The Kama Sutra of Vatsayayana, or Aphorisms of Love, is the best known ancient textbook on love and sex. It is a mixture of cultural beliefs, science, religion and magick. Written approximately 1600 years ago, it lists 12 different aphrodisiac formulas containing a variety of herbs and common and unusual foods.

This text was translated into English in 1883 by Sir Richard Burton, and has been a best seller since then. The Kama Sutra has a lot less about sexual positions (and a lot more about flower arranging) than most people recognize. But it was used as a sort of marriage mannual for those entering adulthood in India.

The aphrodisiacs are highlighted in bold below in this copy of Burton's translation (now in the public domain). I added the numbers to seperate the formulas. Some of the herbs (like licorice) have crossed into western herbology, and others (Wild Asparagus) are known to Chinese herbalism. As I dig deeper into Ayurvedic herbology, more will be written about these alleged love enhancers.

Now the means of increasing sexual vigour are as follows:




1. A man obtains sexual vigour by drinking milk mixed with sugar, the root of the uchchata plant, the piper chaba, and liquorice.



2. Drinking milk, mixed with sugar, and having the testicle of a ram or a goat boiled in it, is also productive of vigour.


3. The drinking of the juice of the hedysarum gangeticum, the kuili, and the kshirika plant mixed with milk, produces the same effect.

4. The seed of the long pepper along with the seeds of the sanseviera roxburghiana, and the hedysarum gangeticum plant, all pounded together, and mixed with milk, is productive of a similar result.

5. According to ancient authors, if a man pounds the seeds or roots of the trapa bispinosa, the kasurika, the tuscan jasmine, and liquorice, together with the kshirakapoli (a kind of onion), and puts the powder into milk mixed with sugar and ghee, and having boiled the whole mixture on a moderate fire, drinks the paste so formed, he will be able to enjoy innumerable women.

6. In the same way, if a man mixes rice with the eggs of the sparrow, and having boiled this in milk, adds to it ghee and honey, and drinks as much of it as necessary, this will produce the same effect.

7. If a man takes the outer covering of sesamum seeds, and soaks them with the eggs of sparrows, and then, having boiled them in milk, mixed with sugar and ghee, along with the fruits of the trapa bispinosa and the kasurika plant, and adding to it the flour of wheat and beans, and then drinks this composition, he is said to be able to enjoy many women.

8. If ghee, honey, sugar and liquorice in equal quantities, the juice of the fennel plant, and milk are mixed together, this nectar-like composition is said to be holy, and provocative of sexual vigour, a preservative of life, and sweet to the taste.

9. The drinking of a paste composed of the asparagus racemosus, the shvadaushtra plant, the guduchi plant, the long pepper, and liquorice, boiled in milk, honey, and ghee, in the spring, is said to have the same effect as the above.

10. Boiling the asparagus racemosus, and the shvadaushtra plant, along with the pounded fruits of the premna spinosa in water, and drinking the same, is said to act in the same way.

11. Drinking boiled ghee, or clarified butter, in the morning during the spring season, is said to be beneficial to health and strength and agreeable to the taste.

12. If the powder of the seed of the shvadaushtra plant and the flower of barley are mixed together in equal parts, and a portion of it, i.e. two palas in weight, is eaten every morning on getting up, it has the same effect as the preceding recipe.

There are also verses on the subject as follows:

'The means of producing love and sexual vigour should be learnt from the science of medicine, from the Vedas, from those who are learned in the arts of magic, and from confidential relatives. No means should be tried which are doubtful in their effects, which are likely to cause injury to the body, which involve the death of animals, and which bring us in contact with impure things. Such means should only be used as are holy, acknowledged to be good, and approved of by Brahmans, and friends.'

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Indian medicine, or Ayurveda, is based on millenia of observation and experimentation. While some of the ideas are unusual to the western mind, many of the observations on the use of herbs have proven to be remarkably advanced and have entered modern scientific medicine. While I don't accept Ayurveda without examining and questioning it, I respect this science of life, and consider it a good place to start exploration of the Universe.