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Kama Sutra

The Kama Sutra (कामसूत्र,, ; lit. 'Principles of Love') is an ancient Indian Hindu Sanskrit text on sexuality, eroticism and emotional fulfillment. Attributed to Vātsyāyana, the Kamasutra is neither exclusively nor predominantly a sex manual on sex positions, but rather a guide on the art of living well, the nature of love, finding partners, maintaining sex life, and other aspects pertaining to pleasure-oriented faculties. It is a sutra-genre text with terse aphoristic verses that have survived into the modern era with different s (commentaries). The text is a mix of prose and anustubh-meter poetry verses.

Kamasutra acknowledges the Hindu concept of purusharthas, and lists desire, sexuality, and emotional fulfillment as one of the proper goals of life. It discussed methods for courtship, training in the arts to be socially engaging, finding a partner, flirting, maintaining power in a married life, when and how to commit adultery, sexual positions, and other topics. The text majorly dealt with the philosophy and theory of love, what triggers desire, what sustains it, and how and when it is good or bad.

The text is one of many Indian texts on Kama Shastra. It is a much-translated work in Indian and non-Indian languages, and has influenced many secondary texts that followed since the 4th-century CE, as well as the Indian arts as exemplified by the pervasive presence of Kama-related reliefs and sculpture in old Hindu temples. Of these, the Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Among the surviving temple, one in Rajasthan has all the major chapters and sexual positions sculpted to illustrate the Kamasutra.

According to Wendy Doniger, the Kamasutra became "one of the most pirated books in English language" soon after it was published in 1883 by Richard Burton. This first European edition by Burton does not faithfully reflect much in the Kamasutra because he revised the collaborative translation by Bhagavanlal Indrajit and Shivaram Parashuram Bhide with Forster Arbuthnot to suit 19th-century Victorian tastes.

Date and authorship
The original composition date or century for the Kamasutra is unknown. Historians have variously placed it between 400 BCE and 300 CE. According to John Keay, the Kama Sutra is a compendium that was collected into its present form in the 2nd century CE. In contrast, the Indologist Wendy Doniger, who had co-translated the Kama Sutra and published many papers on related Hindu texts, stated 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. The text makes no mention of the Gupta Empire, which ruled over major urban areas of ancient India, reshaping arts, culture, and economy from the 4th century through the 6th century CE. For these reasons, she dates the Kama Sutra to the second half of the 3rd century CE. 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".

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). Vatsyayana Mallanaga is its widely accepted author because his name is embedded in the colophon verse, but little is known about him. Vatsyayana states that he wrote the text after much meditation. In the preface, Vatsyayana acknowledges that he is distilling many ancient texts, but these have not survived. 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.

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. 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.

Purusharthas
The Hindu tradition has the concept of the Purusharthas which outlines "four main goals of life". It holds that every human being has four proper goals that are necessary and sufficient for a fulfilling and happy life:
 * Dharma – signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with rta, the order that makes life and universe possible, and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and right way of living. Hindu dharma includes the religious duties, moral rights and duties of each individual, as well as behaviors that enable social order, right conduct, and those that are virtuous. Dharma, according to Van Buitenen, is that which all existing beings must accept and respect to sustain harmony and order in the world. It is, states Van Buitenen, the pursuit and execution of one's nature and true calling, thus playing one's role in cosmic concert.
 * Artha – signifies the "means of life", activities and resources that enables one to be in a state one wants to be in. Artha incorporates wealth, career, activity to make a living, financial security and economic prosperity. The proper pursuit of artha is considered an important aim of human life in Hinduism.
 * Kama – signifies desire, wish, passion, emotions, pleasure of the senses, the aesthetic enjoyment of life, affection, or love, with or without sexual connotations. Gavin Flood explains kāma as "love" without violating dharma (moral responsibility), artha (material prosperity) and one's journey towards moksha (spiritual liberation).
 * Moksha – signifies emancipation, liberation or release. In some schools of Hinduism, moksha connotes freedom from saṃsāra, the cycle of death and rebirth, in other schools moksha connotes freedom, self-knowledge, self-realization and liberation in this life.

Each of these pursuits became a subject of study and led to prolific Sanskrit and some Prakrit languages literature in ancient India. Along with Dharmasastras, Arthasastras and Mokshasastras, the Kamasastras genre have been preserved in palm leaf manuscripts. The Kamasutra belongs to the Kamasastra genre of texts. Other examples of Hindu Sanskrit texts on sexuality and emotions include the Ratirahasya (called Kokashastra in some Indian scripts), the Anangaranga, the Nagarasarvasva, the Kandarpachudmani, and the Panchasayaka.

The defining object of the Indian Kamasastra literature, according to Laura Desmond – an anthropologist and a professor of Religious Studies, is the "harmonious sensory experience" from a good relationship between "the self and the world", by discovering and enhancing sensory capabilities to "affect and be affected by the world". Vatsyayana predominantly discusses Kama along with its relationship with Dharma and Artha. He makes a passing mention of Moksha in some verses.

Vedic heritage
The earliest foundations of the kamasutra are found in the Vedic era literature of Hinduism. Vatsyayana acknowledges this heritage in verse 1.1.9 of the text where he names Svetaketu Uddalaka as the "first human author of the kamasutra". Uddalaka is an early Upanishadic rishi (scholar-poet, sage), whose ideas are found in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad such as in section 6.2, and the Chandogya Upanishad such as over the verses 5.3 through 5.10. These Hindu scriptures are variously dated between 900 BCE and 700 BCE, according to the Indologist and Sanskrit scholar Patrick Olivelle. Among with other ideas such as Atman (self, soul) and the ontological concept of Brahman, these early Upanishads discuss human life, activities and the nature of existence as a form of internalized worship, where sexuality and sex is mapped into a form of religious yajna ritual (sacrificial fire, Agni) and suffused in spiritual terms:

 A fire – that is what a woman is, Gautama. Her firewood is the vulva, her smoke is the pubic hair, her flame is the vagina, when one penetrates her, that is her embers, and her sparks are the climax. In that very fire the gods offer semen, and from that offering springs a man. – Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 6.2.13, c. 700 BCE, Trans.: Patrick Olivelle

According to the Indologist De, a view with which Doniger agrees, this is one of the many evidences that the kamasutra began in the religious literature of the Vedic era, ideas that were ultimately refined and distilled into a sutra-genre text by Vatsyayana. According to Doniger, this paradigm of celebrating pleasures, enjoyment and sexuality as a dharmic act began in the "earthy, vibrant text known as the Rigveda" of the Hindus. The Kamasutra and celebration of sex, eroticism and pleasure is an integral part of the religious milieu in Hinduism and quite prevalent in its temples.

Epics
Human relationships, sex and emotional fulfillment are a significant part of the post-Vedic Sanskrit literature such as the major Hindu epics: the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The ancient Indian view has been, states Johann Meyer, that love and sex are a delightful necessity. Though she is reserved and selective, "a woman stands in very great need of surata (amorous or sexual pleasure)", and "the woman has a far stronger erotic disposition, her delight in the sexual act is greater than a man's".

Manuscripts
The Kamasutra manuscripts have survived in many versions across the Indian subcontinent. While attempting to get a translation of the Sanskrit kama-sastra text Ananga Ranga, which had already been widely translated by the Hindus in their regional languages such as Marathi, associates of the British Orientalist Richard Burton, stumbled into portions of the Kamasutra manuscript. Burton then commissioned the Sanskrit scholar Bhagvanlal Indraji to locate a complete Kamasutra manuscript and translate it. Indraji collected variant manuscripts of the text in libraries and temples of Varanasi, Kolkata and Jaipur. Burton later published an edited English translation of these manuscripts, but not a critical edition of the Kamasutra in Sanskrit.

According to S.C. Upadhyaya, known for his 1961 scholarly study and a more accurate translation of the Kamasutra, there are issues with the manuscripts that have survived and the text likely underwent revisions over time. This is confirmed by other 1st-millennium CE Hindu texts on kama that mention and cite the Kamasutra, but some of these quotations credited to the Kamasutra by these historic authors "are not to be found in the text of the Kamasutra" that have survived.

Structure
Vatsyayana's Kamasutra states it has 1,250 verses distributed over 36 chapters in 64 sections organised into 7 books. This statement is included in the opening chapter, a common practice in ancient Hindu texts, likely to prevent major and unauthorized expansions of a popular text. The text that has survived into the modern era has 67 sections, and this list is enumerated in Book 7 and in Yashodhara's Sanskrit commentary (bhasya) on the text.

The Kamasutra uses a mixture of prose and poetry, and the narration has the form of a dramatic fiction where two characters called nayaka (man) and nayika (woman), are aided by the characters called pitamarda (libertine), vita (pander) and vidushaka (jester). This format follows the teachings found in the Sanskrit classic Natyasastra. The teachings and discussions found in the Kamasutra extensively incorporate ancient Hindu mythology and legends.

Contents
The Kamasutra is a "sutra"-genre text consisting of intensely condensed, aphoristic verses. Doniger describes them as a "kind of atomic string (thread) of meanings", which are so cryptic that any translation is more like deciphering and filling in the text. Condensing a text into a sutra-genre religious text form makes it easier to remember and transmit, but it also introduces ambiguity and the need to understand the context of each chapter, its philological roots, as well as the prior literature, states Doniger. However, this method of knowledge preservation and transmission has its foundation in the Vedas, which themselves are cryptic and require a commentator and teacher-guide to comprehend the details and the inter-relationship of the ideas. The Kamasutra too has attracted commentaries, of which the most well known are those of 12th-century or 13th-century Yaśodhara's Jayamaṅgalā in the Sanskrit language, and of Devadatta Shastri who commented on the original text as well as its commentaries in the Hindi language. There are many other Sanskrit commentaries on the Kamasutra, such as the Sutra Vritti by Narsingha Sastri. These commentaries cite and quote Hindu texts such as the Upanishads, the Arthashastra, the Natyashastra, the Manusmriti, the Nyayasutra, the Markandeya Purana, the Mahabharata, the Nitishastra and others to provide the context, per the norms of its literary traditions. The extant translations of the Kamasutra typically incorporate these commentaries, states Daniélou.

