The Perfumed Garden vs. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, both translated by Sir Richard F. Burton:
Once upon a time across the ocean, many centuries ago, there lived people who liked having sex. “Musselmans” and “Hindoos” alike celebrated the art of physical love through exhaustive—or as I like to say, sexhaustive!—manuals detailing positions, spells/love potions, and weird anecdotes wholly unrelated to genitalia. And the peasants rejoiced to have these manuals for, being devoid of both Stieg Larsson novels and Smirnoff Ice, there were few appropriate recreational activities outside of trying 80 different sexual postures that basically all break down to: woman on her back, legs up.
Sound juicy? It is! And also, depressing. Because in the astounding amount of time that’s passed, it’s probably no longer kosher to suggest that one read the Koran as an aphrodisiac or cry out “I want it done in all ways. Let the revelation of God descend upon me!” while on all fours. (Perfumed Garden, pages 77 and 154.) What I wouldn’t give to be back in the good old days….
Bad News Before Good: Alan Hull Walton, long-winded intro writer for my edition of The Perfumed Garden, delivers some sad tidings early on. The original Garden included a “considerable” chapter on homosexuality, but Sir Richard did not originally translate it, because the French soldier who created the very first translation of the text omitted it. But Richard soon realized what a grave disservice he’d done to humanity and decided to create a second, annotated translation of the work, which would include the missing chapter as well as citations from Numa Numantius, “a learned German [who was] himself sexually inverted.” Tragically, Burton died before his work was finished and his wife, who’d apparently not paid a damn bit of attention to anything her husband worked on while alive, was so shocked by the sexually explicit material that she burned the manuscript-in-progress. Women! Can’t live with them and apparently can’t die in the vicinity of one either.
Making Machiavelli Proud: Indian men, it seems, would stop at nothing to get the women they want. The Kama Sutra recommends endless varieties of charming ladies, including pretending to like children while in her presence, using the same service people she does (blacksmith, jeweler) and taking care not to “contradict her, but point out that he agrees with her in every way.” These relatively innocent techniques give way to some brazenly criminal behavior, however, for once a man determines he wants to marry a woman, Vatsyayana advocates ambushing her with the fire ceremony that seals the deal, either through abducting her, drugging her, or killing her guards. Should she ever be unconscious, the man is encouraged to “enjoy her” before she wakes up. Icky!
???: Here’s a memorable gem from The Perfumed Garden: “A man buys a he-goat who, in voiding his excrements, hits the buyer’s eye with part of it and injures the same. ‘Who has to pay for damages?’ ‘The seller,’ promptly says Abou Arouba. ‘And why?’ asked the Katif. ‘Because he has sold the animal without warning the buyer that it has a catapult in its anus,’ answered the man.”
If anyone can figure out what the h-e double hockey sticks this has to do with fucking, please email me.
Indians Got Kinky: “Mouth congress” and eunuch sex is no big thing, according to The Kama Sutra. There’s even a defensive riff on why oral sex isn’t unclean, and numerous reminders that “in all these things connected with love, everybody should act according to his own inclination.” Furthermore, “nothing tends to increase love so much as the effects of marking with the nails, and biting,” and a chapter is devoted to each activity.
And even more further, Vatsyayana is a tremendous advocate of “striking” both during and before penetration, although (sorry, tool-lovers) he advises against using implements as they can sometimes result in tragedy. The “wedge,” “pinchers,” “scissors,” and “piercing implement” have all been known to kill or deform hapless female partners, so best to stick with “the back of the hand, slowly at first, then proportionately to the increasing excitement, until the end.” But you all already knew that.
Men On Penises: Straight men from back in the day flat out love to talk about penis size. The only thing they love more than talking about the length of other men’s penises is actually measuring said penises. And there are plenty of asides in The Perfumed Garden noting that Arabs (and, of course, “Negros”) have it going on in the trouser region, as proven by the tireless observations of the self-admittedly less-endowed European men. The Garden suggests that, when it comes to length, “the breadth of twelve fingers, or three hand-breadths” will do the trick of satisfying a woman, and if you’re thinking that sounds like a whopper of a cock, you’re right. According to the footnote, that would be about nine inches. (Woundedly, the footnote concludes, “medical opinion, however, states that size is of much less importance in the marital act than tenderness in approach.” Ha. That’s cute.)
Well-Rounded Women: Unsurprisingly, these old texts can be pretty misogynistic. But The Kama Sutra starts to seem downright feminist when it argues against those who would deny women access to its pages. According to Vatsyayana, even “young maidens” should study up. They should also spend their time developing skills in: tattooing, “the art of making beds,” fashioning earrings, magic/sorcery, “making parrots [etc.] out of yarn or thread,” “teaching [real] parrots to speak,” and practicing “sentences difficult to pronounce” i.e. tongue twisters. Character building! Even more awesomely, it is also advised that girls study up on sword-fighting, gambling, carpentry, chemistry, and cock, quail, and ram fighting. Throw cigar smoking in there, and you got yourself a private school education.
You Will LOL: The Perfumed Garden is simply delightful. I want to share every hilarious moment with you, but since I must restrict myself to only a few, let me give you a taste.
During a distinctly Bugs Bunny-esque tale, a king dresses like a woman to fool some bad guy who’s abducted a bunch of hot chicks, and the cross-dressing monarch avoids having sex with the villain by pretending he’s about to puke, then running away. The villain marvels, “God bless you! Any other woman would have been sick into the bed!” (Because that happens on the regular for him. This is the same guy who, “holding in his hands his member in full erection, hit [a girl] on the face and head.” Dude was doing Max Hardcore over 500 years before Max Hardcore was even born.)
The preferred word for “poke” is “rummage,” as in, “you can rummage her in a convenient, measured way.” Charming, right? And some of the names of sexual positions are: “sheep-fashion,” “ram-fashion,” “pounding on the spot,” “the summersault”[sic] (which involves a woman wearing pants around her ankles,) and, my personal favorite, “fitting on of the sock.” Different hip thrusts are also detailed, one of which is called, wonderfully, “the mutual shock.”
The Book That Is Triumphant: I’m tempted to say both are winners. But the truth is, while The Kama Sutra is a revered classic, the quirkiness of The Perfumed Garden stole my heart. Plus, it includes this exhortation no less than two times: “I swear by God that it is necessary to know this book. It is only the shameless bore and the enemy of all science who will not read it, or make fun of it.” So suck it, haters. The rest of you, go forth unto he-goat sex with the blessing of the Lord.
