Kamasutra
Page 20
27 Now for the mixed doubts. 28The doubt is: ‘Will gain or loss result from gratifying a newcomer whose character is unknown or a newly arrived man who is powerful because he has the protection of a favourite?’ 29The doubt is: ‘Will I serve religion or violate it if I go, on the sympathetic advice of a friend, to a Brahmin who knows the Veda, or to a man who is under a vow of chastity or consecrated for a sacrifice, or a man who has taken a vow or who wears the sign of a religious order, if he has seen me and conceived a passion for me and wants to die?’ 30The doubt is: ‘Will pleasure or hatred result if I go to a man without knowing if he has or does not have good qualities, because people have not yet tested him?’ 31Each can be combined with one of the others. This ends the discussion of the mixed doubts.
32 These are the two-sided results, according to Auddalaki: ‘A two-sided gain occurs when she goes to another man and gain comes, also, from the man who is attached to her, out of rivalry. 33A two-sided loss occurs when she spends her own money on a fruitless liaison with another man, and the man who is attached to her, unable to put up with that, takes back the money he had given her. 34A two-sided doubt about gain occurs when she has gone to another man and worries, “Will there be gain in this or not?” and “Will the man who is attached to me also give something, out of rivalry, or not?” 35A two-sided doubt about loss occurs when she has gone to a man at her own expense: “Will my former lover, in his frustration and anger, do me harm or not?” and, “Will the man who is attached to me, unable to put up with it, take back the money he had given me or not?”’
36 But the followers of Babhravya say: 37‘A two-sided gain occurs when gain comes both from the man she goes to and from the man who is attached to her to whom she does not go. 38A two-sided loss occurs when she spends her money fruitlessly on going to another man and cannot recoup her loss of money from the man she does not go to. 39A two-sided doubt about gain occurs when she has gone to another man, and she wonders: “Will he give me money without my incurring expenses or not?” and “Will the man who is attached to me and to whom I have not gone give me money or not?” 40A two-sided doubt about loss occurs when she has gone to another man at her own expense, and she wonders: “Will my former lover, frustrated, demonstrate his powers or not?” and, “Will the one I do not go to become angry and cause me a loss or not?”’
41 Six mixed results are produced by combining these: gain on one side and loss on the other; gain on one side and doubt about gain on the other; gain on one side and doubt about loss on the other. 42Considering among these, together with her helpers, she acts in such a way as to maximize gain, even when there is doubt about gain, or to cut her losses significantly. 43She treats religious merit and pleasure in this same way: they can be combined, one with another, and paired with their opposites. Those are the two-sided results.
44 When a group of voluptuaries keep one woman for all of them, that is a group liaison. 45When she gets together with first one of them and then another, she gets money from them one by one, through their rivalry. 46At occasions such as the spring festival, she announces, through her mother: ‘My daughter “will go tonight to the man who does this or that for me.”’ 47And from going to them in a way that causes rivalry, she targets what she needs: 48gain from one and gain from all of them, loss from one and loss from all, gain from half and gain from all, loss from half and loss from all. Those are the group results.
49 Doubt about gain and doubt about loss can be calculated as above. And religious merit and pleasure can be combined with them in the same way. Those are the gains and losses, consequences, and doubts.
Types of Courtesans
50 The servant woman who carries water, the servant girl, the promiscuous woman, the loose woman, the dancer, the artist, the openly ruined woman, the woman who lives on her beauty, and the courtesan de luxe: those are the types of courtesans. 51And all of them must choose appropriate lovers and helpers and consider the ways to please them, ways to get money from them, to get rid of them and to get back together with them, the consequences of various profits, the consequences from and doubts about gain and loss. That is all about courtesans.
52 And there are two verses about this:
Since men want sexual pleasure
and women, too, want sexual pleasure,
therefore union with women
is the main subject of this text.
53 There are women who care most of all for passion,
and there are also women who care most of all for money;
passion was described earlier,
and the practices of courtesans in this book about courtesans.