In the colonial era marked by sexual censorship, the Kamasutra became famous as a pirated and underground text for its explicit description of sex positions. The stereotypical image of the text is one where erotic pursuit with sexual intercourse include improbable contortionist forms. In reality, according to Doniger, the real Kamasutra is much more and is a book about "the art of living", about understanding one's body and a partner's body, finding a partner and emotional connection, marriage, the power equation over time in intimate relationships, the nature of adultery and drugs (aphrodisiacs ) along with many simple to complex variations in sex positions to explore. It is also a psychological treatise that presents the effect of desire and pleasure on human behavior.

For each aspect of Kama, the Kamasutra presents a diverse spectrum of options and regional practices. According to Shastri, as quoted by Doniger, the text analyses "the inclinations of men, good and bad", thereafter it presents Vatsyayana's recommendation and arguments of what one must avoid as well as what to not miss in experiencing and enjoying, with "acting only on the good". For example, the text discusses adultery but recommends a faithful spousal relationship. The approach of Kamasutra is not to ignore nor deny the psychology and complexity of human behavior for pleasure and sex. The text, according to Doniger, clearly states "that a treatise demands the inclusion of everything, good or bad", but after being informed with in-depth knowledge, one must "reflect and accept only the good". The approach found in the text is one where goals of science and religion should not be to repress, but to encyclopedically know and understand, thereafter let the individual decide. The text states that it aims to be comprehensive and inclusive of diverse views and lifestyles.

Flirting and courtship
The 3rd-century text includes a number of themes, including subjects such as flirting that resonate in the modern era context, states a New York Times review. For example, it suggests that a young man seeking to attract a woman, should hold a party, and invite the guests to recite poetry. In the party, a poem should be read with parts missing, and the guests should compete to creatively complete the poem. As another example, the Kamasutra suggests that the boy and the girl should go play together, such as swim in a river. The boy should dive into the water away from the girl he is interested in, then swim underwater to get close to her, emerge from the water and surprise her, touch her slightly and then dive again, away from her.

Book 3 of the Kamasutra is largely dedicated to the art of courtship with the aim of marriage. The book's opening verse declares marriage to be a conducive means to "a pure and natural love between the partners", states Upadhyaya. It leads to emotional fulfillment in many forms such as more friends for both, relatives, progeny, amorous and sexual relationship between the couple, and the conjugal pursuit of dharma (spiritual and ethical life) and artha (economic life). The first three chapters discuss how a man should go about finding the right bride, while the fourth offers equivalent discussion for a woman and how she can get the man she wants. The text states that a person should be realistic, and must possess the "same qualities which one expects from the partner". It suggests involving one's friends and relatives in the search, and meeting the current friends and relatives of one's future partner prior to the marriage. While the original text makes no mention of astrology and horoscopes, later commentaries, such as one by 13th-century Yashodhara includes consulting and comparing the compatibility of the horoscopes, omens, planetary alignments, and such signs prior to proposing a marriage. Vatsyayana recommends, states Alain Danielou, that "one should play, marry, associate with one's equals, people of one's own circle" who share the same values and religious outlook. It is more difficult to manage a good, happy relationship when there are basic differences between the two, according to verse 3.1.20 of the Kamasutra.

Intimacy and foreplay
Vatsyayana's Kamasutra describes intimacy of various forms, including those between lovers before and during sex. For example, the text discusses eight forms of alingana (embrace) in verses 2.2.7–23: sphrishtaka, viddhaka, udghrishtaka, piditaka, lataveshtitaka, vrikshadhirudha, tilatandula and kshiranira. The first four are expressive of mutual love, but are nonsexual. The last four are forms of embrace recommended by Vatsyayana to increase pleasure during foreplay and during sexual intimacy. Vatsyayana cites earlier – now lost – Indian texts from the Babhraya's school, for these eight categories of embraces. The various forms of intimacy reflect the intent and provide means to engage a combination of senses for pleasure. For instance, according to Vatsyayana the lalatika form enables both to feel each other and allows the man to visually appreciate "the full beauty of the female form", states S.C. Upadhyaya.

Another example of the forms of intimacy discussed in the Kamasutra includes chumbanas (kissing). The text presents twenty-six forms of kisses, ranging from those appropriate for showing respect and affection, to those during foreplay and sex. Vatsyayana also mentions variations in kissing cultures in different parts of ancient India. The best kiss for an intimate partner, according to kamasutra, is one that is based on the awareness of the avastha (the emotional state of one's partner) when the two are not in a sexual union. During sex, the text recommends going with the flow and mirroring with abhiyoga and samprayoga.

Other techniques of foreplay and sexual intimacy that are described in the kamasutra include; various forms of holding and embraces (grahana, upaguhana), mutual massage and rubbing (mardana), pinching and biting, using fingers and hands to stimulate (karikarakrida, nadi-kshobana, anguli-pravesha), three styles of jihva-pravesha (french kissing), and many styles of fellatio and cunnlingus.

Adultery
The Kamasutra, states the Indologist and Sanskrit literature scholar Ludo Rocher, discourages adultery but then devotes "not less than fifteen sutras (1.5.6–20) to enumerating the reasons (karana) for which a man is allowed to seduce a married woman". Vatsyayana mentions different types of nayikas (urban girls) such as unmarried virgins, those married and abandoned by husband, widow seeking remarriage and courtesans, then discusses their kama/sexual education, rights and mores. In childhood, Vātsyāyana says, a person should learn how to make a living; youth is the time for pleasure, and as years pass, one should concentrate on living virtuously and hope to escape the cycle of rebirth.

According to Doniger, the Kamasutra teaches adulterous sexual liaison as a means for a man to predispose the involved woman in assisting him, as a strategic means to work against his enemies and to facilitate his successes. It also explains the signs and reasons a woman wants to enter into an adulterous relationship and when she does not want to commit adultery. The Kamasutra teaches strategies to engage in adulterous relationships, but concludes its chapter on sexual liaison stating that one should not commit adultery because adultery pleases only one of two sides in a marriage, hurts the other, it goes against both dharma and artha.

Caste, class
The Kamasutra has been one of the unique sources of sociological information and cultural milieu of ancient India. It shows a "near total disregard of class (varna) and caste (jati)", states Doniger. Human relationships, including the sexual type, are neither segregated nor repressed by gender or caste, rather linked to individual's wealth (success in artha). In the Kamasutra, lovers are "not upper-class" but they "must be rich" enough to dress well, pursue social leisure activities, buy gifts and surprise the lover. In the rare mention of caste, it is about a man finding his legal wife and the advice that humorous stories to seduce a woman should be about "other virgins of same jati (caste)". In general, the text describes sexual activity between men and women across class and caste, both in urban and rural settings.

Same-sex relationships
The Kamasutra includes verses describing homosexual relations such as oral sex between two men, as well as between two women. Lesbian relations are extensively covered in Chapters 5 and 8 in Book 2. The text also mentions "pretend play", sadomasochism, and group sex.

According to Doniger, the Kamasutra discusses same-sex relationships through the notion of the tritiya prakriti, literally, "third sexuality" or "third nature". In Redeeming the Kamasutra, Doniger states that "the Kamasutra departs from the dharmic view of homosexuality in significant ways", where the term kliba appears. In contemporary translations, this has been inaccurately rendered as "eunuch" – or, a castrated man in a harem, and the royal harem did not exist in India before the Turkish presence in the ninth century. The Sanskrit word Kliba found in older Indian texts refers to a "man who does not act like a man", typically in a pejorative sense. The Kamasutra does not use the pejorative term kliba at all, but speaks instead of a "third nature" or, in the sexual behavior context as the "third sexuality".

The text states that there are two sorts of "third nature", one where a man behaves like a woman, and in the other, a woman behaves like a man. In one of the longest consecutive sets of verses describing a sexual act, the Kamasutra describes fellatio technique between a man dressed like a woman performing fellatio on another man. The text also mentions same-sex behavior between two women, such as a girl losing her virginity with a girlfriend as they use their fingers, as well as oral sex and the use of sex toys between women. Svairini, a term Danielou translates as a lesbian, is described in the text as a woman who lives a conjugal life with another woman or by herself fending for herself, not interested in a husband. Additionally, the text has some fleeting remarks on bisexual relationships.

Translations
According to Doniger, the historical records suggest that the Kamasutra was a well-known and popular text in Indian history. This popularity through the Mughal Empire era is confirmed by its regional translations. The Mughals, states Doniger, had "commissioned lavishly illustrated Persian and Sanskrit Kamasutra manuscripts".

The first English translation of the Kama Sutra was privately printed in 1883 by the Orientalist Sir Richard Francis Burton. He did not translate it, but did edit it to suit the Victorian British attitudes. The unedited translation was produced by the Indian scholar Bhagwan Lal Indraji with the assistance of a student Shivaram Parshuram Bhide, under the guidance of Burton's friend, the Indian civil servant Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot. According to Doniger, the Burton version is a "flawed English translation" but influential as modern translators and abridged versions, even in the Indian languages such as in Hindi, are re-translations of the Burton version, rather than the original Sanskrit manuscript.

The Burton version of the Kamasutra was produced in an environment where the Victorian mindset and Protestant proselytizers were busy finding faults and attacking Hinduism and its culture, rejecting as "filthy paganism" anything they found sensuous and sexual in Hindu arts and literature. The "Hindus were cowering under their scorn", states Doniger, and the open discussion of sex in the Kamasutra scandalized the 19th-century Europeans. The Burton edition of the Kamasutra was illegal to publish in England and the United States till 1962. Yet, states Doniger, it became soon after its publication in 1883, "one of the most pirated books in the English language", widely copied, reprinted and republished sometimes without Richard Burton's name.

Burton made two important contributions to the Kamasutra. First, he had the courage to publish it in the colonial era against the political and cultural mores of the British elite. He creatively found a way to subvert the then prevalent censorship laws of Britain under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Burton created a fake publishing house named The Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares (Benares = Varanasi), with the declaration that it is "for private circulation only". The second major contribution was to edit it in a major way, by changing words and rewriting sections to make it more acceptable to the general British public. For example, the original Sanskrit Kamasutra does not use the words lingam or yoni for sexual organs, and almost always uses other terms. Burton adroitly avoided being viewed as obscene to the Victorian mindset by avoiding the use of words such as penis, vulva, vagina and other direct or indirect sexual terms in the Sanskrit text to discuss sex, sexual relationships and human sexual positions. Burton used the terms lingam and yoni instead throughout the translation. This conscious and incorrect word substitution, states Doniger, thus served as an Orientalist means to "anthropologize sex, distance it, make it safe for English readers by assuring them, or pretending to assure them, that the text was not about real sexual organs, their sexual organs, but merely about the appendages of weird, dark people far away." Though Burton used the terms lingam and yoni for human sexual organs, terms that actually mean a lot more in Sanskrit texts and its meaning depends on the context. However, Burton's Kamasutra gave a unique, specific meaning to these words in the western imagination.

