Contrary to Haṇmante’s claim, the Kokaśāstra does not mention eighty-four āsanas, but rather describes forty-two karaṇas (‘positions’) and notes the names of a few others. Sexual positions are described in the tenth chapter of the Sanskrit Kokaśāstra. However, both authors chose to teach only one or two for the purpose of Haṭhayoga (Birch 2018: 107-108). The authors of two early yoga texts, namely the Dattātreyayogaśāstra and the Vivekamārtaṇḍa, explicitly state that they are aware of the existence of numerous āsanas, of which Śiva taught eighty-four. The Kokaśāstra, also known as the Ratirahasya (‘secrets of passion’), is a Sanskrit work usually dated to the twelfth century, which is approximately the same period when the earliest texts of Haṭha- and Rājayoga were composed. Seeing that several āsanas in the Mallapurāṇa, a Sanskrit work on wrestling, have the same names as those found in yoga texts, 1 it is not inconceivable that similarities, borrowings and ‘cross-pollination’ occurred between Kāmaśāstra and yoga.īühnemann mentions a list of eighty-four āsanas in the Kokaśāstra (‘Koka’s treatise’) based on a citation in a recent Marathi book called the Saṅkhyāsaṅketakośa by Haṇmante (1980). A reference by Gudrun Bühnemann (2007: 158) to eighty-four āsanas in Kāmaśāstra (‘treatises on sexual pleasures’) prompted me to search the well-known works of this genre, such as the Kāmasūtra, for complex postures that might be the same as those in yoga texts.

Karma sutra position 84