I did enjoy so your exceedingly diverting letter regarding the state of penguin farming in Antarctica, I do hope this note finds you well. When cleaning out the closet yesterday I came upon some of my academic notes from my time in India and, being as you are a collector of rare volumes and a gentleman of taste and refinement, (though you remain somewhat reticent as to their precise nature of refinement and taste), and thought that they might pique your interest.
Sometime in the last decade I handed in my honours dissertation (entitled Every Which Way But One: A Study of Comparative Masculinities) to the sociology professor that ran the Sexuality and Sexual Health course at a minor British university, and set off for India, where I had been offered a job in a completely unrelated field. This proved to be start of some very uncomfortable adventures involving gangsters, Indian red light districts, a million dollars worth of diamonds and several bottles of cheap Asian moonshine, an account I regretfully leave for some other time. Suffice to say that I innocently took a job in a colonial part of Bangalore, where I failed to train call centre workers on the arts of the English dialect. Mea maxima culpa. I plead the innocence of extreme youth.
I was paid a ridiculously low sum of money which was still many times what the people I taught were earning, and, the normal avenues of dating being closed due to culture, I spent my weekends rummaging around in the old bookstores of Bangalore, whereupon I happened across a rare volume.
I had, of course, read these Vedic texts before that point. I could see it was translated by an English gentleman, one Sir Richard Burton, who was—as a gentleman of your most comprehensive education will doubtless be aware—most famous for his expertise in falconry and swordsmanship. Burton is well known for several scholarly contributions he made to the field of Historic European Martial Arts, including the Book of the Sword (1884). However, Burton was a man of wide and varied academic interests and was known to collect and translate Middle Eastern and Asian texts for the edification of gentlemen of taste and ladies of discernment. The most famous of these are the Thousand Nights and One Night, (1885) the Perfumed Garden of Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Nafzawi, (1886) and of course, the famous and doubtful Kama Sutra of Vatsayana (1888), which made the author some 16,000 guineas. I have no doubt that the unexpurgated edition of this work lies within your extensive library, possibly alongside the etchings you mentioned that you would show me in your last letter (regarding which, I may say, I am intrigued.) One aberration in Burton’s publication history always intrigued me. Upon which book was Sir Richard working in 1887?
Imagine my excitement when I realized that I had happened upon a pre-1888 edition of his Sanskrit translation. The date of publication was 1887. Could an earlier translation of Vatsyayana have existed, all these years, and no one knew of it? Several of the pages in this volume were still uncut, and the remainder were stuck together. Prising them gently apart, I knew that I had happened upon a rare gem. There were noted differences in the text from the 1888 volume that reached the cold shores of Britain and the library of the Empress of India herself.
I regret that the little volume I found on MG Road in Bangalore was lost. In between the multiple moves in tectonic shifts of my life, I fear such regrettable instances do happen. Fortunately, I have all my notes on the text, together with large extracts from that volume I copied out by hand in some miserable township. Somehow when one thinks of adventurers like Sir Richard, one never thinks of him battling to write his doubtful books under the oppressive heat and the flies. At any rate, I offer to you the alternative to Chapter X, with my own footnotes and scholarship on the alternative texts. I eagerly await your next letter.
I remain, Sir, your most humble and obedient servant with absolutely no trace of irony whatsoever,
Yours sincerely,
Miss R. Scott
Great Shagging, Suffolk.
CHAPTER X[1]
OF THE WAY HOW TO BEGIN AND HOW TO END THE CONGRESS. DIFFERENT KINDS OF CONGRESS AND LOVE QUARRELS.[2]
. . . Such is the the beginning of sexual union. At the end of Congress, the citizen laughs hard and does not allow his lover into the washroom, but handcuffs her ankle to the bed with strict instructions not to move until he has bathed. She came to his rooms bathed and dressed, but as the Citizen did not, and the Citizen should let his lover know this thought that he took her while drenched in perspiration and with stained garments amuses him greatly.
With threats of striking in the Four Ways in order to bring about the Eight Kinds Of Crying[3] the Citizen withdraws to the washingroom. The woman should by no means take this lying down, but instead, unpick the restraints with her hair ornamentation, and remove the collar her lover fastened around her neck, as described in previous chapters [4].
The woman should then shut the high-handed bastard into washingroom and rope the door shut with his own collar so that he cannot escape, hide his slippers, laugh hard, and run out into the night. When a woman proceeds in this manner it is called the Escape of the Saucy Little Wench.
