Sexuality in Ancient India: A Study Based on the Pali Vinayapitaka

The book develops its subject through a detailed study of the Pāli Vinayapiṭaka as a legal, ethical, and socio-cultural record of early Buddhist monastic life. It begins by examining the place of the Vinaya in ancient Indian literature and its value as a source for understanding the external conduct, discipline, and institutional development of the Buddhist Saṅgha. It then identifies and evaluates the data on sex preserved in the Vinaya, showing how questions of sexuality entered the regulatory framework of monastic life because celibacy, restraint, and the management of sensual desire were central to the Buddhist religious path. The work gives sustained attention to brahmacariya as the Buddhist approach to sexual renunciation, while also situating the early Buddhist Saṅgha within its wider social background. From this foundation, Perera studies ordinary heterosexual relationships, hetero- and homosexual deviations, intersexuality, further forms of sexual misconduct, erotic specialists, gaṇikās, prostitution, and miscellaneous sexual phenomena. Across these topics, the book shows that the Vinaya preserves a frank and unusually rich body of evidence about ancient Indian sexual culture, not simply as abstract doctrine but as lived social reality encountered by the Buddhist monastic order.