This dissertation traces the images and stories involving the god of desire from the earliest hymns in the Rg Veda and Atharva Veda through the better known and lesser known tales in the Puranas, to the practices described for the worship of the deity. Finally, the study looks at an Indian Buddhist image of Kamadeva, an early tantric form of the bodhisattva Manjusri.

The best known form of the god, the handsome deity who excites erotic passion in the hearts of those struck by the flower arrows he releases from his sugarcane bow, is most graphically described in the puranic stories which delight in recounting the tug-of-war between Kama and the great ascetic, Siva. However, Kama also appears in other stories and even becomes the object of certain devotional rituals for those seeking health, physical beauty, husbands, wives, and sons. In one story Kama himself succumbs to desire, and must then worship his lover in order to be released from this passion and its curse.

In two other guises Kamadeva is said to take incarnation as Pradyumna, the son of Krsna, and is known as a form of Manjusri called Vajrananga. Although little attention is given to the Pradyumna story in Vaisnava literature, this story presents the incarnate Kama as the husband of Mayavati, Mistress of Illusion. In the Buddhist tradition, Manjusri-Vagrananga carries the sugarcane bow and flower arrows while displaying the srngara rasa. The reasons for these two forms of the deity are explored in the last two chapters.

The thesis presents a monograph of the Indian god of desire and a picture of the way the katha literature perceives and treats the integral human force of "desire.".