The Kama Sutra was first translated into English by Foster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot and explorer Richard Francis Burton in 1883. Under the guise of a sham literary society—The Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares—the two were able to ‘privately’ distribute the work of Indian erotica while also avoiding penalty from the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 (Grant 509). For modern readers, the introduction of The Kama Sutra into Victorian society was a double-edged sword. While the work of Arbuthnot and Burton was extremely radical and progressive for its time, many parts of their translation also reflect the backwardness of Victorian gender/sexuality ideals and seeing the ‘Orient’ as an anthropologic other.  

The translation was presented with many authoritative commentaries from Arbuthnot and Burton to establish the need to study the ‘science’ of sex. The ‘Introduction,’ ‘Preface,’ and ‘Concluding Remarks’ by the translators present sterile for the prospective reader. Arbuthnot and Burton being in the upper echelon of Victorian society meant that The Kama Sutra’s readers would have been primarily wealthy men (510). What springs from this select audience is the fetishization of Indian harems. An advertised extract of the English translation presents a titillating description of Indian homes with private chambers filled with women. Although The Kama Sutra occasionally does use the word ‘harem,’ it would not have been around during the original authorship—much of the fascination with harems correlates to it being a space in which European men could not enter (511-512). In this way, harems operate voyeuristically rather than realistically in Arbuthnot and Burton’s translation.  

Another way in which Arbuthnot and Burton grafted Western sexuality onto Eastern was using the Hindu terms for vagina and penis, yoni, and lingam—which do not appear in the text. Instead, Vatsyayana—the original author of The Kama Sutra—wrote in gender-neutral terms (jaghana) when referring to genitals (Doniger 35). This further anthropologized sex as something that occurs outside of Britain and distanced the reader from the ‘science.’ Other instances of Arbuthnot and Burton changing meaning through translation are taking away a woman’s right to reprove her husband for infidelity or adding exclusively male-gendered pronouns when talking about pleasure (33-35).  

One can see English gentlemen’s anthropological fascination with eastern erotica in the character of Mr. Rochester. Upon returning from wedding shopping with Jane, Mr. Rochester remarks that he would not trade Jane for all the “Grand Turk's whole seraglio, gazelle-eyes, houri forms.” Here one sees Mr. Rochester’s voyeuristic excitement about the living space of women in Aisa. The word seraglio denotes a private apartment or living space for women in the middle east and was a term heavily associated with harems (“Seraglio”). He also uses the word ‘houri’—which refers to an attractive Muslim woman with lustful desires (“Houri”). Even though Mr. Rochester is utilizing words that deal specifically with Arab culture, the larger connotation is that someone of his rank and power would have seen Asia as an erotic other. What comes across from this reference is not that Mr. Rochester is learned in Asian treatises on marriage and gender equality but takes part in the deliberate fetishization of ‘oriental’ sexuality. 

Works Cited 

Doniger, Wendy. “The ‘Kamasutra’: It Isn’t All about Sex.” The Kenyon Review, vol. 25, no. 1, 2003, pp. 18–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4338414. Accessed 4 Oct. 2022. 

Grant, Ben. “Translating/’The’ ‘Kama Sutra.’” Third World Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 3, 2005, pp. 509–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993841. Accessed 4 Oct. 2022. 

"Houri" OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2022, www.oed.com/view/Entry/88879. Accessed 4 October 2022. 

"Seraglio" OED Online, Oxford University Press, September 2022, www.oed.com/view/Entry/176331. Accessed 4 October 2022.