CHAPTER IVORIENT
Ancient Hindu literature treats in startling detail every conceivable aspect of erotic manifestations. There are guides and manuals and elaborate treatises and monographs devoted to particular topics: to coital procedures, to male and female characteristics and tendencies, to strange stimuli, and to amatory potions and philtres. Of all these manuals possibly the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana Malanaga, who is presumed to belong in the fourth century A.D., is the best known. It is, in fact, the most widely disseminated treatise on all phases of erotic practices.
The Kama Sutra furnishes specific information on the techniques of sexual relationships, the virtues and defects of women, the degrees of sensuality among both men and women, the criteria of beauty and attractiveness, the most effective devices in the matter of dress and hair arrangement, foods and cosmetics, perfumes, and the symbolic language of love.
It also stresses potions, their component elements, their preparation, and the type of philtres that are most favorable to the erotic sensibilities.
The Hindu manuals also make special classifications of women according to the degree and durability of theirerotic sensations, their physical appearance, and the osphresiological conditions arising from the pudenda muliebria. Nothing is secretive, nothing is taboo. The primary and universal activity, it is assumed, necessitates wide and deep and exact and revelatory knowledge, so that the man or woman may function to the fullest and most complete extent.
The male is also subjected to analysis, in an amatory direction, according to physiological and erotic categories. The most personal, the most intimate, the most normally cryptic and unspoken matters are subjected to forthright description and comment. For example, one subject discussed with the utmost candor is the intensity of the male erotic potential and his general reactions to sexual conjugation.
Embraces and their varieties of erotic significance, postures and degrees of proximity and physiological contiguity come under observation and exposition. Especially the thirteen types of kissing, each in its own way symptomatic of the intensity of the passion. The art of kissing was itself so important in both ancient classical and Asiatic eroticism that, in the Middle Ages, it reached a literary climax. Johannes Secundus, a Dutch scholar, wrote a passionate amatory sequence of Latin poems entitledBasia, Kisses, in which he exceeded the lyrical surge and sway and the pulsating exultation of the Roman poet Catullus.
In the course of his surgical and medical experiences in various countries, notably in the Orient, Dr. Jacobus X, the French army surgeon who is the author of a voluminous corpus of anthropological matter entitledUntrodden Fields of Anthropology(2 volumes. Paris: Published by Charles Carrington: 2nd. edition, 1898), the author gathered a great deal of unique and miscellaneous and little known information on sexual practices. In discussing potions, he dwellson cubeb pepper, a popular item in the love philtres of the East.
A drink in which the leaves of cubeb pepper have been steeped, according to Dr. Jacobus, produces pronounced genital excitation.
The Arabs were astoundingly prolific in producing manuals on erotic themes, ranging over the entire field of sexual practices, normal and perverted, to which man is physiologically bound.
The attitude adopted in such handbooks, however, is free from the contrived prurient or lascivious tone that might possibly have been expected, particularly in relation to occidental erotic literature. There is apparent, on the contrary, a certain reverential humility, as of one who treats a sacred subject for which supreme gratitude is to be accorded to the ultimate and beneficent Maker. In this sense, therefore, erotic matters have inherently a sanctity that is acknowledged by the Arab writers again and again. As in the case of the Sheikh Nefzawi’sThe Perfumed Garden. Or in the amorous episodes that pervade the corpus of tales of theArabian Nights. Or in theBook of Exposition in the Science of Coition, attributed to a certain theologian and historian named Jalal al-Din al-Siyuti. Many Arab erotic treatises actually introduce the subject with a devout invocation to Allah as the creator and dispenser of such beatific and voluptuous pleasures as are detailed in the text.
In one specific instance the Sheikh Nefzawi, after describing a preparation for correcting amatory impairment, adds: This preparation will make the weakness disappear and effect a cure, with the permission of God the Highest.
A Chinese amatory concoction, whose base was opium, was known as affion. Reputedly, it had decided erotic effects:which, however, were of an intensely violent nature accompanied by flagrant brutality. The fact of opium as a major ingredient, however, was evidently an inducement to its use.
Often small creatures, insects, reptiles, formed the base of amatory philtres. In Africa, for example, the amphibious animal that belonged to the lizard species and was named lacerta scincus was anciently ground into powder and taken as a beverage.
This concoction was considered an aphrodisiac of remarkable potency.
