The Sixty-four Art Forms

First Online: December 18, 2006
Page Last Updated: November 16, 2024

Scholar Vatyayana, the writer of Kamasutra emphasizes that there is more to seduction than sex. He defines the sixty-four art forms for women to master. They are listed below. He recommends a variety of sources to learn these skills from --from elderly family members such as aunts to professionals such as nurses. Vatyayana even provides a thumb rule on how such a advisor can be trusted.

The 64 Skills to become a Perfect Mate

1. Singing
2. Playing on musical instruments
3. Dancing
4. Union of dancing, singing, and playing instrumental music
5. Writing and drawing
6. Tattooing
7. Arraying and adorning an idol with rice and flowers
8. Spreading and arranging beds or couches of flowers, or flowers upon the ground
9. Coloring the teeth, garments, hair, nails and bodies, i.e. staining, dyeing, coloring and  grooming
10. Fixing stained glass into a floor
11. The art of making beds, and spreading out carpets and cushions for reclining
12. Playing on musical glasses filled with water
13. Storing and accumulating water in aqueducts, cisterns and reservoirs
14. Picture making, trimming and decorating
15. Stringing of rosaries, necklaces, garlands and wreaths
16. Binding of turbans and chaplets, and making crests and top-knots of flowers
17. Scenic representations, stage playing Art of making ear ornaments Art of preparing perfumes and odors
18. Proper disposition of jewels and decorations, and adornment in dress
19. Magic or sorcery
20. Quickness of hand or manual skill
21. Culinary arts -- cooking and arrangement of food
22. Making lemonades, sherbets, acidulated drinks, and spirituous extracts with proper flavor and color
23. Tailor's work and sewing
24. Making parrots, flowers, tufts, tassels, bunches, bosses, knobs, etc., out of yarn or thread
25. Solution of riddles, enigmas, covert speeches, verbal puzzles and enigmatical questions
26. Playing the game of Antakshari
27. The art of mimicry or imitation
28. Reading, including chanting and intoning
29. Study of sentences difficult to pronounce. It is played as a game chiefly by women, and children and consists of a difficult sentence being given, and when repeated quickly, the words are often transposed or badly pronounced
30. Practice with sword, single stick, quarter staff and bow and arrow
31. Drawing inferences, reasoning or inferring
32. Carpentry, or the work of a carpenter
33. Understanding of architecture, or the art of building
34. Knowledge about gold and silver coins, and jewels and gems
35. Knowledge of chemistry and mineralogy
36. Coloring jewels, gems and beads
37. Knowledge of mines and quarries
38. Gardening; knowledge of treating the diseases of trees and plants, of nourishing them, and determining their ages
39. Art of cock fighting, quail fighting and ram fighting
40. Art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak
41. Art of applying perfumed ointments to the body, and of dressing the hair with unguents and perfumes and braiding it
42. The art of understanding writing in encrypted script, and the writing of words in a peculiar way
43. The art of speaking by changing the forms of words. It is of various kinds. Some speak by changing the beginning and end of words, others by adding unnecessary letters between every syllable of a word, and so on
44. Knowledge of language and of the vernacular dialects
45. Art of making flower carriages
46. Art of framing mystical diagrams, of addressing spells and charms, and binding armlets
47. Mental exercises, such as completing stanzas or verses on receiving a part of them; or supplying one, two or three lines when the remaining lines are given indiscriminately from different verses, so as to make the whole an entire verse with regard to its meaning; or arranging the words of a verse written irregularly by separating the vowels from the consonants, or leaving them out altogether; or putting into verse or prose sentences represented by signs or symbols. There are many other such exercises.
48. Composing poems
49. Knowledge of dictionaries and vocabularies
50. Knowledge of ways of changing and disguising the appearance of persons
51. Knowledge of the art of changing the appearance of things, such as making cotton to appear as silk, coarse and common things to appear as fine and good
52. Knowledge of human anatomy and art of making love.
53. Various ways of gambling
54. Art of obtaining possession of the property of others by means of mantras or incantations
55. Skill in youthful sports
56. Knowledge of the rules of society, and of how to pay respect and compliments to others
57. Knowledge of the art of war, of arms, of armies, etc.
58. Knowledge of gymnastics
59. Art of knowing the character of a man from his features
60. Knowledge of scanning or constructing verses
61. Arithmetical recreations
62. Making artificial flowers
63. Making figures and images in clay
64. Art of massages and spiritual healing

See Also:

• The Arts of India -- The arts of India exemplify how life can indeed revolve around arts.