9. The Kama Sutra Also Teaches About Biting
In addition to teaching lovers how to slap and spank, the Kama Sutra also contains advice on erotic biting. It poetically describes a full-mouthed bite as the “line of jewels” and instructs such a bite to be used on the throat, armpit or thighs only. The Kama Sutra gives explicit instruction to women on how to bite their male partners, saying she should
“take hold of her lover by the hair, and bend his head down, and kiss his lower lip, and then, being intoxicated with love, she should shut her eyes and bite him in various places… when her lover shows her any mark that she may have inflicted on his body, she should smile at the sight of it, and turning her face as if she were going to chide him, she should show him with an angry look the marks on her own body that have been made by him. Thus if men and women act according to each other’s liking, their love for each other will not be lessened even in one hundred years.”
The emphasis on equality between male and female desire in this passage is indeed unique for the time. While the Kama Sutra does pervasively discuss the feminine nature as a set and given identity, it does treat women with more reverence and equality than most other contemporary writings.