A cogently recommended prescription in the famous Hindu manual, the Ananga-Ranga, consists of the juice of the plant bhuya-Kokali, dried in the sun, and mixed with ghee or clarified butter, honey, and candied sugar. This potion, it is urged, is taken with great pleasurable anticipation.
In Arabia, a highly recommended beverage, designed to strengthen and maintain amatory energy, is camel’s milk in which honey has been poured. The prescription requires consecutive and regular application.
Identical in intent, and somewhat similar in ingredients, is a kind of broth prescribed by the Sheikh Nefzawi, the erotologist. It consists of onion juices, together with purified honey. This mixture is heated until only the consistency of the honey remains. Then it is cooled, water is added, and finally pounded chick-peas. To be taken in a small dose, advises Nefzawi, during cold spells of weather, and before retiring to bed, and for one day only. The result, he promises, will be startlingly successful.
A Turkish recipe recommends olibanum, which is frankincense,mixed with rose water, along with camphor, myrrh, and musk, all pounded and fricated together. The resultant mixture is sealed hermetically in a glass. Then it is left for a day or two in the sun. Now the preparation is ready for use: as a spray over the hands in washing, or on the body, or on the clothing, with consequent impacts on the person and on the erotogenic areas.
In the Orient, honey normally and regularly takes the place occupied by sugar in Western countries. Hence honey is a common ingredient in many foods, pastries and drinks. Basically, it appears repeatedly in prescriptions designed as love-potions. It is, to take an instance, frequently mentioned by Avicenna, the eleventh century Arab philosopher, physician, and libertine, as well as by the erotologist the Sheikh Nefzawi. Honey, compounded with pepper, or with ginger, or with cubebs, in various proportions and variously formed into a consistent brew, is a standard recipe in the amatory pharmacopoeia of the East.
Indian manuals on erotology contain many directions, suggestions, and specific prescriptions relative to the increase of masculine potency. Some of these prescriptions advise rare or unobtainable herbs. Others are hazardous, and may occasion dangerous reactions. Some are merely humorously and naively fantastic and impossible or futile of realization: while occasional recommendations may be warranted and may have some amatory validity.
A drink consisting of milk, with sugar added and the root of the uchchata plant, piper chaba, which is a species of pepper, and liquorice reputedly has strong support as an energizing agent.
Another milk concoction contains seeds of long pepper, seeds of sanseviera roxburghiana, and the hedysarum gangeticum plant, pounded together.
Still another recipe advocates milk and sugar, in which the testes of a ram or goat have been boiled.
An Indian excitant, reputedly effective, is a kind of liquid paste consisting of roots of the trapa bispinosa plant, tuscan jasmine, the kasurika plant, liquorice, and kshirakapoli. All these ingredients, most of them indigenous to India, are crushed together and the conglomerate powder is put into a mixture of milk, sugar, and clarified butter, that is, ghee. The entire concoction is then slowly boiled. This is considered a potent amatory beverage, and is so recommended in the manuals.
Ghee is commonly used in Indian culinary practice. It is also a frequent ingredient in potions and compounds that are directed toward genital excitations. A reputedly forceful agent of this sort is the following recipe, in which ghee appears. Sesame seeds are soaked with sparrows’ eggs: then boiled in milk, to which ghee and sugar, the fruit of the trapa bispinosa plant and the kasurika plant, as well as beans and wheat flour, have been added.
Sparrows’ eggs and rice, boiled in milk with an admixture of honey and ghee, provide what is considered an effective amatory stimulant.
A concoction of milk, honey, ghee, liquorice, sugar, and the juice of the fennel plant is considered a provocative beverage.
Boiled ghee itself, taken as a morning drink in spring time, is believed, in Hindu erotology, to form a positive excitant for amorous practices.
Certain oriental plants that have special erotic virtues are mentioned frequently in Hindu amatory treatises. Among such plants are: the shvadaustra plant, asparagus racemosus,the guduchi plant, liquorice, long pepper, and the premna spinosa. These are often used in compounds to form a potion.
Among the diversified prescriptions, compounds, and philtres contained in the Ananga-Ranga or in similar erotic manuals mentioned in this survey, not a few are merely innocuous in action by virtue of their innocuous ingredients. Others are merely ineffective, while still others may be decidedly fraught with hazards and dangers in their reactions. All potions and amatory concoctions, therefore, either alluded to or described in greater detail in this present conspectus, are treated from an academic or historical or solely informative viewpoint, not asad hocspecifics for any physiologically amatory condition whatever.
