Vatsyayana, author of the Kama Sutra

This ascetic, probably celibate scholar who lived in classical India (around the 5th century A.D.) is an unlikely candidate to have written history's best known book on erotic love. Little is known about Vatsyayana's life, but in his famous book--actually a collection of notes on hundreds of years of spiritual wisdom passed down by the ancient sages--he wrote that he intended the Kama Sutra as the ultimate love manual and a tribute to Kama, the Indian god of love. Though it has become famous for its sections on sexual instruction, the book actually deals much more with the pursuit of fulfilling relationships, and provided a blueprint for courtship and marriage in upper-class Indian society at the time. In addition to his classic work on love, Vatsyayana also transcribed the Nyaya Sutras, an ancient philosophical text composed by Gautama in the 2nd century B.C. that examined questions of logic and epistemology. The Kama Sutra has been translated into hundreds of languages and has won millions of devotees around the world.