The problems with Burton mistranslation are many, states Doniger. First, the text "simply does not say what Burton says it says". Second, it "robs women of their voices, turning direct quotes into indirect quotes, thus losing the force of the dialogue that animates the work and erasing the vivid presence of the many women who speak in the Kamasutra". Third, it changes the force of words in the original text. For example, when a woman says "Stop!" or "Let me go!" in the original text of Vatsyayana, Burton changed it to "She continually utters words expressive of prohibition, sufficiency, or desire of liberation", states Doniger, and thus misconstrues the context and intent of the original text. Similarly, while the original Kamasutra acknowledges that "women have strong privileges", Burton erased these passages and thus eroded women's agency in ancient India in the typical Orientialist manner that dehumanized the Indian culture. David Shulman, a professor of Indian Studies and Comparative Religion, agrees with Doniger that the Burton translation is misguided and flawed. The Burton version was written with a different mindset, one that treated "sexual matters with Victorian squeamishness and a pornographic delight in the indirect", according to Shulman. It has led to a misunderstanding of the text and created the wrong impression of it being ancient "Hindu pornography".

In 1961, S. C. Upadhyaya published his translation as the Kamasutra of Vatsyayana: Complete Translation from the Original. According to Jyoti Puri, it is considered among the best-known scholarly English-language translations of the Kamasutra in post-independent India.

Other translations include those by Alain Daniélou (The Complete Kama Sutra in 1994). This translation, originally into French, and thence into English, featured the original text attributed to Vatsyayana, along with a medieval and a modern commentary. Unlike the 1883 version, Daniélou's new translation preserves the numbered verse divisions of the original, and does not incorporate notes in the text. He includes English translations of two important commentaries, one by Jayamangala, and a more modern commentary by Devadatta Shastri, as endnotes. Doniger questions the accuracy of Daniélou's translation, stating that he has freely reinterpreted the Kamasutra while disregarding the gender that is implicit in the Sanskrit words. He, at times, reverses the object and subject, making the woman the subject and man the object when the Kamasutra is explicitly stating the reverse. According to Doniger, "even this cryptic text [Kamasutra] is not infinitely elastic" and such creative reinterpretations do not reflect the text.

A translation by Indra Sinha was published in 1980. In the early 1990s, its chapter on sexual positions began circulating on the Internet as an independent text and today is often assumed to be the whole of the Kama Sutra.

Doniger and Sudhir Kakar published another translation in 2002, as a part of the Oxford World's Classics series. Along with the translation, Doniger has published numerous articles and book chapters relating to the Kamasutra. The Doniger translation and Kamasutra-related literature has both been praised and criticized. According to David Shulman, the Doniger translation "will change peoples' understanding of this book and of ancient India. Previous translations are hopelessly outdated, inadequate and misguided". Narasingha Sil calls the Doniger's work as "another signature work of translation and exegesis of the much misunderstood and abused Hindu erotology". Her translation has the folksy, "twinkle prose", engaging style, and an original translation of the Sanskrit text. However, adds Sil, Doniger's work mixes her postmodern translation and interpretation of the text with her own "political and polemical" views. She makes sweeping generalizations and flippant insertions that are supported by neither the original text nor the weight of evidence in other related ancient and later Indian literature such as from the Bengal Renaissance movement – one of the scholarly specialty of Narasingha Sil. Doniger's presentation style titillates, yet some details misinform and parts of her interpretations are dubious, states Sil.

Reception
Indira Kapoor, a director of the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, states that the Kamasutra is a treatise on human sexual behavior and an ancient attempt to seriously study sexuality among other things. According to Kapoor, quotes Jyoti Puri, the attitude of contemporary Indians is markedly different, with misconceptions and expressions of embarrassment, rather than curiosity and pride, when faced with texts such as Kamasutra and amorous and erotic arts found in Hindu temples. Kamasutra, states Kapoor, must be viewed as a means to discover and improve the "self-confidence and understanding of their bodies and feelings".

The Kamasutra has been a popular reference to erotic ancient literature. In the Western media, such as in the American women's magazine Redbook, the Kamasutra is described as "Although it was written centuries ago, there's still no better sex handbook, which details hundreds of positions, each offering a subtle variation in pleasure to men and women."

Jyoti Puri, who published a review and feminist critique of the text, stated that the "Kamasutra is frequently appropriated as indisputable evidence of a non-Western and tolerant, indeed celebratory, view of sexuality" and for "the belief that the Kamasutra provides a transparent glimpse into the positive, even exalted, view of sexuality". However, according to Puri, this is a colonial and anticolonial modernist interpretation of the text. These narratives neither resonate with nor provide the "politics of gender, race, nationality and class" that may have been prevalent in ancient India as published by other historians.

According to Doniger, the Kama Sutra is a "great cultural masterpiece", one which can inspire contemporary Indians to overcome "self-doubts and rejoice" in their ancient heritage.

In popular culture
List of feature films based on the Kamasutra:
 * Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love
 * Kamasutra 3D
 * Tales of The Kama Sutra: The Perfumed Garden
 * Tales of The Kama Sutra 2: Monsoon

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Kama Sutra


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David Arkenstone

David Arkenstone (born July 1, 1952) is an American composer and performer. His music is primarily instrumental, with occasional vocalizations. Most of Arkenstone's music falls into new age category; however, he also worked in other genres, including even a heavy metal soundtrack for Emperor: Battle for Dune video game. His music has been described as 'soundtracks for the imagination'. Throughout his career, Arkenstone released over 50 albums and composed music for video games, including World of Warcraft, and for television, including NBC's Kentucky Derby. Arkenstone has been nominated for Grammy Awards five times.

Biography
After moving from Chicago to California at the age of ten, he was involved in various high school bands playing guitars and keyboards, playing baseball in his spare time. He studied music in college and started a progressive rock band named after himself, but he soon discovered his own musical voice in the instrumental genre. Arkenstone was influenced by writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien and Ian Fleming, and grew up listening to bands like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Deep Purple, and Yes, as well as listening to classical music.

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He has also composed music for television; channels such as the History Channel, the Discovery Channel and NBC Sports include his music. He has also written music for trailers and film soundtracks, including the independent film PRISM, as well as computer game soundtracks such as World of Warcraft, Lands of Lore 2 and 3, Earth and Beyond, Emperor: Battle for Dune, and Space Siege. He also features on 20 Years of Narada Piano.

Arkenstone has earned five Grammy nominations for his work: In the Wake of the Wind in 1992, Citizen of the World in 2000, Atlantis in 2004, Fairy Dreams in 2020, and Pangaea in 2022.

Arkenstone has learned to play a variety of musical instruments, including bouzouki, mandolin, guitar, bass guitar, harp, cello, flute, electronic keyboards, piano, Turkish saz, pennywhistle, melodica, and pan pipes. He also plays drums and percussion and has performed some vocalizations on his albums.

Arkenstone is also involved in the band Troika; their sound is similar to his solo work. The band members like to remain anonymous, although the compositions are credited to Arkenstone.

His theme "The Journey Begins/Kyla's Ride" was used for the FIFA World Cup France '98 broadcastings intro by the Mexican television network Azteca.

His song "Papillon (On the Wings of the Butterfly)" was formerly used as background music in Future World at Epcot in Walt Disney World. His song "The Palace" was once used as background music in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom as well. "The Palace" also used to play in Tokyo Disneyland's Tomorrowland, and another one of his songs, "Valley in the Clouds" was also used.

He signed with Domo Records and re-released the album Echoes of Light and Shadow in 2010.

Arkenstone was a member of the composing team who developed the music for Blizzard Activision's World of Warcraft videogame's Cataclysm expansion. Along with Arkenstone, the team consists of Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford, and Neal Acree.

title: David Arkenstone


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Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music band founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The group has seen many personnel changes over the years, with Froese the only constant member until his death in January 2015. The best-known lineup of the group was its mid-1970s trio of Froese, Christopher Franke, and Peter Baumann. In 1979, Johannes Schmoelling replaced Baumann until his own departure in 1985. This lineup was notable for composing many movie soundtracks. Since Froese's death in 2015, the group has been under the leadership of Thorsten Quaeschning. Quaeschning is Froese's chosen successor and is currently the longest-serving band member, having joined in 2005. Quaeschning is currently joined by violinist Hoshiko Yamane who joined in 2011 and Paul Frick who joined in 2020. Prior to this Quaeschning and Yamane performed with Ulrich Schnauss from 2014 to 2020. Schnauss only played two shows with Froese in November 2014 before Froese's passing.

Tangerine Dream are considered a pioneering act in electronica. Their work with the electronic music Ohr label produced albums that had a pivotal role in the development of the German musical scene known as kosmische Musik ("cosmic music"). Their "Virgin Years", so called because of their association with Virgin Records, produced albums that further explored synthesizers and sequencers, including the UK top 20 albums Phaedra (1974) and Rubycon (1975). The group also had a successful career composing film soundtracks, creating over 60 scores.

From the late 1990s into the 2000s, Tangerine Dream continued to explore other styles of instrumental music as well as electronica. Their recorded output has been prolific, including over one hundred albums. Among other scoring projects, they helped create the soundtrack for the video game Grand Theft Auto V. Their mid-1970s work has been profoundly influential in the development of electronic music styles such as new-age and electronic dance music.

On 29 September 2017, the band released an all-new music studio album entitled Quantum Gate. In December 2019, they released Recurring Dreams, a compilation of new recordings of some of the band's classic compositions. On 26 November 2021, the band released an EP entitled Probe 6–8 (including three tracks: "Raum", "Para Guy" and "Continuum"), whose concept was developed further on their following album Raum, their latest studio album to date which was released on 25 February 2022.

