Kamasutra
Page 32
32 He is called a vita (‘pander’) because he ‘makes a noise’ (vitati), that is to say, he tells stories, between one person and another.
33 He has no wealth or has used up his wealth, has nothing but his body or has a wife, is a local or a visitor, and cannot live as he used to do.
35 A beggar woman (bhikshuki) is the wife of a male beggar (bhikshuka). All of these types of women are sophisticated in the arts, for they, too, are always procuring things for battles and truces, and so they are called Procuresses.
1 These are legitimate sons.
2 Sex with women of classes lower than his own caste is not forbidden, nor is it encouraged with such women even if they have not been expelled, that is, excluded from sharing dishes; for there are some women who, when they eat from a dish, pollute it so that it cannot be purified simply by being cleaned. And so it is said:
Traditionally, only a servant woman can be the wife of a
servant;
she and one of his own class can be the wife of a commoner;
these two and one of his own class for a king;
and these three and one of his own class for a Brahmin.
A second-hand woman is one who had another man before, lost her virginity, then became a widow, and, because the flesh is weak, took another man, again.
4 ‘Some other reason’ would be a reason other than a son or pleasure. But otherwise, without such a reason, he should not desire married women; this is what V implies, following the opinion of the followers of Babh-ravya. V has already said that Gonikaputra wrote the book about other men’s wives. There Gonikaputra gives the example cited in this passage.
6 He thinks: ‘Just as she would shatter her virtue if she made love with me, so she has already done with others, with many lovers.’
8 He thinks: ‘Since her affection will grow as a result of making love, she will make him turn away from the enemy who wants to harm me, and he will have special feelings for me. Otherwise, my enemy will get support from that great and powerful man and kill me before I have experienced all four of the aims of human life.’
9 He thinks: ‘That powerful man is her husband.’
10 He thinks: ‘For a man would give up his life’s breaths for a friend, or even enter hell. And I must ward off my enemies to save my own body.’
11 He thinks: ‘Her husband is my enemy; I will kill him silently, with a stick. Otherwise, I will find that he will kill my family, or take them from me by violence and enjoy them himself, by force. And since he has raised a weapon to kill me, killing him does not violate religion.’*
12 He thinks: ‘There is no guard, and she will give me the money out of affection. Since I am unable to support my family, I will use her enormous wealth to do deeds for the sake of religion, and so forth.
For Manu says a man should support
An old mother, a father, a good wife, and a little son,
even by doing a hundred things
that should not be done.’*
13 He thinks: ‘She desires me, when we are face to face. But [behind my back] she will say, “He lusts after the kingship”, and so people will think, “He is working schemes against the king.”’
14 He thinks: ‘People will say, “He is an adulterer”, and that will be the ruin of me.’
15 He thinks: ‘He does what she tells him to do. And when my enemies have gained power through him, they will kill me.’
16 He thinks: ‘She will get my enemies to kill me.’ Or, ‘He corrupts the women I have married, by seducing them. And it is said, “An enemy’s cruelty should be paid back in kind.”’
17 He thinks: ‘The king has hired me to spy inside the house; since there is no other means, I will become intimate with his wife, who does not trust him, and get him to come outside.’
19 He thinks: ‘She will bring me a girl that I cannot attain because I have no money, a girl who is both beautiful and rich and therefore a source of the three aims of human life. Or, when I am making love to this one, she will think, “He will get us both together”, and I will seduce, at the same time, some woman or other and the woman who is the real thing.’
20 He thinks: ‘My enemy, who would steal my life’s breaths, sits, lives, drinks, and eats with her husband. (Above [1.5.8], it was just a matter of being intimate in a general way.) Through her, when I have become intimate with her, I will get him to drink a poison that will steal his life’s breaths in a short time.’
25 A young woman of good family, married, and now in the prime of youth, can no longer be treated like a virgin. For a man uses a virgin subtly and with techniques applied one at a time, while he uses a girl who has reached the prime of youth blatantly and with everything at once.
26 There is no difference between her and the other four: virgins, secondhand women, courtesans, and the wives of other men. The widow [1.5.22] and the wandering woman ascetic [1.5.23] can be regarded like the wives of other men, because there are other reasons for taking them; the servant girl and the daughter of the courtesan de luxe [1.5.24] are like courtesans, because they are taken for pleasure; the young woman of good family [1.5.25] is like a virgin, taken for the sake of a son and family.
27 A member of the third nature is a non-male, who is different from both men and women because she is neither a man nor a woman. Or else one could regard her as a kind of courtesan, because the reason for sex with her is pleasure, obtained through oral sex.
