This book is an attempt to analyze the conception of kama in theearly-medieval classical Sanskrit literary tradition from a genderperspective. By reading against the grain, the author has tried toillumine the sexual status of women within the different genres ofthese classical Sanskrit sources. The book highlights that far frombeing a unitary homogeneous category with only a certain kind ofsexual status, women and their sexuality have been conceiveddifferently in different philosophical schools, be theydharmasnstra, kamasastra, Lokayata, tantric, ayurvedic and theascetic philosophies. \n