CHAPTER VINDIA
India is a spacious land of astounding contrasts and variations. It is a land of mystery and mysticism, and at the same time it investigates reality with infinite patience. It is a land of diversified, age-old cultures, and its ancient university at Taxila in the Punjab ante-dated the Hellenic Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum by long centuries. Yet it has had and still has illiterate villages, where legends and sagas of antique doings are still transmitted orally. It is a continent of abundant wealth, and its maharajas and princelings and emperors have been resplendent in golden raiment, exultant in their treasure houses where lakhs of rupees lie heaped alongside rubies and emeralds, diamonds and pearls, and a dozen other varieties of precious stones, almost beyond human reckoning and evaluation. Yet, within this very century, children have stood at lonely wayside stations, from Bombay to Rawalpindi, in the Punjab and in Bengal, in the North West Frontier and in Madras Presidency, clamoring for roti and pani, bread and water. It is a land of lavish fertility, and a land of recurrent famine and devastation. A land of hieratic formalities and a land of innovation.
India is a country of artistic achievements of the highestorder, of profound philosophical speculation, of monumental poetic and literary production. It is dedicated to things of the spirit, yet its Kali craves blood. It clings adhesively to remote traditions, to ethnic and religious mores, to indurated social ways. Yet it forges ahead, eager to maintain itself in the forefront of industrial expansion. It maintains old domestic and communal demarcations and rigidities, yet it welcomes the novelties, the mutations of this restless age. It is dedicated to intellectual, cosmological meditation, yet it probes into sexual manners, into the characteristics of lust and passion, and all the secretive unspoken intimacies of carnality. It has practically made a monopoly of texts and treatises on the subject of love and all its darker and more intricate and subtle manifestations. It is a country that has produced, in this field, six of the major manuals, poetic eulogies or expositions, dealing with the forms and practices of Aphrodite Pandemos.
The Ratirahasya, variously called the Koka Shastra, was the work of the poet Kukkoka. It consists of some eight hundred verses on love techniques.
The Ananga-Ranga, also called Kamaledhiplava, was written by the poet Kullianmull, and belongs in the fifteenth or sixteenth century A.D. The contents describe factually and realistically the physical characteristics of various types of women, their deportment, dress, facial and bodily traits, their amatory responsiveness, together with certain principles that establish objective amatory criteria.
The Rasmanjari was the work of the poet Bhanudatta. It classifies men and women according to personal behavior, age, physical type.
The Smara Pradipa, consisting of some four hundred verses, expounds amatory laws or tendencies. It was the work of the poet Gunakara.
The Ratimanjari is a brief poetic exposition on love, whose author was the poet Jayadeva.
The Panchasakya is considerably longer, and is divided into five Arrows. The author was Jyotirisha.
Woman, in these treatises and poetic elaborations and expositions, is the central theme, and her physical traits, ideally considered, and the elements that, cumulatively, constitute her dominant attraction, are minutely and imaginatively depicted: the texture of the skin, the shape of the moon face, the coloring of the hair, the brightness of eye are measured and defined in relation to cosmic phenomena, to flowers, to the lotus, to the mustard blossom, to the lily and the fawn, and, above all, her devoutness is stressed, and her impassioned worship of the Hindu pantheon, the totality of the deities.
The Kama Sutra is an extended exposition of love and its procedures and manipulations, in some 1200 verses divided into sections in which various aspects and techniques in amatory mores are treated.
And, like The Perfumed Garden and similar Oriental excursions into sexual activities, it diffuses an aura of religiosity, a solemn sense of reverence, a divine acknowledgment. The tone is frank without prurience: the elaborate classifications and injunctions are minute and lucid without introducing an undercurrent, however unobtrusive, of deliberate and gross scurrilities. It is not libidinous, then, in intent, for the author himself, a profoundly contemplative religious devotee, adumbrated his work, not as a salacious and lewd inducement to debauchery, but as an exposition of the physiological man who, while making concessions in conformity with certain established amatory principles, may yet transcend his carnal desires and, instead of being enslaved by his erotic lusts, may become master of them and use them under due control, but never without restraint and a kind of Hellenic and Aristotelian moderation, a physiologicalaurea mediocritas.