Origins: psychedelia and krautrock
Edgar Froese arrived in West Berlin in the mid-1960s to study art. His first band, the psychedelic rock-styled The Ones, disbanded after releasing only one single. After The Ones, Froese experimented with musical ideas, playing smaller gigs with a variety of musicians. Most of these performances were in the famous Zodiak Free Arts Lab, although one grouping also had the distinction of being invited to play for the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. The music was partnered with literature, painting, early forms of multimedia, and more. It seemed as though only the most outlandish ideas attracted any attention, leading Froese to comment: "In the absurd often lies what is artistically possible." As members of the group came and went, the direction of the music continued to be inspired by the Surrealists, and the group came to be called by the surreal-sounding name of Tangerine Dream, inspired by mishearing the line "tangerine trees and marmalade skies" from the Beatles' track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

Froese was fascinated by technology and skilled in using it to create music. He built custom-made instruments and, wherever he went, collected sounds with tape recorders for use in constructing musical works later. His early work with tape loops and other repeating sounds was the obvious precursor to the emerging technology of the sequencer, which Tangerine Dream quickly adopted upon its arrival.

Released in 1970 by record label Ohr, the first Tangerine Dream album, Electronic Meditation, was a tape-collage Krautrock piece, using the technology of the time rather than the synthesized music they later became famous for. The line-up for the album was Froese, Klaus Schulze, and Conrad Schnitzler. Electronic Meditation began the period known as the Pink Years (the Ohr logo was a pink ear). Subsequent albums, beginning with Alpha Centauri, relied heavily on electronic instruments. The band's music during the early 1970s prominently featured organ from Steve Schroyder (on Alpha Centauri) or Peter Baumann (on subsequent releases), commonly augmented by guitar from Froese and drums from Christopher Franke. They also started their heavy usage of the Mellotron during this period.

Rise to fame: the Virgin years
The band's 1973 album Atem was named as one of British DJ John Peel's records of the year, and this attention helped Tangerine Dream to sign to the fledgling Virgin Records in the same year. Soon afterward they released the album Phaedra, an eerie soundscape that unexpectedly reached No. 15 in the UK Albums Chart and became one of Virgin's first bona fide hits. Phaedra was one of the first commercial albums to feature sequencers and came to define much more than just the band's own sound. The creation of the album's title track was something of an accident: the band was experimenting in the studio with a recently acquired Moog synthesizer, and the tape happened to be rolling at the time. They kept the results and later added flute, bass guitar, and Mellotron performances. The Moog, like many other early synthesizers, was so sensitive to changes in temperature that its oscillators would drift badly in tuning as the equipment warmed up, and this drift can easily be heard on the final recording. This album marked the beginning of the period known as the 'Virgin Years'.

Their mid-1970s work has been profoundly influential in the development of electronic music styles such as new-age (although the band themselves disliked the term) and electronic dance music.

In the 1980s, along with other electronic music pioneers such as Jean-Michel Jarre (with whom Edgar Froese collaborated on Jarre's 2015 album Electronica 1: The Time Machine) and Vangelis, the band were early adopters of the new digital technology, which revolutionized the sound of the synthesizer, although the group had been using digital equipment (in some shape or form) as early as the mid-1970s. Their technical competence and extensive experience in their early years with self-made instruments and unusual means of creating sounds meant that they were able to exploit this new technology to make music quite unlike anything heard before.

Tangerine Dream live
Tangerine Dream's earliest concerts were visually simple by modern standards, with three men sitting motionless for hours alongside massive electronic boxes festooned with patch cords and a few flashing lights. Some concerts were even performed in complete darkness, as happened during the performance at York Minster on 20 October 1975. As time went on and technology advanced, the concerts became much more elaborate, with visual effects, lighting, lasers, pyrotechnics, and projected images. By 1977 their North American tour featured full-scale Laserium effects.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, the band toured extensively. The concerts generally included large amounts of unreleased and improvised material and were consequently widely bootlegged. They were notorious for playing extremely loudly and for a long time. The band released recordings of a fair number of their concerts, and on some of these the band worked out material that would later form the backbone of their studio recordings.

Forays into vocals
Most of Tangerine Dream's albums are entirely instrumental. Two earlier albums that prominently featured lyrics were Cyclone (1978) and Tyger (1987). While there were occasionally a few vocals on the band's other releases, such as the track "Kiew Mission" from 1981's Exit and "The Harbor" from 1987's Shy People, the group only returned to featuring vocals on a larger scale in a musical trilogy based on Dante's Divine Comedy. This was followed by a 2007 album Madcap's Flaming Duty and a 2010 cover collection Under Cover – Chapter One.

After their 1980 East Berlin gig, when they became one of the first major Western bands to perform in a communist country, Tangerine Dream released a double live album of one of their performances there, called Poland, recorded during their tour in the winter at the end of 1983. With Poland, the band moved to the Jive Electro label, marking the beginning of the Blue Years.

Soundtracks
Throughout the 1980s, Tangerine Dream composed scores for more than 20 films. This had been an interest of Froese's since the late 1960s, when he scored and acted in the experimental film "Auf Scheißer schießt man nicht", directed by Hansjürgen Pohland. Many of the group's soundtracks were composed at least partially of reworked material from the band's studio albums or work that was in progress for upcoming albums; see, for example, the resemblance between the track "Igneous" on their soundtrack for Thief and the track "Thru Metamorphic Rocks" on their studio release Force Majeure. Their first exposure on US television came when a track for the then in-progress album Le Parc was used as the theme for the television program, Street Hawk. Some of the more famous soundtracks have been Sorcerer, Thief, Legend, Risky Business, The Keep, Firestarter, Flashpoint, Heartbreakers, Shy People and Near Dark.

Tangerine Dream also composed 35 hours of music stems for the video game, Grand Theft Auto V.

In 2016, Tangerine Dream released their own version of the theme music for the television series Stranger Things. Tangerine Dream had inspired music for the series.

Going independent
Several of the band's albums released during the 1990s were nominated for Grammy Awards. Since then, Tangerine Dream with Jerome Froese took a directional change away from the new-age leanings of those albums and toward an electronica style. After Jerome's departure, founder Edgar Froese steered the band in a direction somewhat reminiscent of material throughout their career.

In later years, Tangerine Dream released albums in series. The Dream Mixes series began in 1995 with the last being released in 2010. The Divine Comedy series, based on the writings of Dante Alighieri, spanned 2002–2006. From 2007 to 2010, the Five Atomic Seasons were released. Most recently, the Eastgate Sonic Poems series, based on the works of famous poetic authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, began in 2011, with the last appearing in 2013. Also, beginning in 2007, Tangerine Dream released a number of EPs, referred to as "CupDiscs" by the band.

Edgar Froese also released a number of solo recordings, which are similar in style to Tangerine Dream's work. Jerome Froese released a number of singles as TDJ Rome, which are similar to his work within the Dream Mixes series. In 2005, he released his first solo album Neptunes under the name Jerome Froese. In 2006, Jerome left Tangerine Dream to concentrate on his solo career. His second solo album Shiver Me Timbers was released on 29 October 2007, and his third, Far Side of the Face, was released in 2012. Beginning in 2011, Jerome Froese joined with former Tangerine Dream member Johannes Schmoelling and keyboardist Robert Waters to form the band Loom, which plays original material, as well as Tangerine Dream classics. Thorsten Quaeschning, leader of Picture Palace Music, was brought into Tangerine Dream in 2005 and contributed to most of the band's albums and CupDiscs since then.

The group had recording contracts with Ohr, Virgin, Jive Electro, Private Music, and Miramar, and many of the minor soundtracks were released on Varèse Sarabande. In 1996, the band founded their own record label, TDI, and more recently, Eastgate. Subsequent albums are today generally not available in normal retail channels but are sold by mail-order or through online channels. The same applies to their Miramar releases, the rights to which the band bought back. Meanwhile, their Ohr and Jive Electro catalogs (known as the "Pink" and "Blue" Years) are currently owned by Esoteric Recordings.

Concert updates
To celebrate their 40th anniversary (1967–2007), Tangerine Dream announced their only UK concert: at London Astoria on 20 April 2007. The band also played a totally free open-air concert in Eberswalde on 1 July 2007 and at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt on Main on 7 October 2007. 2008 saw the band in Eindhoven Netherlands playing at E-Day (an electronic music festival); later in the year they also played the Night of the Prog Festival in Loreley, Germany, as well as concerts at the Kentish Town Forum, in London on 1 November, at the Picture House, Edinburgh on 2 November, and their first live concert in the US for over a decade, at the UCLA Royce Hall, Los Angeles on 7 November.

In 2009, the group announced that they would play a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, on 1 April 2010, titled the Zeitgeist concert, 35 years after their milestone concert there on 2 April 1975. The entire concert was released as a 3-CD live album on 7 July 2010.

Tangerine Dream embarked in spring and summer 2012 on a tour of Europe, Canada and the USA called The Electric Mandarine Tour 2012: The 1st leg was a 5-date European tour, beginning on 10 April in Budapest (Hungary) via Padua (Italy), Milano (Italy), Zurich (Switzerland), and ending on 10 May in Berlin (Germany). The 2nd leg was a North-American tour that started with the Jazz Festival in Montréal (Canada) on 30 June, followed by a concert on 4 July at the Bluesfest in Ottawa (Canada) and continued as a 10-date US journey beginning in July in Boston, then New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and California. On 16 November 2014, Tangerine Dream performed in Melbourne, Australia, as part of Melbourne Music Week. They were the final shows with Froese. Tangerine Dream played two consecutive nights at the Union Chapel, Islington London on April 23 & 24 2018, the second supported by ex-Japan and Porcupine Tree musician Richard Barbieri. In October and November 2019, Tangerine Dream went on its 16 step Random & Revision Tour.

2023 saw the band embark on the largest tour of their entire career, including a 19-date tour of North America (September 8 – October 5: taking in Miami, Asheville, Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, Albuquerque, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Seattle, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Montreal, Toronto and Chicago), 13-dates in Germany (October 10 – 28), and 10-dates in the UK (November 5 – 14)

After Edgar Froese's death
Edgar Froese died suddenly in Vienna on 20 January 2015 from a pulmonary embolism. On 6 April 2015, the group's remaining members (Quaeschning, Schnauss and Yamane) and Bianca Acquaye (Froese's widow), pledged to continue working together in an effort to fulfill Froese's vision for the group. However, ex-member Jerome Froese announced in his Facebook time line that, in his opinion, Tangerine Dream will not exist without his father.