The Ananga-Ranga usually includes, among amatory items that form energizing concoctions, plants, roots, blossoms, flowers that are indigenous to India. Many of these plants have their modern botanical designations in Latin terminology, while others still remain unidentifiable or extremely rare.
Kuili powder, lechi, kanta-gokhru, kakri, and laghushatavari, compounded as a mixture in milk, will, it is asserted, create manifest physiological vigor.
An amatory drink concocted in the East is thus compounded: Pith of the moh tree, well pounded and mixed with cow’s milk. It constitutes a highly strengthening potion.
Among wealthy Chinese, lavish dining includes a special broth or soup. This soup is particularly favored for its energizing and provocative excitation. The soup is prepared from the nests of sea-swallows, highly spiced. These nests are built from edible sea-weeds, to which cling fish—spawnparticles rich in phosphorus. As an erotic beverage, the soup is reputed to be extremely efficacious.
Among Chinese in low economic levels, nuoc-man is used as a love stimulant. It is an extraction of decomposed fish, prepared like cod-liver oil.
The leaves of cubeb pepper, in an infusion, are considered in Chinese erotology to produce marked amatory tendencies.
A very popular pill, whose composition, however, is not revealed to the reader, appears again and again in the long picaresque, erotic Chinese novel entitledChin P’ing Mei. One of the characters, a monk, recommends to the adventurous hero that a certain pill, to be taken in a drop of spirits, has remarkable potency, which is specified numerically and in the degree of its voluptuousness. The erotic effects, in fact, are described by the monk in verse. The pill, yellow in hue, and ovoid in shape, is of the utmost efficacy, over a long expanse of days, the masculine vigor, described generously and enticingly, increasing with each successive day and each amatory encounter.
From a genital gland of the musk-deer and also of a species of goat that thrives in Tartary, a bitter, volatile substance is extracted, that is termed musk. In the Orient, notably in Tibet and in Iran, musk has been in use, in culinary preparations, for its assumed erotic virtues.
Musk, in fact, is pervasively associated with amatory sensations. To the ideal woman, according to Hindu erotology, whose pulchritude and appeal are beyond criticism, clings the aroma of musk, elusive, tantalizing.
Musk has long been involved in erotic practices, and its virtue in this direction has been repeatedly emphasized in amatory manuals, particularly among the Arabs. Evenin tales and legends, in poetry and in chronicles, the perfume of musk and its marked allure play no small part in the creation of romantic episodes.
The tradition of musk as an amatory agent, arousing mental and sensual erotic images and inclinations, lingers on into contemporary times. In a popular mystery tale,The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer, the plot centres around a sinister, super-intelligent Oriental operator named Dr. Fu-Manchu. One of his hirelings is the woman called Kâramanèh. Her nearness is sensed by the narrator, a certain Dr. Petrie. He detects the perfume, which ‘like a breath of musk, spoke of the Orient.’ It seemed to intoxicate the narrator, disturbing his rational faculties, suggesting the beauty of the villainous Kâramanèh.
In the inexhaustible richness of world literature, in every country and in every century, there are texts, memoirs, guides, novels, dramas, poetry, sagas and legends that are devoted largely, occasionally exclusively, to the amatory theme: from the Dialogues of Luisa Sigea to Pietro Aretino’s lascivious sonnets, from the amatory epistles of Alciphron to the lush and fantastic orgiastic extravagances of the Marquis de Sade.
Among all this heterogeneous variety of treatment, viewpoint, and exposition, there is the almost universally accepted standard text, originally produced in Sanskrit by Vatsyayana, of the Kama Sutra, the Apothegms on Love, the essence of amatory science, the distillations of erotic precepts.
A certain plant named Pellitory of Spain, and, in Latin terminology, Anacyclus Pyrethrum, has a traditionally credited amatory quality. The plant is so considered in Arab erotological literature.
The Orient, knowledgeable in the virtues and characteristicsof numberless extracts and distillations, unguents and lotions, considered ambergris, as a perfume, to be endowed with restorative, life-preserving properties. Anciently, among the Persians, there was a tonic composed of precious stones—pearls, and rubies, and gold, and powdered ambergris, producing a pastille that was eaten with anticipatory amatory prospects.
In modern times, too, in the East, coffee is often drunk in which a touch of ambergris has been intruded.
Very anciently, ambergris had reputedly amazing qualities, that would produce, temporarily, a state of rejuvenescence in aged suppliants.
