtha' of the Bengal Sanskrit Association, Calcutta.

After this, he went to England for post-graduate study in Archaeology at the London University.

He took sannyasa at Rishikesh in 1974 and since then has visited many ashramas, saints and centres of traditional learning in search of material on forgotten and neglected aspects of Indian religion and culture. At present he lives in Mysore (Karnataka), working on the philosophy and history of the Natha sects.