The floruit of the author of the Kama Sutra has not beendetermined definitively. It has been variously assigned between the first and the sixth century A.D.
The entire work is pervaded by the three Hindu concepts of Dharma, goodness or virtue, in the Greek sense, Artha, which is wealth, and Kama, sensual pleasure.
The range of topics covers normal and abnormal conditions and practices: wedded love and fellatio, public harlotry and transvestism, courtship and the frenzies of passion, the behavior of wives during a husband’s absence, the artifices of feminine conquest, osculation and amatory permutations, the employment of an intermediary, the ways of the courtesan, and, finally, personal adornment, tonic medicines, methods of exciting desire.
In respect of the latter, there are various recipes involving oils, unguents, and juices. One unguent that has amatory appeal is composed of tabernamontana coronaria, costus speciosus, and flacourtia cataphracta.
Another aid is oil of hogweed, echites putrescens, the sarina plant, yellow amaranth, and leaf of nymphae. This salve is applied to the body.
Let the man eat the powder of the nelumbrium speciosum, the blue lotus, the mesna roxburghii, together with clarified butter, which is ghee, and honey.
The bone of a peacock, or of a hyena, covered with gold and fastened on the right hand, has an exciting effect.
Similarly with a bead made from the seed of the jujube or a conch shell, that is enchanted by magic spells and then fastened on the hand.
A mixture of powders of white thorn apple, black pepper, long pepper, and honey is reputedly a means of female subjugation.
So with an ointment made of the emblica myrabolens plant.
A drink of milk and sugar, the pipar chaba, liquorice, and the root of the uchchata plant is an invigorating agent.
A liquid consisting of milk mixed with juice of the kuili plant, the hedysarum gangeticum, and the kshirika plant is likewise a stimulant.
A drink of a paste consisting of asparagus racemosus, the guduchi plant, the shvadaushtra plant, long pepper, liquorice: boiled in milk, ghee, and honey, and taken in the spring time.
A man who plays on a reed pipe smeared with juices of the bahupadika plant the costus arabicus, the euphorbia antiquorum, the tabernamontana coronaria, the pinus deodora, the kantaka plant, and the vajfa plant will effect female subjugation.
A camel bone, dipped into the juice of the eclipta prostata, then burned, and pigment from the ashes placed in a box made of camel bone, and applied to the eyelashes with a camel bone pencil are also a means of subjugation.
A drink of boiled clarified butter, in the morning, in the spring time, is equally effective.
A drink of asparagus racemosus and the shvadaushtra plant, with pounded fruit of premna spinosa, in water.
A drink composed as follows: The covering of sesame seeds, soaked in sparrows’ eggs: boiled in milk, with ghee and sugar, with fruit of the trapa bispinosa and the kasuriki plant: with the addition of flour of beans and wheat.
Vigor is increased by a brew consisting of rice, with sparrows’ eggs: boiled in milk, together with honey and ghee.
The Kama Sutra suggests that the means of arousing vigor may also be learned from medicine, from the Vedas, and from adepts in Magic. Nothing that may be injurious in its effects, however, should be employed, only such means as are holy and recognized as good.
Other stimulants that are known to the Hindu manuals of erotology include the following:
The anvalli nut is stripped of its outer shell. The juiceis then extracted. It is dried in the sun and subsequently mixed with powdered anvalli nut. The paste is eaten with ghee, honey, and candied sugar.
A compound of hog plum, eugenia jambreana, and flowers of the nauclia cadamba. These items are all indigenous to India, as are so many of the ingredients mentioned in the Indian treatises. In many cases, however, the plants and fruits, herbs and extracts are not unknown and are available in the Occident.