Tangerine Dream played their first show following Froese's death on 9 June 2016 in Szczecin, Poland.

On 29 September 2017, Tangerine Dream released their new studio album entitled, Quantum Gate, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the band's foundation. The album is based on ideas and musical sketches by founder Edgar Froese and was completed by the remaining members of the band.

On 31 January 2020, Tangerine Dream re-released their December 2019 album Recurring Dreams, an eleven-track collection of new recordings of some of the band's classic tracks, worldwide through Kscope. This was launched to coincide with the Tangerine Dream: Zeitraffer exhibition, which opened on 17 January 2020 at London's Barbican and runs until 2 May 2020.

On 9 June 2020, Paul Frick became the first member to join the group following Edgar's death after having made guest appearances with the band, starting in November 2018. Later on, the group started working on a new studio album entitled, Raum, featuring Froese's archival recordings in early 2022 via Kscope. Frick has the unique distinction of being the first addition to the group who did not ever personally meet Froese.

It was announced on 22 June 2021 that Ulrich Schnauss has decided to stop performing live. Since then, the band's official website lists him as a former member.

In March 2023, the band embarked on the longest tour of their entire career, with concerts in Portugal (Casa da Música), Switzerland (Geneva's Electron Festival), The Netherlands (3-date tour), Belgium (Het Depot), France (La Gaîté Lyrique), Poland (2-date tour), Romania (TIFF Festival), the US (16-date tour), Canada (3-date tour), Germany (12-date tour), England (8-date tour), Scotland (2-date tour) and Poland (1-date).

Influences
Tangerine Dream began as a surreal krautrock band, with each of the members contributing different musical influences and styles, before becoming a "revered progressive electronic act." Edgar Froese's guitar style was inspired by Jimi Hendrix, as well as the avant-garde composers Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen, while Christopher Franke contributed elements of György Ligeti and Terry Riley. Yes-like progressive rock influence was brought in by Steve Jolliffe on Cyclone. The sample-based sound collages of Johannes Schmoelling drew their inspiration from a number of sources; one instance is Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians on parts of Logos Live, and the track "Love on a Real Train" from the Risky Business soundtrack.

Classical music has had an influence on the sound of Tangerine Dream over the years. György Ligeti, Johann Sebastian Bach, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Maurice Ravel, and Arcangelo Corelli are clearly visible as dominant influences in the early albums. A Baroque sensibility sometimes informs the more coordinated sequencer patterns, which has its most direct expression in the La Folia section that comes at the very end of the title track of Force Majeure. In live performances, the piano solos often directly quoted from Romantic classical works for piano, such as the Beethoven and Mozart snippets in much of the late 1970s – early 1980s stage shows. In the bootleg recording of the Mannheim Mozartsaal concert of 1976 (Tangerine Tree volume 13), the first part of the first piece also clearly quotes from Franz Liszt's Totentanz. The first phrase is played on a harpsichord synthesizer patch and is answered by the second half of the phrase in a flute voicing on a Mellotron. During the 1990s, many releases included recordings of classical compositions: Pictures at an Exhibition (on Turn of the Tides), Largo (from Xerxes) (on Tyranny of Beauty), Symphony in A Minor (by J. S. Bach), and Concerto in A Major / Adagio (by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) (both on Ambient Monkeys).

Since the 1990s, Tangerine Dream have also recorded cover versions of Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze" (first on 220 Volt Live) and The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", "Back in the U.S.S.R.", "Tomorrow Never Knows", and "Norwegian Wood".

An infrequently recurring non-musical influence on Tangerine Dream, and Edgar Froese in particular, have been 12th–19th-century poets. This was first evident on the 1981 album Exit, the track title "Pilots of the Purple Twilight" being a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Locksley Hall. Six years later, the album Tyger featured poems from William Blake set to music; and around the turn of the millennium, Edgar Froese started working on a musical trilogy based on Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, completed in 2006. Most recently, the 2007 album Madcap's Flaming Duty features more poems set to music, some again from Blake but also e.g. Walt Whitman.

Pink Floyd were also an influence on Edgar Froese and Tangerine Dream, the band in its very early psychedelic rock band phase playing improvisations based on Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive". Madcap's Flaming Duty is dedicated to the memory of the late Syd Barrett. The title refers to Barrett's solo release The Madcap Laughs.

The band's influence can be felt in ambient artists such as Deepspace, The Future Sound of London, David Kristian, and Global Communication, as well as rock, pop, and dance artists such as Porcupine Tree, M83, DJ Shadow, Ulrich Schnauss, Cut Copy, and Kasabian. The band also clearly influenced 1990s and 2000s trance music, notably Chicane; both "Offshore" and "Sunstroke" borrow heavily from "Love on a Real Train" where lush soundscapes and synth pads are used along with repetitive synth sequences, much like in their 1975 releases Rubycon and Ricochet, as well as some of their music from the early 1980s. The group have also been sampled countless times, more recently by Recoil on the album SubHuman, by Sasha on Involver, and on several Houzan Suzuki albums. Michael Jackson also expressed being a fan of Tangerine Dream, specifically their 1977 soundtrack for the film Sorcerer. It inspired him to get a Synclavier II, which a demo of would be used as the intro for Beat It.

In popular culture

 * In the critically acclaimed 1991 Mexican telenovela Cadenas de Amargura, Tangerine Dream's song "Yucatan" is used as part of the novela's music score particularly in the more suspenseful scenes.
 * Steven Wilson, of Porcupine Tree, stated that Tangerine Dream was one of his influences to make his music, and often cites Zeit as his all-time favorite album.
 * Japanese electronic musician Susumu Hirasawa dedicated his song "Island Door (Paranesian Circle)" (トビラ島（パラネシアン・サークル）) to Tangerine Dream.
 * In 2016, Netflix's original show Stranger Things used three Tangerine Dream tracks in its soundtrack: "Green Desert" from Green Desert (1986) in episode five, "Exit" from Exit (1981) in episode six, of season 1 and "Tangent (Rare Bird)" from Poland (1984) in episode nine of season 2. Composers of the soundtrack for the show, Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of the electronic band Survive, also cited Tangerine Dream as the key influence behind the soundtrack, the main theme of which was later covered by Tangerine Dream.
 * In 2022, the horned dinosaur Bisticeratops froeseorum was named in memory of Edgar Froese, the late founder of Tangerine Dream.

Personnel
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Tangerine Dream existed as several short-lived incarnations, all of which included Froese, who teamed up with several musicians from West Berlin's underground music scene, including Steve Jolliffe, Sven-Åke Johansson, Klaus Schulze, and Conrad Schnitzler.

Froese's most notable association was his partnership with Christopher Franke. Franke joined Tangerine Dream in 1970 after serving time in the group Agitation Free, originally to replace Schulze as the drummer. Franke is credited with starting to use electronic sequencers, which were introduced on Phaedra, a development that had not only a large impact on the group's music but on many electronic musicians to this day. Franke stayed with the group for 17 years, leaving in 1988 because of exhausting touring schedules, as well as creative differences with Froese.

Other long-term members of the group include Peter Baumann (1971–1977), who later went on to found the new-age label Private Music, to which the band was signed from 1988 to 1991; Johannes Schmoelling (1979–1985); Paul Haslinger (1986–1990); Froese's son Jerome Froese (1990–2006); Linda Spa (1990–1996, 2005–2014), a saxophonist & flute player who appeared on numerous albums and concerts, contributing one track on Goblins' Club; and most recently Thorsten Quaeschning of Picture Palace Music (2005–present).

A number of other members were also part of Tangerine Dream for shorter periods of time. Unlike session musicians, these players also contributed to compositions of the band during their tenures. Some of the more notable members are Steve Schroyder (organist, 1971–1972), Michael Hoenig (who replaced Baumann for a 1975 Australian tour and a London concert, included on Bootleg Box Set Vol. 1), Steve Jolliffe (wind instruments, keyboards and vocals on Cyclone and the following tour; he was also part of a short-lived 1969 line-up), Klaus Krüger (drummer on Cyclone and Force Majeure) and Ralf Wadephul (in collaboration with Edgar Froese recorded album Blue Dawn, but it was released only in 2006; also credited for one track on Optical Race (1988) and toured with the band in support of this album).

Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Tangerine Dream was often joined on stage by Zlatko Perica or Gerald Gradwohl on guitars, and Emil Hachfeld on electronic drums. Jerome Froese left in 2006 after a concert at the Tempodrom in Berlin. Until late 2014, Tangerine Dream comprised Edgar Froese, as well as Thorsten Quaeschning, who first collaborated in the composition of Jeanne d'Arc (2005). For concerts and recordings, they were usually joined by Linda Spa on saxophone and flute, Iris Camaa on drums and percussion, and Bernhard Beibl on guitar. In 2011, electric violinist Hoshiko Yamane was added to the lineup and is featured on some of the most recent albums.

In late 2014, Bernhard Beibl announced on his Facebook page that he would stop collaborating with Tangerine Dream. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that Tangerine Dream would no longer be touring with Linda Spa or Iris Camaa, but that Ulrich Schnauss had been brought into the fold. Edgar Froese's death in January 2015, however, left this a short-lived line-up.

Members

 * Current members
 * Thorsten Quaeschning – bandleader, music director, synthesizer, sequencer, drums, guitar (2004–present) Recording engineer; (2003)
 * Hoshiko Yamane – acoustic violin, electric viola, electric violin, cello, Ableton Push controller, looper, synthesizer (2011–present)
 * Paul Frick – synthesizer, piano, sequencer, looper (2020–present, guest: 2018–2020)

Bianca Froese-Acquaye, Edgar Froese's widow, has taken up the mantle of continuing the legacy of the group and works closely in a non-musical capacity with the remaining members.

