PARIS.- Kama-Sutra: Spirituality and Erotism in Indian Art is the first exhibition ever organized that examines that jewel that is the Kama-Sutra text. Attributed to a Brahman who would have written in the 4th century of our era, it was often misinterpreted and incorrectly presented as a pornographic book. It is however one of the major texts in Medieval Hinduism, and a work designed to act as a guide for men and women throughout their lives in order to attain salvation.

Hinduism is one of the most ancient religions, or rather, one of the most ancient oriental philosophies of life. It was originally made up of 4 fundamental pillars, which corresponded to the different stages of life. The Kama-Sutra is the 3d of those pillars. The first corresponds to the early years of life, those during which were forged morals and ethics. Man learned everything that made of him an individual of quality. The second pillar of Hinduism is that of professional success and of material wellbeing that enabled one to have a decent life and to be a virtuous person. That step corresponds to the moment of the rising in power of the human being in his life, as an adult. The third pillar of Hinduism was thus the kama. That is the moment in life when, strengthened by the first two steps, the human being becomes aware of his inner life, of the strength of his body and of his spirit. He takes its full measure; he masters his strength and his inner life. He has reached maturity. That step is essential because it allows him to attain the last of the pillars: the moksha that make up the apotheosis and the capacity to reach absolute grace, religious ecstasy and overall understanding. As such, the Kama-Sutra as life-book takes on a more than overwhelming dimension in the Oriental life style and particularly in India.

The major place given to eroticism in this religious book is hard to understand in the West, heir to the Judeo-Christian traditions. However, “in India, eroticism occupied, during three thousand years of uninterrupted artistic and ideological production, a far more important place than in our classical Antiquity or in our Christian Europe. That is due in great part to the fact that if in Christianity God is love, in India God makes love.” (Michel ANGOT, L’Art érotique hindou, unpublished)

In India, no traditional work has a purely artistic vocation: the function of statues in particular, is exclusively religious. Far from reflecting popular concepts, the works concerning sacred eroticism are always illustrations of scholarly literature, written in Sanskrit by the Brahmans. In traditional India, such eroticism was not guilty, it “was used as a framework to read the world: sexual practice is assimilated to a ritual practice and vice-versa. [...] According to the ancient texts, there was indeed a universal order, dynamic but this was not acquired; the creative thrust waned in creation and therefore it had to be constantly sustained, motivated or renewed. And desire, especially the desire for love, is what feeds and reproduces the world. That idea is found throughout the multiple cosmogonies imagined in India: creation is less of an acquired characteristic than an ongoing process, always threatened. In fact, there were not only humans and animals partaking in this desire: in the rituals, everything was sexualized. Because amorous desire is the prototype of desire and love is not an affair of the heart but of the body; it reached its accomplishment in rituals that all aimed at producing the world, therefore at reproducing it and at supporting creation. Obviously this is not limited only to human generation and it is the whole universe that is invited to these cosmic weddings.” (ibid.)

The Kama-Sutra was written in Sanskrit, the sacred language, around the 4th century of our era by Vâtsyâyana, a Brahman, therefore a member of that erudite elite that monopolized the sacred and its transmission. On that subject, he declared that the aim of this work was to pay homage to the three human finalities: virtue, religious behaviour throughout the world [dharma], prosperity, politics, and the administration of men and of things, material wellbeing [artha] and finally desire, voluptuous pleasure in all its forms, love [kama]. The ultimate aim being to be freed from death, from life and detached from oneself [moksha], - a notion that Catholicism often translates as salvation. “The Kama-Sutra’s eroticism is not the art of debauchery but a serious and wise form of art; it illustrates that profound tendency in India to transform the act of love into a ritual in which the protagonists are not given over only to passion but principally to knowledge. Hence the pertinence of the sacred-profane opposition vanishes.” (ibid.) The Kama-Sutra overcomes false ideas and is preoccupied with the sphere of the spiritual by recalling that: “From start to finish, from youthful chastity to the final abnegation, one must succeed at life’s pilgrimage, and live to satisfy one’s passions” (KS VII.2. p. 371).

The Kama-Sutra is written in a versified form, and, like all the other great Hindu works, it is designed to be interiorized by the Brahman student as well as by an urban public, wealthy, polished and educated. The fact that sexual pleasure is a recurring theme provides this book with a universal range. However, contrary to perceived ideas, it does not preach hedonism, it transcends religions, social classes, castes, ethnicities and gives an absolute priority to a life lived in virtue, in joy, in pleasure and bears witness to a judicious combination of humour and of sexual liberation for men and women, even as it respects a strict social and spiritual code.

Kama-Sutra: Spirituality and Erotism in Indian Art is exhibiting over three hundred works following the original layout of the Kama-Sutra, i.e. the following seven books or sections (adhikaranas): society and the social concepts, sexual union, about seduction and marriage, about the wife, about extra-marital relationships, about the courtesans, about the occult arts.