To gain amatory acquiescence and supremacy over the person desired, the following Hindu preparation is recommended: A few pieces of arris root are mixed with mango oil. They are then placed in an aperture in the trunk of the sisu tree. The pieces are left thus for some six months, at which time an ointment is compounded, reputedly effective in a genital sense.
The lotus, jasmine, and the asoka plant are in the opinion of Hindu erotologists provocative of venery. With respect to the lotus, this plant is associated with the ideal feminine personality, supreme pulchritude and perfection symbolized by the Lotus Woman.
Hemp contains elements productive of sexual stimuli. In Hindu erotology, the leaves and seeds of the plant are chewed in this expectation. On occasion, the seeds are mixed with other ingredients: ambergris, sugar, and musk: all of which are credibly of aphrodisiac quality.
An infusion of hemp leaves and seed capsules is drunk as a liquor.
An extract of hemp, much used in India, is charas, which is both smoked and eaten. Botanically, hemp is the plant Cannabis Indica, from which are produced over 150 drug preparations.
An Indian plant named bhuya—kokali and, in botanical terminology, solanum Jacquini, is credited with erotic properties. The juice is extracted and dried in the sun. This is then mixed with ghee, candied sugar, and honey, and taken as a potion.
Calamint, an aromatic herb, was used in India as an amatory excitant.
Chutney, a characteristically Indian relish, is compounded of fruits, herbs, and seasonings. Apart from its culinary use, chutney is considered a sensual stimulant.
Erotic ingenuities have devised variations in physiological relations. The Arab erotologist the Sheikh Nefzawi, in hisThe Perfumed Garden, alludes to this ingenuity in the case of Indian practices, where twenty-nine possible forms of intimacy were in vogue.
An eye-salve called collyrium was known among the Romans as, apart from its ophthalmological virtue, a sexual aid. Collyrium was so considered in India too, where it was also credited with possessing magic qualities that were applicable to erotic manifestations.
Macabre concoctions have been the stock in trade of the dispensers of philtres and excitants in all ages among all races. A prescription that is urged in Hindu erotological literature runs as follows: A compound consisting of flowers thrown on a corpse that is being carried to a burning ghat for disposal: along with a mixture compounded of the powdered bones of the peacock and of the jiwanjiva bird, and the leaf of the plant vatodbhranta. A genital application promises, in the opinion of the Hindu manuals, marked physiological vigor.
Many Oriental treatises on erotology deal with the physiological characteristics of men and women, temperamental differences, erotic postures in multiple varieties, and recommendations regarding local inguinal applications. The topic of potions as such is far less extensively treated, largely for the reason that the love-potion, innocuous and effectual, is actually rare. Yet each manual is hopeful and anticipatory in this respect.
The Ananga-Ranga, of which a French translation appeared in Paris in 1920, in the Bibliothèque des Curieux, was originally composed in Sanskrit in the sixteenth century by the poet Kalyanamalla. It covers cosmetic hints and amatory devices, hygienic suggestions, periapts and incantations designed to attract and retain affection. It discusses the four major types of women, their personal characteristics, the hours and days most propitious for intimacy. There are tables and statistics that go into minute detail on these points. There is a table classifying and differentiating the seats of passion, the erotogenic areas. There are several pages of tables that expound different types of embrace with different types of partners. Nothing is left to chance. Nothing is omitted. The text marches forward, with confidence and a sense of authority, from the uprising of the libido to the ultimate consummation.
The characteristics of men, their physiological frame, their capacities are evaluated, with a remarkable substantiation of tables and statistics and measurements. The temperaments of women are reviewed with equal thoroughness, and the regions of India are considered geographically and erotically in relation to this topic.
Aphrodisiacs, both external and internal, are treated: drugs and charms, magic unguents, fascinating incense, incantations and invocations.
An external application runs thus: Shopa or anise seed, that is, anethum sowa, reduced to a powder. An electuaryis made with honey. This application, according to the Ananga-Ranga, promises effective results.
