Amorous Batik Paintings

Brahmin Shvetaketu... decided to unravel before the world an authoritative scripture channelising man's animal instincts into a disciplined practice of pleasure... he undertook to rearrange the text originally presented by Nandi, the bull of Shiva, in a thousand chapters... Vatsyayana, the celebrated author of the Kama Sutra, condensed it further into the thirty-six chapters that exist today... the intention of the Kama Sutra is to link pleasure with virtue, and it is all about not being a slave to sensual desire... The pleasure that arises at the time of the physical senses and the mind and the heart enjoying their natural objects, is Kama... In Dharma, Artha and Kama, the preceding one is better than the succeeding one... Vatsyayana establishes Kama as an independent branch of study, declaring physical desire to be an integral need of the body,... in ethical rhythm with Artha and Dharma.

"Kapalika tantrikas believed that...instinct to love, Kama, was body's...enlivening strength...which charged in sexual union prepared body...soul and mind for harbouring all pleasurable sensations which finally led to parmananda...when...self united with and merged into universal or cosmic self...Khajuraho (was) its best laboratory... Khajuraho temples have hundreds of sculptures portraying various positions of coition and love making... which the modern mind would consider obscene and vulgar... (Khajuraho) temples were always thronged by crowds of mahantas and common devotees. Obviously, people those days thought of sex and love differently... (khajuraho temples are) amongst the finest works of art that man's creative genius might claim to have ever created on the earth... Whatsoever human imagination conceives, it will fall short of the magnificence that these stone structures breathe..."