BOOK SEVEN · EROTIC ESOTERICA
CHAPTER ONE
[59] Making Luck in Love
1 The Kamasutra has now been told in full. 2But a person who has not obtained the object of desire through the methods it describes may have recourse to these secret recipes. 3Beauty, good qualities, the right age, and generosity—these make you lucky in love. 4But an ointment made of the leaves of the East Indian rose bay, wild ginger, and the Indian plum can also make you lucky in love. 5So can an ointment made of these substances, finely ground up and mixed with myrobalan oil, all prepared in a human skull. 6And so can eye make-up made with oil prepared from hogweed, the mauve savannah-flower, the yellow silk-cotton flower, red amaranth, and blue lotus leaves, 7or garlands coated with the same materials. 8You become lucky in love if you lick a powder made of the dried filaments of white lotuses, blue lotuses, and rose chestnuts, mixed with honey and clarified butter, 9or if you coat yourself with an ointment made of these substances together with the leaves of the East Indian rose bay, Indian plum, and cinnamon bay-tree. 10Holding a gold-plated peacock’s eye or hyena’s eye in your right hand makes you lucky in love. 11You may also use, in the very same way, an amulet made from a jujube-berry and one made from a conch-shell, employing the methods of the Atharva Veda.
12 When a master sees that a servant girl has reached the ripeness of her youth with a knowledge of magic and a skill in applying it, he keeps her away from any other man for just one year. When her lovers have become ardent out of sheer perversity, since she has been kept from them, he gives the girl to the one who, out of rivalry with the others, gives a lot of money. That is a way to increase luck in love. 13When a courtesan de luxe sees that her own daughter has reached the ripeness of her youth, she protects her by inviting lovers whose intelligence, character, and beauty are similar to the girl’s, and she makes this agreement: ‘Whoever gives such and such can take her hand in marriage.’ 14And, seemingly without her mother’s knowledge, the daughter inspires love, to excess, in the rich sons of the men-about-town. 15She manages to see them here or there in the course of enjoying the arts, or in music-halls, or at the home of a beggar woman. 16And when they give the money that has been stipulated, the mother offers the daughter’s hand in marriage. 17But if the mother does not get that amount of money, she may even supplement it with a part of her own money and say to her daughter, ‘He gave this.’ 18Or she may get him to marry the girl and then take her virginity. 19Or, if she has secretly united the girl with these men, while she herself pretends to know nothing about it, she then reports it to judges whom she knows.
20 But if the daughter has already lost her virginity with a girlfriend or a servant girl, and if she thoroughly understands the Kamasutra and is well grounded in the techniques that can only be done with practice, and she is secure in her age and in her ability to make her own luck in love, then the courtesans de luxe let her go. Those are the Oriental practices.* 21The marriage is without infidelity for the duration of a year. From then on, she is free to indulge her desires. 22Even after that year, if the man who married her invites her, she must go to him for that night even if she loses money by doing so. Those are the ways in which a courtesan marries and increases her luck in love. 23All of this also applies to the daughters of women who make their living on the stage. 24But those women can give their daughter to a man who does them special fav
ours on a musical instrument. That is how to make luck in love.
[60] Putting Someone in your Power
25 If you coat your penis with an ointment made with powdered white thorn-apple, black pepper, and long pepper, mixed with honey, you put your sexual partner in your power. 26If you make a powder by pulverizing leaves scattered by the wind, garlands left over from corpses, and peacocks’ bones, it puts someone in your power.* 27If you pulverize a female ‘circle-maker’ buzzard that died a natural death, and mix the powder with honey and gooseberry, it puts someone in your power.* 28If you cut the knotty roots of the milkwort and milk-hedge plants into pieces, coat them with a powder of red arsenic and sulphur, dry and pulverize the mixture seven times, mix it with honey, and spread it on your penis, you put your sexual partner in your power. 29If you burn the same powder at night, you can make the moon, viewed through the smoke, appear golden. 30If you mix the same powder with monkey shit and scatter the mixture over a virgin, she will not be given to another man.