Or, Take Asclepias gigantea. Crush and beat in a mortar with leaves of jai, until the juice has been extracted. This too is an external application.
Again: The fruit of the Tamarinda Indica; crush in a mortar, with honey and Sindura.
The seeds of Urid, in milk and sugar. Expose for three consecutive days to the sun. Then crush to a powder. Knead into cake form. Fry in ghee. Eat this concoction every morning.
One hundred and fifty seeds of the inner bark of the Moh tree. Heap in a mortar and beat. Drink it in cow’s milk.
On a Tuesday, extract the entrails of a blue jay—coracias indica—and put into the body a little kama-salila. Place the bird in an earthen pot and cover it with a second pot moistened with mud: keep it in an uncluttered spot for seven days. At the end of that time take out the contents and reduce them to a powder. Make pills, and dry them. One pill to be taken by a man or a woman: that will be sufficient to promote vigor and libido.
Magic verses will be equally effective: also the chanting of a mantra, for the efficacy resides in the Devata, the deity therein. Or pronounce formulas and utter invocations, such as:
Oh Kameshwar, submit this person to my will!
Utter the hallowed and mystic term Om! Mention thename of the woman who is the object of the passion. Then conclude with Anaya! Anaya!
Pulverize kasturi, which is common musk, and wood of yellow tetu. Mix with old honey, two months old, and apply genitally.
Sandalwood and red powder of curcuma and alum and costus and black sandalwood, together with white Vala and the bark of the Deodaru. Powder, and mix with honey: then allow to dry. This is now Chinta—mani Dupha: an incense that will promote your efficiency, dominate all thought, and, according to the promise of the manual, make you master of the entire universe.
To prepare a powerful and alluring incense, mix equal quantities of cardamom seeds, oliba, and the plant Garurwel, sandalwood, the flower of jasmine, and Bengal madder.
Pulverize bombax heptaphyllum: macerate in milk. Then apply the paste to the face. This will produce amatory reactions.
Take bibva nuts and black salt, leaves of lotus. Reduce to ashes and soak in solanum Jacquini. Apply with buffalo excrement and the result will be most favorable.
Mix equal parts of the juice of rosa glanduifera, expressed from the leaves, and ghee or clarified butter. Boil with ten parts of milk, sugar, and honey. Drink this concoction regularly. The result will be a state of active vigor.
Take saptaparna on a Sunday by mouth, with a prospect of renewed vigor.
Soak the seeds of Urid in milk and sugar: dry in the sun for three days. Reduce the whole to a powder. Knead intocake consistency. Fry in ghee. Eat this every morning. However old the patient may be, he will acquire great vigor.
The seeds of white Tal-makhana, macerated in the juice of the banyan tree. Mix with seeds of karanj and put into the mouth.
Vajikarana. This agent restores strength and physical vigor.
The Ananga-Ranga, like other Oriental erotic manuals, concludes devoutly: May this treatise, Ananga-Ranga, be dear to men and women, so long as the sacred River Ganges flows from Siva’s breast with his wife Gauri by his left side: so long as Lakhmi shall love Vishnu: so long as Brahma shall be engaged in the study of the Vedas, and so long as the earth shall endure, and the moon, and the sun.
Curry is especially associated with Indian culinary preparations. It is a sauce compounded of a variety of spices in varying proportions: coriander seeds, cumin, ginger, cardamom seeds, turmeric, garlic, vinegar, and mustard seeds. In addition to its use as a condiment, curry has been held to possess a stimulative quality.
As a rule when physiological vigor is defective or ineffectual in some respect, stimulants are advised to remedy the condition. In a contrary sense, however, when the libido is too intense and too active, a Hindu recommendation, designed to modify the urgency, consists of a special application. This application is compounded of the juice of the fruits of the cassia fistula, eugenia jambolana, in a mixture of powder of vernonia anthelmentica, the soma plant, the lohopa—jihirka, and the eclipta prostata: all of these plants being native to India.