Almonds belong to the Orient. Their fragrance is entwined in Oriental poetry, in Oriental legend, and in Oriental modes of living. It is therefore not surprising that the almond, variously prepared, whether powdered, or reduced to an oil, is associated with invigorating tonics.The Perfumed Garden, the erotic handbook written by the Arab erotologist the Sheikh Nefzawi, describes a number of preparations in which the base is almond.
He recommends the eating of some twenty almonds, with a glassful of honey, and one hundred pine-tree grains, just before retiring to bed. As an alternate, there is chicken broth, with cream, yolk of eggs, and powdered almonds.
In Eastern Asia there has always been, for untold ages, an awareness of the stimulating effects of certain foods. So, among the Annamites, the chief food was fish, which, according to certain anthropological studies and investigations, gives an appreciably lascivious tendency to this people.
Among other foods, they are addicted to garlic, which they consume in large quantities, ginger, and onion, all of which have aphrodisiac properties.
There are other erotogenic means, contrivances and manipulative devices, mentioned in Hindu manuals, that are designed for ithyphallic inducements.
The Orient has always been a rich source for erotic material. Formal manuals, anthologies, poetry all stress amatory concepts, erotic situations, amorous encounters. In 1907 the Mercure de France published an Anthologie de L’Amour Asiatique, by a certain Thalasso. It ranges over many countries of the Asiatic continent, describing the traits and temperaments of the women of these countries from an amatory viewpoint. The author quotes a Georgian popular song, that contains the essence of the anthology. It is that the purpose of every man, every husband, should be to devise varying amatory pleasures. He should know how to renew the enjoyments of Aphrodite. He should be skilled in avoiding monotony and satiety. Every woman of every country has her own peculiarities, her own coyness, her own aggressiveness. The women of Egypt, he says, are promiscuous, though beautiful. All the coquettish arts are known to Persian women. The Abyssinians are slim and well-formed and appealing in looks. The women of the Hedjaz are apart; they maintain their honor and their modesty, and there are no harlots among them. In Constantinople all the women, in pulchritude, resemble Venus, but they are of varying degrees of chastity. Circassian women are like the moon. Georgian women are very tender-hearted, and persistent pleas will win the day with them.
The Orient is always prepared to experiment with strange objects, unique devices, complicated contraptions, protracted and difficult treatments, all for the ultimate purpose of recovering the libido, or protracting the amatory span, or maintaining full and effectual vigor.
Take, for instance, a man’s molar tooth: and the boneof a lapwing’s left wing. Place in a purse, under the woman’s pillow. Tell her of your action. The result, presumably by means of the implied sympathetic magic, will be very favorable.
A plant belonging in the satyrion species, called Orchis Morio, that is native to the South East of Europe, particularly in the area near Istanbul, is used in Turkey as an excitant.
The juice of the roots of the mandayantaka plant, the clitoria ternateea, the anjanika plant, the shlakshnaparni plant and the yellow amaranth, compounded into a lotion, constituted an Oriental invigorating recipe.
Among the Japanese, a root highly esteemed for its amatory potential is ninjin, which has properties analogous to those of the mandrake.
The Chinese are fond of a sauce called nuoc-man. Spiced with garlic and pimento, this fish extract, similar to the Roman garum, is treated as a stimulant, containing, as it does, genesiac elements: salt and phosphorus.
As the West inherited and absorbed many cultural phases, views, concepts, practices, mores from the East, it likewise acquired some of the amatory and medicinal knowledge relating to electuaries and healing methods, herbs and plants that might be contributory to health and well-being, and, as an antique encyclopedic work suggests, an exciter to venery. Thus Zacutus Lusitanus, Zacutus the Portuguese, a medieval physician, author of a medical text entitledPraxis Medica Admiranda, enumerates the ingredients of an amatory preparation. The composition is as follows: Musk and ambergris, pterocarpus santalinus, both red and yellow, calamus aromaticus, cinnamon, bole Tuccinum,galanga, aloes-wood, rhubarb, absinthe, Indian myrobalon: all pounded together.
The most remarkable literary erotic production of China may reasonably be considered to be the picaresque novel Chin P’ing Mei, the adventurous history of Hsi Men and his six wives. It has been styled the Chinese Decameron, but it transcends the scope, the contents, the variousness of incident and characterization and sense of vivid reality manifested in Boccaccio’s Decameron. The Chinese tale is full of a variety of scenes and episodes, in the manner of the European large-scaled, spacious novel. It is also permeated by a tone of ribaldry, a vein of salacious eroticism, and a large number of episodes describing amatory experiences. One particular scene deals with a species of pill, the composition of which is not revealed, that has unique functional effects.