When the woman runs out into the night, this is known as the Flight of the Smart Ass and when her lover has to climb out onto the roof of the roof like a blue-arsed baboon, it is called the Climb of the Blue-Arsed Baboon. When he curses his lover in a most furious manner while hanging off the end of the building, calling her an impetuous little brat and promises to make her suffer in the Five Ways and the Seven Ways[4] it is called The Curse of the Highhanded Bastard Whose Woman Has Outsmarted Him.
Upon availing himself of his clothing and finding the slippers she has replaced with her own, the Citizen should pursue his lover along the road in a chariot she is unused to seeing him drive, and therefore cannot ascertain from a distance that it is he and no other. When the Citizen pursues his lover in the chariot with the open back, it is called the Pursuit of the Scarlet Neck and if he pursues her in a closed conveyance it is called the Pursuit of the Citizen In A Fur Shrivani With No Undergarments[6]. Whichever mode of pursuit he chooses, the Citizen should waylay is lover on the road and offer her sweetmeats in a most condescending, inappropriate and offensive manner possible.
Some authorities indicate that this practice of offering sweetmeats in an offensive manner is favoured throughout these lands, but Vatsayana notes that it appears to be a practice favoured in Southern lands, and should be avoided elsewhere, being deemed unworthy of imitation.[7]
The woman should the show fear and due deference, whereupon the Citizen should forgive her, and concede that her caper was most efficacious in showing him who was really in charge.
Whereupon, she should consent to get into the chariot with him. When a woman consents to get into the Citizen’s chariot after the Flight of the Saucy Little Wench known as The Accession of the Saucy Little Wench Who Knows the Jig Is Up.
Whereupon the Citizen should ensure his lover is warm, give her strong liquor to drink straight from the bottle, and give her sweetmeats he should keep in the Chariot for such purposes, and drive his chariot to where-ever seems good to him.
He should turn her face towards the moon, the different planets, the morning star, the polar star, and the seven Rishis, or Great Bear. He should plant kisses on her face and hands, because really she is a very good girl who got in the chariot without him having to tell her twice.
And that is the end of sexual congress.
[1] On the end of sexual congress, the 1888 version of Burton’s translation runs:
Such is the beginning of sexual union. At the end of the congress, the lovers with modesty, and not looking at each other, should go separately to the washing-room. After this, sitting in their own places, they should eat some betel leaves, and the citizen should apply with his own hand to the body of the woman some pure sandalwood ointment, or ointment of some other kind. He should then embrace her with his left arm, and with agreeable words should cause her to drink from a cup held in his own hand, or he may give her water to drink. They can then eat sweetmeats, or anything else, according to their likings and may drink fresh juice, soup, gruel, extracts of meat, sherbet, the juice of mango fruits, the extract of the juice of the citron tree mixed with sugar, or anything that may be liked in different countries, and known to be sweet, soft, and pure. The lovers may also sit on the terrace of the palace or house, and enjoy the moonlight, and carry on an agreeable conversation. At this time, too, while the woman lies in his lap, with her face towards the moon, the citizen should show her the different planets, the morning star, the polar star, and the seven Rishis, or Great Bear.
This is the end of sexual union.
The reader will note the significant differences between this sanitized version, and the earlier text.
[3] Chapter VII of the 1887 text I uncovered in Bangalore differs little from Chapter VII of the 1888 text that ended up in the Empress of India’s Library. Those Victorians just weren’t right in the head.
[4] These ways have been expunged from the received 1888 text but wild horses shall not drag from me what they are. There are some things you just can’t unread. There’s not enough brain bleach in all the world. Just saying. Sodding aristocratic bastard Victorians. This footnote may need to be cleaned up for academic rigor.
[5] Supra. at Footnote 4.
[6] Vatsayana was a Vedic sage who was widely traveled. We do not know how far he travelled, but this would indicate he did, in fact, spend some time in Northern climes, where a man of common birth who had attained wealth, but without the breeding that should attend it, is referred to be “all fur coats and and no knickers.”
[7] We cannot know precisely what this phrase means, but I have a horrible suspicion the modern day vernacular may run something along the lines of ‘Hey lil girl. You want some candy? Get in the truck first.’ In which case, it is indeed unworthy of imitation.
Postcards From The Hedge. 