The plant botanically designated Emblica Myrabolens, states the Hindu manual Kama Sutra, is conducive to the vita sexualis, when the plant is compounded into an ointment.
The same manual, adding a goetic touch to a prescription, asserts the stimulative value of a bead formed from jujube seed or conch shell, over which an incantation had been uttered. The bead is attached to the hand.
For a diminution of physiological vigor, or for its total elimination in an amatory direction, Indian manuals suggested a long, rigid treatment. It consisted of the daily consumption of young leaves of mairkousi. Fakirs and other holy men were subjected to this regimen until full manhood was reached at the age of twenty-five.
Fennel, an aromatic plant, has long been in use in culinary preparations. It has also a reputation for inspiring energy in an aphrodisiac sense. In India, it is used for this purpose in the following form: The juice of the fennel plant is mixed with honey, milk, sugar, liquorice, and ghee or clarified butter.
This concoction is viewed with a certain religious respect and is associated with a drink fit for the gods.
Perfumes have at all times been included in the amatory pharmacopoeia. Among Indian erotologists, perfumed fumigation is considered a powerful excitant.
In India, ghee, which is clarified butter, is normally used in cookery. At the same time it is credited with amatory properties. A drink of boiled ghee, taken in the morning, in the spring time, is among the erotic recipes of the Hindu treatises.
As a frequent base for love recipes, ginger, which is also commonly used in the Orient for dietary purposes, is generally present as an amatory item, and is taken by mouth with pepper, honey, and other spices.
Every natural phenomenon, every product of the fields, whatever dwells on sea or is hidden underground: all such items have at some time or other been tested and recommended for their potential contribution to amatory functions. So even the breeze in spring time has had its eulogists in Hindu erotology as an amorous inspiration: also the flowers that are in bud, the songs and twitterings of birds, and the humming sibilance of bees. Similarly, music was recommended as promotive of desire. Even, on occasion, the touch of a person, an aroma, a taste, a sound, a form may stir longings. In a more earthy and domestic sense, leeks and garlic, beans and onions have been found useful as stimulants. Some concoctions are merely hinted at, without being given a nomenclature. Thus an ancient Greek historian is cited by the Greek encyclopedist Athenaeus himself, in hisBanquet of the Philosophers, as authority for a certain Hindu preparation.
When applied to the soles of the feet, it created an immediate and powerful amatory reaction. But this specific, as so many others, has faded into oblivion.
The Kama Sutra recommends an ointment compounded thus: Xanthochymus pichorius, honey, ghee, tabernamontana coronaria, mesna roxburghii, nelumbrium speciosum, and blue lotus.
Another compound, to be taken by mouth, is blue lotus and powder of the nelumbrium speciosum, mixed with honey and ghee.
Amatory provocation may be induced by certain powders and ointments made from the following plants: Costus speciosus,tabernamontana coronaria, and flacourtia cataphracta, compounded together.
For genital potency, preparations, mechanical devices, electuaries, unguents, incantations, and brews have been urged in Hindu manuals. In addition to the variety of ointments herbs, spices, and animal secretions, surgical operations, hazardous both physiologically and emotionally, have been gravely prescribed.
An unusual procedure for strengthening vigor involves a mixture that is to be thrown at the person desired. The mixture is composed of powder of milk, kantaka plant, and the hedge plant, with the powdered root of the lanjalika plant and the excrement of a monkey.
A mixture of cowach and honey, along with the pulverized remains of a dead kite and the prickly hairs of a tropical plant. This is a means of amatory supremacy.
An application of Lechi, costus arabicus, kanher root, chikana, gajapimpali, and askhand, pulverized and mixed with ghee.
To strengthen and recover vigor, a drink is prepared as follows: Lechi, kuili powder, asparagus racemosus, cucumber, and kanta-gokhru: mixed with milk.