 * Former members

 * Edgar Froese – leader and founder, keyboards, guitars (1967–2015; his death)
 * Christopher Franke – keyboards, drums (1970–1987)
 * Peter Baumann – keyboards (1971–1973, 1973–1975, 1975–1977)
 * Johannes Schmoelling – keyboards (1979–1985)
 * Jerome Froese – keyboards, guitars (1990–2006)
 * Paul Haslinger – keyboards, guitars (1986–1990)
 * Linda Spa – saxophone, flute, keyboards (1990–1996, 2005–2014)
 * Klaus Schulze – drums, percussion (1969–1970; died 2022)
 * Conrad Schnitzler – cello, violin, fx (1969–1970; died 2011)
 * Steve Jolliffe – saxophone, keyboards, flute, vocals (1969, 1978)
 * Michael Hoenig – keyboards (1975)
 * Ulrich Schnauss – synthesizer, piano, sequencer, Ableton (2014–2020)
 * Klaus Krüger – drums, percussion (1978–1979)
 * Ralf Wadephul – keyboards (1988–1989)
 * Steve Schroyder – keyboards, vocals (1970–1971)
 * Bernhard Beibl – guitars, violin (2006–2014)
 * Iris Camaa – percussion, Roland V-Drums (2001–2014)
 * Zlatko Perica – guitars (1992–1997)
 * Fred Braceful – drums and percussion (1969)
 * Happy Dieter – bass (1969; died 1974)
 * Lanse Hapshash – drums (1967–1969)
 * Kurt Herkenberg – bass (1968–1969; died 1983)
 * Volker Hombach – saxophone, violin, flute (1967–1969)
 * Charlie Prince – vocals (1967–1968)

Guest musicians

 * Jimmy Jackson (1970) – organ on Electronic Meditation
 * Thomas Keyserling (1970) – flute on Electronic Meditation
 * Udo Dennebourg (1971) – flute on Alpha Centauri
 * Roland Paulick (1971) – synthesizer on Alpha Centauri
 * Florian Fricke (1972)
 * Christian Vallbracht (1972)
 * Jochen von Grumbcow (1972)
 * Hans Joachim Brüne (1972)
 * Johannes Lücke (1972)
 * Eduard Meyer (1979) – cello on Force Majeure
 * Susanne Pawlitzki (1985)
 * Jocelyn Bernadette Smith (1987)
 * Jacquie Virgil (1987)
 * Diamond Ross (1987)
 * Hubert Waldner (1989–1990)
 * Chi Coltrane (1991)
 * Enrico Fernandez (1992)
 * Richi Wester (1992)
 * Jayney Klimek – vocals (1992–1994, 2002–2005)
 * Roland Braunstein (1993)
 * Julie Ocean (1993)
 * Mark Hornby (1994–2002)
 * Gerald Gradwohl – guitars (1994–1996, 1999–2001, 2006–2007)
 * Gisela Kloetzer (1994)
 * Milan Polak (1995)
 * Emil Hachfeld – codotronic drums (1997–1999)
 * Vicki McClure (1998)
 * Barbara Kindermann (2001)
 * Claire Foquet (2001)
 * Jane Monet (2001)
 * Bianca Acquaye (2001, 2005)
 * Bry Gonzales (2001)
 * Jack Liberty (2002, 2009)
 * Lerk Andebracht (2002, 2009)
 * Zlatko Perica – guitars (2003–2005) (1992–1997; full time member)
 * Saskia Klumpp (2003, 2005)
 * Tatjana Kouchev (2005)
 * Fridolin Johann Harms (2005)
 * Brandenburg Symphonic Orchestra (2005)
 * Neuer Kammerchor Potsdam (2005)
 * Claire Fouquet (2005)
 * Barbara Kindermann (2005, 2008)
 * Diane Miller (2005)
 * Jane Monet (2005)
 * Christian Hausl (2006–2007, 2010)
 * Gynt Beator (2006)
 * Thomas Beator (2006)
 * Hetty Snell (2010)
 * Zoe Marshall (2010)
 * Stephanie Oade (2010)
 * Rebecca J. Herman (2010)
 * Carolina Eyck (2017)
 * Richard Barbieri (2018)
 * Franz Bargmann (2019)
 * Paul Frick (2018–2020) (2020–present; full time member)
 * Steve Hillage (2020)
 * Michał Łapaj (2021)
 * Steve Rothery (2022)
 * Steve Roach (2023)
 * Robert Rich (2023)
 * Julie Slick (2023)
 * Cliff Hewitt (2023)
 * Nick Beggs (2023)
 * Ali Ferguson (2023)

Discography
Tangerine Dream has released over one hundred albums (not counting compilations and fan releases) over the last five decades. A project to collect and release fan concert recordings, known as the Tangerine Tree, was active from 2002 to 2006.

Studio, EP or mini albums
 * 1) Electronic Meditation (1970)
 * 2) Alpha Centauri (1971)
 * 3) Zeit (1972)
 * 4) Atem (1973)
 * 5) Phaedra (1974)
 * 6) Rubycon (1975)
 * 7) Stratosfear (1976)
 * 8) Cyclone (1978)
 * 9) Force Majeure (1979)
 * 10) Tangram (1980)
 * 11) Exit (1981)
 * 12) White Eagle (1982)
 * 13) Hyperborea (1983)
 * 14) Le Parc (1985)
 * 15) Green Desert (1986, recorded in 1973)
 * 16) Underwater Sunlight (1986)
 * 17) Tyger (1987)
 * 18) Optical Race (1988)
 * 19) Lily on the Beach (1989)
 * 20) Melrose (1990)
 * 21) Rockoon (1992)
 * 22) Quinoa (1992, revised 1998)
 * 23) Turn of the Tides (1994)
 * 24) Tyranny of Beauty (1995)
 * 25) The Dream Mixes (1995)
 * 26) Tangerine Ambience (1996)
 * 27) Goblins' Club (1996)
 * 28) Tangerine Ambience Vol II (1997)
 * 29) TimeSquare – Dream Mixes II (1997)
 * 30) Ambient Monkeys (1997)
 * 31) Der Meteor (1997)
 * 32) The Hollywood Years Vol. 1 (1998)
 * 33) The Hollywood Years Vol. 2 (1998)
 * 34) Mars Polaris (1999)
 * 35) The Seven Letters from Tibet (2000)
 * 36) The Past Hundred Moons (2001)
 * 37) The Melrose Years (2002) (Re-recordings of Optical Race, Lily on the Beach and Melrose)
 * 38) DM 4 (2003)
 * 39) Purgatorio (2004)
 * 40) Kyoto (2005)
 * 41) Space Flight Orange (2005) (EP)
 * 42) Jeanne d'Arc (2005)
 * 43) Phaedra 2005 (2005) (Re-recording)
 * 44) Blue Dawn (2006)
 * 45) Paradiso (2006)
 * 46) Metaphor (2006) (EP)
 * 47) Springtime In Nagasaki (2007) (Five Atomic Seasons)
 * 48) Madcap's Flaming Duty (2007)
 * 49) Summer In Nagasaki (2007) (Five Atomic Seasons)
 * 50) One Times One (2007)
 * 51) Purple Diluvial (2008)
 * 52) Views from a Red Train (2008)
 * 53) The Anthology Decades (2008)
 * 54) Tangram 2008 (2008) (Re-recording)
 * 55) Hyperborea 2008 (2008) (Re-recording)
 * 56) Fallen Angels (2008) (EP or single?)
 * 57) Autumn in Hiroshima (2008) (Five Atomic Seasons)
 * 58) Choice (2008) (EP)
 * 59) Flame (2009)
 * 60) Chandra – The Phantom Ferry Part I (2009)
 * 61) A Cage in Search of a Bird (2009) (EP)
 * 62) Winter in Hiroshima (2009) (Five Atomic Seasons)
 * 63) DM V (2010)
 * 64) Zeitgeist (2010) (EP)
 * 65) Run to Vegas (2010)
 * 66) Under Cover – Chapter One (2010)
 * 67) The Endless Season (2010) (Five Atomic Seasons)
 * 68) The Island of the Fay (2011) (Eastgate's Sonic Poems Series)
 * 69) The Gate of Saturn (2011) (mini-album or EP)
 * 70) The Angel of the West Window (2011) (Eastgate's Sonic Poems Series)
 * 71) Mona da Vinci (2011) (mini-album or EP)
 * 72) Finnegans Wake (2011) (Eastgate's Sonic Poems Series)
 * 73) Machu Picchu (2012) (mini-album or EP)
 * 74) Cruise to Destiny (2013)
 * 75) Franz Kafka — The Castle (2013) (Eastgate's Sonic Poems Series)
 * 76) Chandra – The Phantom Ferry Part II (2014)
 * 77) Josephine The Mouse Singer (2014) (mini-album)
 * 78) Mala Kunia (2014) (mini-album)
 * 79) Zero Gravity (2015) (EP with Jean-Michel Jarre)
 * 80) Quantum Key (2015) (mini-album)
 * 81) Particles (2016) (mini-album or EP)
 * 82) Light Flux (2017)
 * 83) Quantum Gate (2017)
 * 84) Recurring Dreams (2019)
 * 85) Probe 6–8 (2021) (EP)
 * 86) Raum (2022)

title: Tangerine Dream


text:
Polyp (zoology)

A polyp in zoology is one of two forms found in the phylum Cnidaria, the other being the medusa. Polyps are roughly cylindrical in shape and elongated at the axis of the vase-shaped body. In solitary polyps, the aboral (opposite to oral) end is attached to the substrate by means of a disc-like holdfast called a pedal disc, while in colonies of polyps  it is connected to other polyps, either directly or indirectly. The oral end contains the mouth, and is surrounded by a circlet of tentacles.

Classes
In the class Anthozoa, comprising the sea anemones and corals, the individual is always a polyp; in the class Hydrozoa, however, the individual may be either a polyp or a medusa, with most species undergoing a life cycle with both a polyp stage and a medusa stage. In class Scyphozoa, the medusa stage is dominant, and the polyp stage may or may not be present, depending on the family. In those scyphozoans that have the larval planula metamorphose into a polyp, the polyp, also called a "scyphistoma," grows until it develops a stack of plate-like medusae that pinch off and swim away in a process known as strobilation. Once strobilation is complete, the polyp may die, or regenerate itself to repeat the process again later. With Cubozoans, the planula settles onto a suitable surface, and develops into a polyp. The cubozoan polyp then eventually metamorphoses directly into a medusa.

Anatomy

The body of the polyp may be roughly compared in a structure to a sac, the wall of which is composed of two layers of cells. The outer layer is known technically as the ectoderm, the inner layer as the endoderm (or gastroderm). Between ectoderm and endoderm is a supporting layer of structureless gelatinous substance termed mesoglea, secreted by the cell layers of the body wall. The mesoglea can be thinner than the endoderm or ectoderm or comprise the bulk of the body as in larger jellyfish. The mesoglea can contain skeletal elements derived from cells migrated from ectoderm.