31 They say that if you hollow out the trunk of a rosewood tree and keep in it, for six months, a mixture of orris roots and mango-oil, and then take it out and keep it for another six months, the ointment, which the gods are fond of, puts someone in your power. 32They say that if you take thin sticks from the heart of a cashew tree and place them for six months in a tree hollowed out in the same way, they develop the perfume of acacia flowers. The ointment made from them, which the demigods* are fond of, puts someone in your power. 33They say that if you mix panic-seed* and East Indian rose bay, coat them with mango-oil, and keep them in a hollowed-out rose chestnut tree for six months, the ointment, which the semi-serpents are fond of, puts someone in your power. 34They say that if you coat a camel’s bone with the juice of a marigold* and burn it, and keep the resulting ointment in a hollow shank-bone and mix it with antimony, using a stick made of camel-bone, the resulting pure collyrium works on the eyes and puts someone in your power. 35You can also make salves for the eyes in this way using the bones of hawks, vultures, and peacocks.
[61] Stimulants for Virility
36 If you drink milk infused with kidney beans, pepper, and sugarcane, and mixed with sugar, you become as virile as a bull. 37If you drink milk prepared with the testicles of a ram or billy goat, and mixed with sugar, it gives you the virility of a bull. 38So does drinking milk prepared with cock’s-head root, dates, and horse-eye bean, 39or milk prepared with almond seeds, sugar-cane root, and cock’s-head root. 40Scholars say: ‘If you make a cake by grinding up some water chestnuts, kysoor root, and licorice, together with dates and jujubes, adding clarified butter and milk sweetened with sugar, and cooking it over a slow fire, and you eat it until you are satisfied, you can make love with endless women.’ 41Scholars say: ‘If you wash a bean and a lotus with milk, soften them with warm clarified butter, take them out, make them into a rice-pudding with milk from a cow who has a grown calf, and eat it with honey and butter, you can make love with endless women.’ 42Scholars say: ‘If you make a cake out of cock’s-head root, horse-eye bean, sugar, honey, butter, and wheat, and eat it until you are satisfied, you can make love with endless women.’ 43If you make a rice-pudding with rice that has been prepared with the juice from a sparrow’s egg, pour honey and butter on it, and eat it until you are satisfied, you can—and so forth as above.* 44If you skin sesame seeds and prepare them with the juice from a sparrow’s egg, add the fruits of water chestnuts, kysoor root, and horse-eye beans, together with wheat-meal and bean-meal, and milk with sugar, butter, and cooked barley, then bake a cake and devour it until you are satisfied, you can—and so forth, as above. 45Scholars say: ‘Butter, honey, sugar, licorice, in quantities of eight parts of each to one part of wine-palm hemp and one hundred and twenty-eight parts milk: this six-part nectar of immortality is ritually pure, bestows virility and long life, and keeps the juices flowing.’* 46Scholars say: ‘A dish made of asparagus, “dog’s-fang” prickly-fruit, and molasses, with a decoction of long-pepper and honey, cooked in cow’s milk with goat’s butter, and eaten every day at the beginning of the spring,* is a food that is ritually pure, bestows virility and long life, and keeps the juices flowing.’ 47Scholars say: ‘A dish made of asparagus, “dog’s-fang” prickly-fruit, and the crushed fruits of the flax plant, cooked with four times as much water until it reaches the right consistency, and then eaten early every day at the beginning of spring, is a food that is ritually pure, bestows virility and long life, and keeps the juices flowing.’ 48Scholars say: ‘Rise early every day and eat four ounces* of a dish made of barley-meal cooked with an exactly equal quantity of powdered “dog’s-fang” prickly-fruit, a dish that is ritually pure, bestows virility and long life, and keeps the juices flowing.’
49 You can learn the techniques that compel love
from the Veda of Long-Life and from the Veda,*
from people who know the magic recipes and spells,
and from other qualified people.
50 You should not use techniques
that are doubtful, dangerous for the body,
obtained by killing living creatures,
or made of impure substances.
51 A man who has amassed inner powers
obeys rules that educated people follow
and that Brahmins and well-wishing friends
recommend.
CHAPTER TWO
[62] Rekindling Exhausted Passion
1 If you are unable to pleasure a woman of fierce sexual energy, have recourse to devices. 2As you begin to make love, caress her with your hand between her legs and enter her only when she has become wet. That is a way of kindling passion.* 3Oral sex kindles the passion of a man who is of dull sexual energy, past his prime, too fat, or exhausted from love-making. 4Or use sex tools,* 5made of gold, silver, copper, iron, ivory, or buffalo horn, 6or ones made of tin or lead, which are soft, cool the semen, and produce a violent* effect during the sexual act. Those are the techniques of the followers of Babhravya. 7Vatsyayana says: The ones made of wood more closely resemble the original.