Applications that, in the estimation of the Ananga-Ranga, are of value as phallic stimulants, include leaves of the jai, rui seed, honey, lotus flower pollen, Hungarian grass, and anise.
Loha-Bhasma is a preparation of ferrous oxide and is used, according to Hindu erotologists, as a priapic stimulant.
An herb indigenous to India, known botanically as maerua arenaria, is considered beneficial in inducing amatory inclination.
Despite Hindu proscriptions against the consumption of meat, meat is frequently mentioned in Hindu texts as an erotic agent, particularly red, lean meat.
Arrack is an Indian liquor prepared from the flowers of the Moh tree, that are rich in sugar content. The Moh tree, botanically Bassia latifolia, is used in a recipe for physiological renewal. The pith is pounded and, with cow’s milk, taken as a drink.
In India, opium, that is, papaver somniferum, has been used as a phallic excitation, although a sixteenth century Dutch traveler, Linschoten, who was familiar with the East and the West Indies, asserted that it diminishes the libido.
A phallic application is costus arabicus, powdered raktabol, which is myrrh, borax, aniseed, and manishil, mixed with oil of sesame.
A lotion of juice of the roots of the madayanlika plant, the anjanika plant, yellow amaranth, the shlakshnaparni plant, and the clitoria ternateea.
A help in amatory experimentation is the following: The sprouts of the vajnasunhi plant are cut into small strips. They are then dipped in a mixture of sulphur and red arsenic, and dried seven times. The resultant powder is now burned at night; when the smoke rises, if a golden moon is observed behind the fumes, success will attend the erotic encounter.
A composition of long pepper, seeds of the plant sansevieraroxburghiana, and seeds of the plant hedysarum gangeticum, pounded and mixed with milk.
Various soups are advised, in Hindu erotology, as strengthing ministrants. Particularly so, soups in which the ingredients are cheese, or fish, or celery, or mushrooms, or lentils, or onions.
Dill, which botanically is anthum graveolens, is an Eastern ingredient for furthering the libido.
To Hindu erotologists, all amatory acts, the cult of the phallus, and erotic performances, are under the aegis of the triune god Trimurti.
Trapa bispinosa, which is a nut belonging in the water chestnut species, is frequently used in amatory composition. The paste is prepared from the seeds or roots of the trapa bispinosa, kasurika, tuscan jasmine, and liquorice, and a bulb called kshirakapoli. The whole is mixed with milk, ghee, and sugar: then boiled into a consistency.
Wine, in India, is considered conducive to priapic performance. But only, as among the Greeks and the Romans and the ancient Hebrews, when taken in moderation. Otherwise, excessive drinking of wine is an object of condemnation. A rule in Hindu ritual establishes the criterion of sufficiency:
So long as the mind’s light flickers not,For so long drink! Shun the rest!Whoso drinks still more is a beast.
So long as the mind’s light flickers not,For so long drink! Shun the rest!Whoso drinks still more is a beast.
So long as the mind’s light flickers not,For so long drink! Shun the rest!Whoso drinks still more is a beast.
So long as the mind’s light flickers not,
For so long drink! Shun the rest!
Whoso drinks still more is a beast.
As a defensive measure against erotic aggressiveness, Hindu erotology suggests the following procedure. Thewoman who is the prospective object of an amatory approach should bathe in the buttermilk of a male buffalo. The milk is mixed with powder of yellow amaranth, the banu-padika plant, and the gopalika plant.
Cinnamon is the dried inner bark of an East Indian tree. In addition to its use as a condiment, cinnamon has been credited with amatory implications.
TheAtharva Vedais a Sanskrit text dealing with thaumaturgic procedures, magic formulas, incantations, and prescriptions affecting various emotional circumstances. A magic invocation, intended to excite feminine passion in a particular woman, runs this:
With the all-powerful arrow of Love do I pierce thy heart, O woman! Love, love that causes unease, that will overcome thee, love for me! That arrow, flying true and straight, will cause in thee burning desire. It has the point of my love, its shaft is my determination to possess thee!