In China erotic perversions were as numerous as in ancient Rome. The cinaedus, the Gito who is prominent in Petronius’Satyricon, is termed in Chinaamasi. Dr. Jacobus X, the French anthropologist, has a great deal to say on this subject.
The Islamic concept of erotic practice is associated with devoutness. It implies the transmission to man of the divine creative force. Thus the erotic never becomes lewd or lascivious or prurient for the mere purpose of lubricity. The Koran counsels physiological intimacy as a sacred function, an ordained and enjoined rite. Omar Haleby ibn Othman, the Arab erotologist, likewise chants the erotic act as an expression, a manifestation derived from sacred sources. The erotic consummation has lost its fleshly, earthy connotation. It has assumed a venerable and venerated sanctity.
In the ancient Orient and even in much later ages, the phallus was an object of veneration not in a prurient or lustful sense, but as the source of procreation, the emblem of maternity. For sterility was the major, the primary curse. Hence any means might be exercised to counteract this catastrophic condition, this mark of divine disfavor, this racial blight. Hence too among certain ethnic communities as well as in Biblical literature the stranger, or the occasional traveler, or the concubine, was offered conjugal status, for the sole purpose of effecting generation.
Horror of sterility drove women to ceaseless supplications, to priapic invocations, to priapic contacts, to secret devices, and to magic aid. In the East, there was the belief that to walk over certain stones was a remedy for such sterility. In Madagascar a stone was held in reverence as promoting both agricultural and human fertility. In obscure regions of the Pyrenees Mountains, as well as in France, similar stones were believed conducive to amatory excitation and also to fertility. And these stones were merely worn and weather-beaten vestiges of the original phallic shapes or other analogous forms.
In India, too, the lingam and the yoni were pervasively revered throughout the continent. There were temples lined with hundreds of lingams, garlanded with flowers, anointed with ghee in continuous adoration.
A mixture of rose water, powdered almonds, and sugar is an old Arab drink that was commonly considered to correct incapacity. So too with a mixture, cooked together, of cloves, ginger, nuts, wild lavender, and nutmeg.
The Koran contains prescriptions that govern the daily life, material and spiritual, of Moslems. For amatory purposes, which in themselves imply a sacred function, certain perfumes are recommended as stimulants. Musk is mostfrequently mentioned and used. Also camphor, essence of rose, olibanum, and cascarilla.
The erotic theme in general is always associated, in Arab texts, with reverence and sanctity, never with prurience. The Arab erotologist Omar Haleby asserts that the Prophet himself advised recourse to invocations in the case of physiological incapacity.
The erotic consummation, repeats Omar Haleby, must be considered as an act inspired by the divinity. It is the why and the wherefore of the entire cosmos, the divine law of the conservation of the human species.
To promote physiological vigor, Moslem tradition recommends frequent cold ablutions. Nourishment also holds an important position, and specific suggestions of food are made. Fish caught in the sea are helpful. Also: lentils and truffles, mutton boiled in fennel, cumin, and anise: eggs, especially the yolk, and saffron. Dried dates have a value in this respect, as well as honey and pigeon’s blood. Effective electuaries may be compounded with these ingredients.
An old Oriental manual, putatively basing many of its assertions on the secrets of the Kabbala, classifies various types of love: Lust and passion and the rarer, ultimate, absolute spiritual love. Amatory emotions are enumerated and guidance is offered in several directions. Women are placed in various categories, according to their physical traits, their personal attractions, their sensibilities.
As a general counsel of perfection, particularly for celibates, corporeal hygiene is enjoined at all times. The routine of Nature itself, it is suggested, is an exemplary mentor, involving alternations of rest and work in due moderation. In the matter of consumption of food, too, restraint is advised. Food should be taken in silence, slowly, and whilefacing the East. Adherence to such prescriptions, it is stressed, will produce a corporeal and spiritual balance free from violent entanglements.
In the case of the woman, there are thirty-two points that, in their totality, produce perfection and beauty for the allurement of men. These points include whiteness of skin, dark hair, pink tongue, small ears, and moderate height.
Other Oriental handbooks elaborate, on the other hand, on all the possible permutations conducive to amatory consummations. These almost exclusively follow Hindu, Arab, and Turkish tradition.