The original composition date or century for the Kamasutra is unknown. Historians have variously placed it between 400 BCE and 300 CE.[16][note 1] According to John Keay, the Kama Sutra is a compendium that was collected into its present form in the 2nd century CE.[17] In contrast, the Indologist Wendy Doniger, who has co-translated the Kama Sutra and published many papers on related Hindu texts, states that the surviving version of the Kama Sutra must have been revised or composed after 225 CE because it mentions the Abhiras and the Andhras dynasties that did not co-rule major regions of ancient India before that year.[18] The text makes no mention of the Gupta Empire which ruled over major urban areas of ancient India, reshaping ancient Indian arts, Hindu culture and economy from the 4th century through the 6th century. For these reasons, she dates the Kama Sutra to the second half of the 3rd century CE.[18]
The place of its composition is also unclear. The likely candidates are urban centers of north India, alternatively in the eastern urban Pataliputra (now Patna).[19] Doniger notes Kama Sutra was composed "sometime in the third century of the common era, most likely in its second half, at the dawn of the Gupta Empire".[20]
Vatsyayana Mallanaga is its widely accepted author because his name is embedded in the colophon verse, but little is known about him.[21] Vatsyayana states that he wrote the text after much meditation.[22] In the preface, Vatsyayana acknowledges that he is distilling many ancient texts, but these have not survived.[22] He cites the work of others he calls "teachers" and "scholars", and the longer texts by Auddalaki, Babhravya, Dattaka, Suvarnanabha, Ghotakamukha, Gonardiya, Gonikaputra, Charayana, and Kuchumara.[22] Kamasutra was considered to have been put together from a 150 chapter manuscript that had itself been distilled from 300 chapters which in turn came from a compilation of some 100,000 chapters of text. It was thought to have been written in its final form sometime between the third and fifth century CE.[23] Vatsyayana's Kamasutra is mentioned and some verses quoted in the Brihatsamhita of Varahamihira, as well as the poems of Kalidasa. This suggests he lived before the 5th-century CE.[24][25]