8 The inside should be the size of the penis, and it should be thick, with raised bumps on the outside to make it rough. 9Two of these make a ‘wraparound’,* 10and three or more, up to the full length of the penis, make a ‘little topknot’. 11When you twine around one single string of beads as much as the size allows, it is a ‘single topknot’. 12A device fastened around the hips, with a mouth and hole at both ends and huge, rough cups over the testicles, used with force appropriate to the size, is a ‘coat of mail’ or a ‘little net’. 13In the absence of these, attach to your hips, with a string, a cucumber, lotus stalk, or bamboo section, well greased with sesa-mum oil and decoctions; or use a smooth garland of wood, knotted and strung with many gooseberry kernels. Those are the unpierced techniques.
14 But they say that a man whose penis has not been pierced does not experience real sex. 15And so the people of the South pierce a boy’s penis just like his ears. 16A young man has it cut with a knife and then stands in water as long as the blood flows. 17To keep the opening clear, he has sexual intercourse that very night, continuously.* 18Then, after an interval of one day, he cleans the opening with astringent decoctions. 19He enlarges it by putting larger and larger spears of reeds and ivory-tree wood in it, 20and he cleans it with a piece of sugar-cane coated with honey. 21After that, he enlarges it by inserting a tube of lead with a protruding knot on the end, 22and he lubricates it with the oil of the marking-nut. Those are the techniques of piercing. 23He inserts into the enlarged opening sex tools made in various shapes: 24the ‘round’, the ‘round on one side’, the ‘little mortar’, the ‘little blossom’, the ‘thorny’, the ‘heron’s bone’, the ‘little elephant’s tusk’, the ‘eight circles’, the ‘spinning top’, the ‘water chestnut’, or others according to the method and the act. They must be able to bear a lot of use, and may be soft or rough* according to individual preferences. That is how to rekindle exhausted passion, the sixty-second section.
[63] Methods of Increasing the Size of the Male Organ
25 Rub your penis with the bristles of insects* born in trees, then massage it with oil for ten nights, then rub it again and massage it again. When it swells up as the result of this treatment, lie down on a cot with your face down and let your penis hang down from a hole in the cot. 26Then you may assuage the pain with cool astringents and, by stages, finish the treatment. 27This swelling, which lasts for a lifetime, is the one that voluptuaries call ‘prickled’.
28 You can make an enlargement that lasts for a month by rubbing your penis with, one at a time, the juices of ground cherry, sweet potato, water leeches, fruits of the nightshade, fresh buffalo butter, ‘elephant’s ear’ teak tree leaves, and heliotrope. 29You can make an enlargement that lasts for six months by rubbing it with those astringents when they have been cooked in oil, 30or by cooking in oil, over a slow fire, the seeds of pomegranates, cucumbers, and gritty cucumbers, and the juice of the fruits of the nightshade, and then rubbing or bathing your penis with this mixture. 31You learn these various techniques from qualified people. Those are the methods of increasing the size of the male organ.
[64] Unusual Techniques
32 Any woman whom you sprinkle with powdered thorns of milk-hedge, mixed with hogweed, monkey-shit, and the roots of the glory lily, cannot desire any other man. 33If a man makes love with a woman whose vagina has been rubbed with a mixture of powdered rue, kinka oil plants, marigolds, iron, and ants, together with a decoction of the juices of the fruits of rattan and Java plum, his passion for her vanishes.* 34If a man makes love with a woman who has bathed in buffalo buttermilk mixed with powdered dung-beetles, mint, and ants, his passion for her vanishes. 35An ointment, or a garland, made from the flowers of wild jasmine, hog-plum, and Java plum, makes someone unlucky in love. 36An ointment made of the white flowers of the ‘cuckoo’s-eye’ caper bush makes an ‘elephant-cow’ contract tightly for one night. 37An ointment made of powdered white lotus, blue lotus, ‘morningstar’ tree blossoms, rose dammar blossoms, and marjoram, makes a ‘doe’ open wide.*