The sac-like body built up in this way is attached usually to some firm object by its blind end, and bears at the upper end the mouth which is surrounded by a circle of tentacles which resemble glove fingers. The tentacles are organs which serve both for the tactile sense and for the capture of food. Polyps extend their tentacles, particularly at night, containing coiled stinging nettle-like cells or nematocysts which pierce and poison and firmly hold living prey paralysing or killing them. Polyp prey includes copepods and fish larvae. Longitudinal muscular fibrils formed from the cells of the ectoderm allow tentacles to contract when conveying the food to the mouth. Similarly, circularly disposed muscular fibrils formed from the endoderm permit tentacles to be protract or thrust out once they are contracted. These muscle fibres belong to the same two systems, thus allows the whole body to retract or protrude outwards.

We can distinguish therefore in the body of a polyp the column, circular or oval in section, forming the trunk, resting on a base or foot and surmounted by the crown of tentacles, which enclose an area termed the peristome, in the centre of which again is the mouth. As a rule there is no other opening to the body except the mouth, but in some cases excretory pores are known to occur in the foot, and pores may occur at the tips of the tentacles. Thus it is seen that a polyp is an animal of very simple structure, a living fossil that has not changed significantly for about half a billion years (per generally accepted dating of Cambrian sedimentary rock).

The external form of the polyp varies greatly in different cases. The column may be long and slender, or may be so short in the vertical direction that the body becomes disk-like. The tentacles may number many hundreds or may be very few, in rare cases only one or two. They may be long and filamentous, or short and reduced to mere knobs or warts. They may be simple and unbranched, or they may be feathery in pattern. The mouth may be level with the surface of the peristome, or may be projecting and trumpet-shaped. As regards internal structure, polyps exhibit two well-marked types of organization, each characteristic of one of the two classes, Hydrozoa and Anthozoa.

In the class Hydrozoa, the polyps are indeed often very simple, like the common little fresh water species of the genus Hydra. Anthozoan polyps, including the corals and sea anemones, are much more complex due to the development of a tubular stomodaeum leading inward from the mouth and a series of radial partitions called mesenteries. Many of the mesenteries project into the enteric cavity but some extend from the body wall to the central stomodaeum.

Reproduction
It is an almost universal attribute of polyps to reproduce asexually by the method of budding. This mode of reproduction may be combined with sexual reproduction, or may be the sole method by which the polyp produces offspring, in which case the polyp is entirely without sexual organs.

Asexual reproduction
In many cases the buds formed do not separate from the parent but remain in continuity with it, thus forming colonies or stocks, which may reach a great size and contain a vast number of individuals. Slight differences in the method of budding produce great variations in the form of the colonies. The reef-building corals are polyp-colonies, strengthened by the formation of a firm skeleton.

Sexual reproduction
Among sea anemones, sexual plasticity may occur. That is, asexually produced clones derived from a single founder individual can contain both male and female individuals (ramets). When eggs and sperm (gametes) are formed, they can produce zygotes derived from "selfing" (within the founding clone) or out-crossing, that then develop into swimming planula larvae.

The overwhelming majority of stony coral (Scleractinia) taxa are hermaphroditic in their adult colonies. In these species, there is ordinarily synchronized release of eggs and sperm into the water during brief spawning events. Although some species are capable of self-fertilization to varying extents, cross-fertilization appears to be the dominant mating pattern.

Etymology
The name polyp was given by René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur to these organisms from their superficial resemblance to an octopus (poulpe, ultimately from Ancient Greek adverb πολύ (poly, "much") + noun πούς (pous, "foot")), with its circle of writhing arms round the mouth. This comparison contrasts to the common name "coral-insects" applied to the polyps which form coral.

Threats
75% of the world's corals are threatened due to overfishing, destructive fishing, coastal development, pollution, thermal stress, ocean acidification, crown-of-thorns starfish, and introduced invasive species.

In recent decades the conditions that corals and polyps have found themselves in have been changing, leading to new diseases being observed in corals in many parts of the world, posing even greater risk to an already pressured animal. Aquatic life has been put under a substantial amount of stress because of the pollutants caused by land-based agriculture. Particularly, exposure to the insecticide profenofos and the fungicide MEMC have played a major part in polyp retraction and biomass decrease. There have been many experiments resulting supporting hypothesis that heat stress in Acropora tenuis juvenile polyp provoke an up-regulation of protein in the endoplasmic reticulum. The results vary based on the polyp characteristics such as age, type, and growth stage.

title: Polyp (zoology)


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Ovipositor

The ovipositor is a tube-like organ used by some animals, especially insects, for the laying of eggs. In insects, an ovipositor consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages. The details and morphology of the ovipositor vary, but typically its form is adapted to functions such as preparing a place for the egg, transmitting the egg, and then placing it properly. For most insects, the organ is used merely to attach the egg to some surface, but for many parasitic species (primarily in wasps and other Hymenoptera), it is a piercing organ as well.

Some ovipositors only retract partly when not in use, and the basal part that sticks out is known as the scape, or more specifically oviscape, the word scape deriving from the Latin word scāpus, meaning "stalk" or "shaft".

In insects

Grasshoppers use their ovipositors to force a burrow into the earth to receive the eggs. Cicadas pierce the wood of twigs with their ovipositors to insert the eggs. Sawflies slit the tissues of plants by means of the ovipositor and so do some species of long-horned grasshoppers. In the ichneumon wasp genus Megarhyssa, the females have a slender ovipositor (terebra) several inches long that is used to drill into the wood of tree trunks. These wasps are parasitic in the larval stage on the larvae of horntail wasps, hence the egg must be deposited directly into the host's body as it is feeding. The ovipositors of Megarhyssa are among the longest egg-laying organs (relative to body size) known.

The stingers of the Aculeata (wasps, hornets, bees, and ants) are ovipositors, highly modified and with associated venom glands. They are used to paralyze prey, or as defensive weapons. The penetrating sting plus venom allows the wasp to lay eggs with less risk of injury from the host. In some cases, the injection also introduces virus particles that suppress the host's immune system and prevent it from destroying the eggs. However, in virtually all stinging Hymenoptera, the ovipositor is no longer used for egg-laying. An exception is the family Chrysididae, members of the Hymenoptera, in which species such as Chrysis ignita have reduced stinging apparatus and a functional ovipositor.

Fig wasp ovipositors have specialized serrated teeth to penetrate fruits, but gall wasps have either uniform teeth or no teeth on their ovipositors, meaning the morphology of the organ is related to the life history.

Members of the Dipteran (fly) families Tephritidae and Pyrgotidae have well-developed ovipositors that are partly retracted when not in use, with the part that sticks out being the oviscape. Oestridae, another family within Diptera, often have short hairy ovipositors, the species Cuterebra fontinella has one of the shortest within the family.

Ovipositors exist not only in winged insects, but also in Apterygota, where the ovipositor has an additional function in gathering the spermatophore during mating. Little is known about the egg-laying habits of these insects in the wild.

In fish
Female bitterlings in the genus Rhodeus have an ovipositor in the form of a tubular extension of the genital orifice. During breeding season, they use it when depositing eggs in the mantle cavity of freshwater mussels, where their eggs develop in reasonable security. Seahorses have an ovipositor for introducing eggs into the brood pouch of the male, who carries them until it is time to release the fry into a suitable situation in the open water.

In amphibians
The marbled newt, or Triturus marmoratus, females participate in parental investment by ovipositing their eggs. They carefully wrap them in aquatic leaves as a form of protection, scattering them throughout a pond to avoid predation. Females are not able to breathe during the oviposition process; therefore, the benefit to wrapping the eggs outweigh the cost of holding their breath.

title: Ovipositor


text:
Ionic crystal

In chemistry, an ionic crystal is a crystalline form of an ionic compound. They are solids consisting of ions bound together by their electrostatic attraction into a regular lattice. Examples of such crystals are the alkali halides, including potassium fluoride (KF), potassium chloride (KCl), potassium bromide (KBr), potassium iodide (KI), sodium fluoride (NaF). Sodium chloride (NaCl) has a 6:6 co-ordination. The properties of NaCl reflect the strong interactions that exist between the ions. It is a good conductor of electricity when molten, but very poor in the solid state. When fused the mobile ions carry charge through the liquid. They are characterized by strong absorption of infrared radiation and have planes along which they cleave easily. The exact arrangement of ions in an ionic lattice varies according to the size of the ions in the solid.

title: Ionic crystal


text:
Spleen

The spleen is an organ found in almost all vertebrates. Similar in structure to a large lymph node, it acts primarily as a blood filter. The word spleen comes.

The spleen plays very important roles in regard to red blood cells (erythrocytes) and the immune system. It removes old red blood cells and holds a reserve of blood, which can be valuable in case of hemorrhagic shock, and also recycles iron. As a part of the mononuclear phagocyte system, it metabolizes hemoglobin removed from senescent red blood cells. The globin portion of hemoglobin is degraded to its constitutive amino acids, and the heme portion is metabolized to bilirubin, which is removed in the liver.

The spleen houses antibody-producing lymphocytes in its white pulp and monocytes which remove antibody-coated bacteria and antibody-coated blood cells by way of blood and lymph node circulation. These monocytes, upon moving to injured tissue (such as the heart after myocardial infarction), turn into dendritic cells and macrophages while promoting tissue healing. The spleen is a center of activity of the mononuclear phagocyte system and is analogous to a large lymph node, as its absence causes a predisposition to certain infections.

In humans, the spleen is purple in color and is in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen. The surgical process to remove the spleen is known as a splenectomy.

Structure
The spleen is underneath the left part of the diaphragm, and has a smooth, convex surface that faces the diaphragm. It is underneath the ninth, tenth, and eleventh ribs. The other side of the spleen is divided by a ridge into two regions: an anterior gastric portion, and a posterior renal portion. The gastric surface is directed forward, upward, and toward the middle, is broad and concave, and is in contact with the posterior wall of the stomach. Below this it is in contact with the tail of the pancreas. The renal surface is directed medialward and downward. It is somewhat flattened, considerably narrower than the gastric surface, and is in relation with the upper part of the anterior surface of the left kidney and occasionally with the left adrenal gland.

There are four ligaments attached to the spleen: gastrosplenic ligament, splenorenal ligament, colicosplenic ligament, and phrenocolic ligament.

