Right esteemed magi and other beings, our troupe have run into a bit of a silly problem and we figured it should be shared to the collective mental might of the comunity.
During our last adventure we (A companion with long fingers) stumbled upon a tome.
This Tome was described to him as filled with fine illustrations of a sligthly evocative nature and not that heavy on the text atleast not what he could garner from it.
Yes according to the ST and with general concensus from the troupe our thiefy companion has gotten his mits on a copy(?) of the Kama Sutra.
The companion now wants to trade this tome to the covenant as payment for a season of work (we found it to be fair as the book aperes to be of high quality and its worth atleast that much for the roaring laughter that occured when it dawned on him what it was he had in is hands.) however now that we are probably going to add it to the library we kinda got stuck statting it out.
In short how would you people stat out the Kama Sutra as either a Sumae or a tractus?
the first idea was atleast that it would be for the ability charm.
If the tome you are referring to is the Kama Sutra (not the KaRma Sutra), then, in the context of Ars Magica, I would treat it as a tractatus on the ability Carouse; or possibly as a collection of tractatus, on the abilities Carouse, Profession: Courtesan, Charm and possibly Athletics and/or Medicine.
That's because a summa is supposed to be encyclopaedic in nature, i.e. cover all aspects of an ability. A tractatus, on the other hand, is supposed to provide in-depth treatment of a particular sub-area of expertise. Ars Magica has no ability like "sex and seduction" (if it had, the Kama Sutra would be a reasonable summa). Instead, I think it's a sub-area of the ability Carouse, which covers having fun, and leading others into having fun, maximizing enjoyment and minimizing negative side-effects such as hangovers.
This would be, of course, a "mundane" version of the Kama Sutra, or of similar books which did exist in the roman/greek world. India, in Ars Magica, is at the edges of the mundane world. A very reasonable way to model the Kama Sutra would then be as a tome on something supernatural, with the infernal art of Debauchery being a perfect candidate.
With scores in some Infernally Tainted Abilities too.
Unless, of course, you don't like the idea of that stuff being Infernal in your saga, or leading to it. Dealing with religions and cultures beyond European Christianity in AM is always a delicate matter.
Since it is a foreign religious text about a mystery tradition I would do something fun with it, like make it mean different things to different people. The real text is about Tantric sexuallity which while on the surface is about sex, on a deeper level is meant to be about healing and sacred energy. I would say if someone has no magical abilities it would count a mid range tractus on carousing, if a magi studies it it would be a lower score but high quality tractus on corpus or mentem, lastly if it is studied by someone with the exceptional talent Healing make it a high value summea.
Also note that the Kama Sutra isn't, for the most part, about sex - it's about being a good lover. As such, it's got chapters on philosophy, and ethics, and so on. To quote the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_Sutra
As such, it looks like it would be a tractus on Philosophe or Theology as much as anything else.
I would probably treat the Kama Sutra as a potential source of breakthrough for essentially Ancient Magic (unless the magus is going to travel to India)
If what he has is not the actual Kama Sutra but just Medieval Porn (and it did exist) then I would simply treat it as a vernacular work (artes and Acadame) with an Aesthetic Quality instead of a source quality, which can be studied for either illustration or painting ability, depending on how the work is illustrated.