Yea, thy heart is pierced. The arrow has struck home. I have overcome by these arts thy reluctance, thou art changed! Come to me, submissive, without pride, but only longing! Thy mother will be powerless to prevent thy coming, neither shall thy father be able to prevent thee! Thou art completely in my power.
O Mitra, O Varuna, strip her of will power! I, I alone, wield power over the heart and mind of my beloved!
A woman, on the other hand, may secure a man’s love by the following supplication:
I am possessed by burning love for this man: andthis love comes to me from Apsaras, who is victorious ever. Let the man yearn for me, desire me, let his desire burn for me! Let this love come forth from the spirit, and enter him.
Let him desire me as nothing has been desired before! I love him, want him: he must feel this same desire for me!
O Maruts, let him become filled with love. O Spirit of the Air, fill him with love. O Agni, let him burn with love for me!
A variant supplication directed toward a similar purpose is the following, from the same source as the two previous invocations:
By the power and Laws of Varuna I invoke the burning force of love, in thee, for thee. The desire, the potent love-spirit which all the gods have created in the waters, this I invoke, this I employ, to secure thy love for me!
Indrani has magnetized the waters with this love-force.
And it is that, by Varuna’s Laws, that I cause to burn!
Thou wilt love me, with a burning desire.
In its religious traditions, India has affinities with the earliest known forms of sacred rites, concepts, and views. In Hindu religious mythology, the cosmic power of creation, of the generative capacity, is symbolized by the duality of the hermaphrodite, the male and female intertwined, sharing the properties of each other, representing the passive and active principles that pervade all Nature.
From the testimony furnished by bas-reliefs in caves such as the Ajanta caverns, by temple carvings, paintings,and sculptural adornments, the cult of the lingam, throughout India, appears to date back to a very remote and undetermined antiquity.
Among certain sects, the supreme power is worshipped in the phallic form. In wayside lodges, on facades and shrines, the genital figure of masculine dominance is everywhere on view. In many instances this omnipresence and insistence of the symbolic phallus assume monstrously obscene forms and positions, writhing and contorted in erotic frenzy, or entwined in serpentine coils and performing abominations of the utmost lubricity in the name and under the aegis of the cosmic creative force.
A remoter but still valid corollary is that the amatory urge derives from this universal generative process and strives to merge with it and hence seeks whatever erotic measures and manipulations may be favorable to such a consummation.
At Benares, Jagannath, and elsewhere in India, the deities of generation were held in great reverence, and were worshipped, notably by women, who symbolically, and more frequently actually, consorted with, for instance, Vishnu, at a nocturnal ceremony during the annual celebrations held in his honor.
TheAtharva Veda, the Sanskrit magic text, contains an invocation whereby a woman appeals for a husband:
I seek a husband. Sitting here, my hair flowing loose, I am like one positioned before a giant procession, searching for a husband for this woman without a spouse.
O Aryaman! This woman cannot longer bear to attend the marriages of other women. Now, having performed this rite, other women will come to the wedding-feast of hers!
The Creator holds up the Earth, the planets, the Heavens.
O Creator, produce for me a suitor, a husband.
TheAtharva Vedaalso recommends a talisman made from sraktya wood, to be used in supplication to all the divinities of the Hindu pantheon, with these words:
And this great and powerful talisman does strike to victory wherever it is used. It produces children, fecundity, security, fortunes!
Another Hindu invocation, in the text of theAtharva Veda, contains an amatory appeal for a wife:
I take upon myself strength, strength of a hundred men. I take up this power in the name of the spirit that comes here, that is coming, that has come. O Indra, give me that strength!
As the Asvins took Surya, the child of Savitar, to be a bride, so has destiny said that here shall come a wife for this man! Indra, with that hook of gold, of power, bring here a wife for him that desires a wife.