KAMA

in the mythology of India, the god of love. During the Vedic age, he personified cosmic desire, or the creative impulse, and is called the first-born of the primeval chaos that makes all later creation possible. In later periods he is depicted as a handsome youth, attended by heavenly nymphs, who shoots love-producing flower-arrows. His bow is of sugarcane, his bowstring a row of bees. Once directed by the other gods to arouse Siva's (Shiva's) passion for Parvati, he disturbed the great god's meditation on a mountaintop. Enraged, Siva burned him to ashes with the fire of his third eye. Thus he became Ananga (Sanskrit: the Bodiless). But some accounts say Siva soon relented and restored him to life after the entreaties of his wife, Rati. The term kama (Sanskrit kama) also refers to one of the proper pursuits of man in his role as a householder, that of pleasure and love. A classic textbook on erotics and other forms of human pleasure, the Kama-sutra, is attributed to the sage Vatsyayana.