Measurements
The spleen, in healthy adult humans, is approximately 7 to 14 cm in length.

An easy way to remember the anatomy of the spleen is the 1×3×5×7×9×10×11 rule. The spleen is 1 by, weighs approximately 7 oz, and lies between the 9th and 11th ribs on the left-hand side and along the axis of the 10th rib. The weight varies between 1 oz and 8 oz (standard reference range), correlating mainly to height, body weight and degree of acute congestion but not to sex or age.

Blood supply
Near the middle of the spleen is a long fissure, the hilum, which is the point of attachment for the gastrosplenic ligament and the point of insertion for the splenic artery and splenic vein. There are other openings present for lymphatic vessels and nerves. In addition to the splenic artery, collateral blood supply is provided by the adjacent short gastric arteries.

Like the thymus, the spleen possesses only efferent lymphatic vessels. The spleen is part of the lymphatic system. Both the short gastric arteries and the splenic artery supply it with blood.

The germinal centers are supplied by arterioles called penicilliary radicles.

Nerve supply
The spleen is innervated by the splenic plexus, which connects a branch of the celiac ganglia to the vagus nerve.

The underlying central nervous processes coordinating the spleen's function seem to be embedded into the Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis, and the brainstem, especially the subfornical organ.

Development
The spleen is unique in respect to its development within the gut. While most of the gut organs are endodermally derived, the spleen is derived from mesenchymal tissue. Specifically, the spleen forms within, and from, the dorsal mesentery. However, it still shares the same blood supply—the celiac trunk—as the foregut organs.

Pulp

Other
Other functions of the spleen are less prominent, especially in the healthy adult:
 * Spleen produces all types of blood cells during fetal life
 * Production of opsonins, properdin, and tuftsin.
 * Release of neutrophils following myocardial infarction.
 * Creation of red blood cells. While the bone marrow is the primary site of hematopoiesis in the adult, the spleen has important hematopoietic functions up until the 5th month of gestation. After birth, erythropoietic functions cease, except in some hematologic disorders. As a major lymphoid organ and a central player in the reticuloendothelial system, the spleen retains the ability to produce lymphocytes and, as such, remains a hematopoietic organ.
 * Storage of red blood cells, lymphocytes and other formed elements. The spleen of horses stores roughly 30 percent of the red blood cells and can release them when needed. In humans, up to a cup (240 ml) of red blood cells is held within the spleen and released in cases of hypovolemia and hypoxia. It can store platelets in case of an emergency and also clears old platelets from the circulation. Up to a quarter of lymphocytes are stored in the spleen at any one time.

Enlarged spleen
Enlargement of the spleen is known as splenomegaly. It may be caused by sickle cell anemia, sarcoidosis, malaria, bacterial endocarditis, leukemia, polycythemia vera, pernicious anemia, Gaucher's disease, leishmaniasis, Hodgkin's disease, Banti's disease, hereditary spherocytosis, cysts, glandular fever (including mononucleosis or 'Mono' caused by the Epstein–Barr virus and infection from cytomegalovirus), and tumours. Primary tumors of the spleen include hemangiomas and hemangiosarcomas. Marked splenomegaly may result in the spleen occupying a large portion of the left side of the abdomen.

The spleen is the largest collection of lymphoid tissue in the body. It is normally palpable in preterm infants, in 30% of normal, full-term neonates, and in 5% to 10% of infants and toddlers. A spleen easily palpable below the costal margin in any child over the age of 3–4 years should be considered abnormal until proven otherwise.

Splenomegaly can result from antigenic stimulation (e.g., infection), obstruction of blood flow (e.g., portal vein obstruction), underlying functional abnormality (e.g., hemolytic anemia), or infiltration (e.g., leukemia or storage disease, such as Gaucher's disease). The most common cause of acute splenomegaly in children is viral infection, which is transient and usually moderate. Basic work-up for acute splenomegaly includes a complete blood count with differential, platelet count, and reticulocyte and atypical lymphocyte counts to exclude hemolytic anemia and leukemia. Assessment of IgM antibodies to viral capsid antigen (a rising titer) is indicated to confirm Epstein–Barr virus or cytomegalovirus. Other infections should be excluded if these tests are negative.

Calculators have been developed for measurements of spleen size based on CT, US, and MRI findings.

Splenic injury
Trauma, such as a road traffic collision, can cause rupture of the spleen, which is a situation requiring immediate medical attention.

Asplenia
Asplenia refers to a non-functioning spleen, which may be congenital, or caused by traumatic injury, surgical resection (splenectomy) or a disease such as sickle cell anaemia. Hyposplenia refers to a partially functioning spleen. These conditions may cause a modest increase in circulating white blood cells and platelets, a diminished response to some vaccines, and an increased susceptibility to infection. In particular, there is an increased risk of sepsis from polysaccharide encapsulated bacteria. Encapsulated bacteria inhibit binding of complement or prevent complement assembled on the capsule from interacting with macrophage receptors. Phagocytosis needs natural antibodies, which are immunoglobulins that facilitate phagocytosis either directly or by complement deposition on the capsule. They are produced by IgM memory B cells (a subtype of B cells) in the marginal zone of the spleen.

A splenectomy (removal of the spleen) results in a greatly diminished frequency of memory B cells. A 28-year follow-up of 740 World War II veterans whose spleens were removed on the battlefield showed a significant increase in the usual death rate from pneumonia (6 rather than the expected 1.3) and an increase in the death rate from ischemic heart disease (41 rather than the expected 30), but not from other conditions.

Accessory spleen
An accessory spleen is a small splenic nodule extra to the spleen usually formed in early embryogenesis. Accessory spleens are found in approximately 10 percent of the population and are typically around 1 centimeter in diameter. Splenosis is a condition where displaced pieces of splenic tissue (often following trauma or splenectomy) autotransplant in the abdominal cavity as accessory spleens.

Polysplenia is a congenital disease manifested by multiple small accessory spleens, rather than a single, full-sized, normal spleen. Polysplenia sometimes occurs alone, but it is often accompanied by other developmental abnormalities such as intestinal malrotation or biliary atresia, or cardiac abnormalities, such as dextrocardia. These accessory spleens are non-functional.

Infarction
Splenic infarction is a condition in which blood flow supply to the spleen is compromised, leading to partial or complete infarction (tissue death due to oxygen shortage) in the organ.

Splenic infarction occurs when the splenic artery or one of its branches are occluded, for example by a blood clot. Although it can occur asymptomatically, the typical symptom is severe pain in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen, sometimes radiating to the left shoulder. Fever and chills develop in some cases. It has to be differentiated from other causes of acute abdomen.

Hyaloserositis
The spleen may be affected by hyaloserositis, in which it is coated with fibrous hyaline.

Society and culture
There has been a long and varied history of misconceptions regarding the physiological role of the spleen, and it has often been seen as a reservoir for juices closely linked to digestion. In various cultures, the organ has been linked to melancholia, due to the influence of ancient Greek medicine and the associated doctrine of humourism, in which the spleen was believed to be a reservoir for an elusive fluid known as "black bile" (one of the four humours). The spleen also plays an important role in traditional Chinese medicine, where it is considered to be a key organ that displays the Yin aspect of the Earth element (its Yang counterpart is the stomach). In contrast, the Talmud (tractate Berachoth 61b) refers to the spleen as the organ of laughter while possibly suggesting a link with the humoral view of the organ.

Etymologically, spleen comes from the Ancient Greek σπλήν (splḗn), where it was the idiomatic equivalent of the heart in modern English. Persius, in his satires, associated spleen with immoderate laughter.

In English, William Shakespeare frequently used the word spleen to signify melancholy, but also caprice and merriment. In Julius Caesar, he uses the spleen to describe Cassius's irritable nature:

Must I observe you? must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you; for, from this day forth, I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, When you are waspish.

The spleen, as a byword for melancholy, has also been considered an actual disease. In the early 18th century, the physician Richard Blackmore considered it to be one of the two most prevalent diseases in England (along with consumption). In 1701, Anne Finch (later, Countess of Winchilsea) had published a Pindaric ode, The Spleen, drawing on her first-hand experiences of an affliction which, at the time, also had a reputation of being a fashionably upper-class disease of the English. Both Blackmore and George Cheyne treated this malady as the male equivalent of "the vapours", while preferring the more learned terms "hypochondriasis" and "hysteria". In the late 18th century, the German word Spleen came to denote eccentric and hypochondriac tendencies that were thought to be characteristic of English people.

In French, "splénétique" refers to a state of pensive sadness or melancholy. This usage was popularised by the poems of Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) and his collection Le Spleen de Paris, but it was also present in earlier 19th-century Romantic literature.

Food
The spleen is one of the many organs that may be included in offal. It is not widely eaten as a principal ingredient, but cow spleen sandwiches are eaten in Sicilian cuisine. Chicken spleen is one of the main ingredients of Jerusalem mixed grill.

Other animals

In cartilaginous and ray-finned fish, the spleen consists primarily of red pulp and is normally somewhat elongated, as it lies inside the serosal lining of the intestine. In many amphibians, especially frogs, it has the more rounded form and there is often a greater quantity of white pulp.

In reptiles, birds, and mammals, white pulp is always relatively plentiful, and in birds and some mammals the spleen is typically rounded, but it adjusts its shape somewhat to the arrangement of the surrounding organs. In most vertebrates, the spleen continues to produce red blood cells throughout life; only in mammals this function is lost in middle-aged adults. Many mammals have tiny spleen-like structures known as haemal nodes throughout the body that are presumed to have the same function as the spleen. The spleens of aquatic mammals differ in some ways from those of fully land-dwelling mammals; in general they are bluish in colour. In cetaceans and manatees they tend to be quite small, but in deep diving pinnipeds, they can be massive, due to their function of storing red blood cells.

Marsupials have y-shaped spleens, and it develops postnatally.

The only vertebrates lacking a spleen are the lampreys and hagfishes (the early-branching Cyclostomata, or jawless fishes). Even in these animals, there is a diffuse layer of haematopoeitic tissue within the gut wall, which has a similar structure to red pulp and is presumed homologous with the spleen of higher vertebrates.

In mice, the spleen stores half the body's monocytes so that, upon injury, they can migrate to the injured tissue and transform into dendritic cells and macrophages to assist wound healing.

title: Spleen