28 Because there are no distinctions among male lovers as there are for female lovers, the one kind of lover is involved with virgins, secondhand women, and courtesans, and everyone knows him well. But when that same lover seeks an excessive pleasure with the wives of other men, in order to get something special, he becomes the second kind of lover, concealed. The best kind has all the good qualities, the middling kind has half, and the worst kind has just a quarter; a man who lacks all of the good qualities is no lover at all. ‘Both’ refers to both male and female lovers.*
29 The ‘but’ means that these women are not eligible even for the reasons discussed above. A leper is marked by a disgusting disease. A lunatic can do anything but finds no pleasure in it. A woman fallen from her own caste because of some major crime makes any man who associates with her fallen, too. A woman who tells secrets embarrasses her lover. A woman who expresses, in public, her desire for her lover shames him and causes trouble for him. A woman whose prime of youth is almost entirely gone destroys the lifespan and vigour of the man who serves her. A woman who is bad-smelling in her hidden places and in her mouth turns a man away from sex. A woman friend is a contemporary of his wife. A wandering woman ascetic, who has taken a vow under some order or other, is forbidden because having her would obstruct both religion and power. And so it is said:
A man who sheds his seed in the womb that was his own,
or in maidens, low-caste women,
or the wives of his son or friend,
is equal to a man who defiles his teacher’s marriage-bed.*
30 If, besides her own husband, she has five men as husbands, she is a loose woman and eligible for everyone who has a good reason. Draupadi,* however, who had Yudhishthira and the others as her own husbands, was not eligible for other men. How could one woman have several husbands? Ask the authors of the Epic!
32 A foster-brother is a child who drank milk at the wet-nurse’s breast along with the man. He is like the friend who played in the sand with him but is mentioned separately because of the intensity of his affection.
1 The sexual organ is called the ‘sign’ (lingam), because it is the sign of femaleness and so forth. From texts and from experience it is known that the male organ is convex and the female organ concave. If the man’s penis is small, like a hare’s, he is called a ‘hare’; if medium, a ‘bull’; if large, a ‘stallion’. The word ‘however’ indicates that women are distinct; they have a different nomenclature because they have a different sexual organ. Knowing this, scholars called them ‘doe’ and so forth instead of female hare’ and
so forth. And they spoke of the distinguishing marks in this way:
The size of the penis is divided
into the three categories of ‘hare’ and so forth,
according to the length, in graduated order:
six, nine, and twelve [fingers].*
Its circumference should measure
equal to its length.
But some say, ‘There is no fixed rule
about the circumference.’
Women are divided in the same way
in common parlance:
‘does’ and so forth, just like ‘hares’ and so forth,
with regard to both length and circumference.
2 The three equal couplings, characterized by the equal size of the opening and the inserted organ, are between a ‘hare’ and ‘doe’, ‘bull’ and ‘mare’, and ‘stallion’ and ‘elephant cow’.
3 These are the six unequal couplings: The harder way (when the penis, because of its greater size, can enter the opening only with difficulty) is with the two women immediately beneath the man (1. ‘bull’ with ‘doe’; 2. ‘stallion’ with ‘mare’), and with the woman farthest beneath him (3. ‘stallion’ with ‘doe’). The easier way (when the penis, because of its smaller size, works inside the opening, but cannot fill it fully) is with the two women immediately above him (4. ‘hare’ with ‘mare’; 5 ‘bull’ with ‘elephant cow’) and with the woman farthest above him (6. ‘hare’ with ‘elephant cow’).
4 In the largest coupling, a woman’s itch is most satisfactorily relieved; she accommodates the large penis inside her by assuming a position such as the ‘wide open’ [2.6.7 ff.], stretching her vagina. But in the smallest coupling, even when she contracts her vagina by assuming a position such as the ‘cup’ [2.6.13 ff.], there is no relief for her. V will speak later about ways of changing the size of the sexual organ, in which the woman stretches hers by the use of her arms and shoulders [2.6.7], and the man uses devices to increase his [7.1–2]. But it is said:
But if a lover has a small penis,
no matter how long the man works,
women, they say, do not grow very fond of him,
because he does not relieve their itch.
And the saying is right.
5 He might be wounded when she bites or scratches or slaps him.
6 The two opposite circumstances are, first, when he has average sexual energy (his enthusiasm is average, his virility average, and he can bear to be somewhat wounded) and, secondly, when he has fierce sexual energy (his enthusiasm is very great and he can bear, to the extreme, serious wounds).
10 A man experiences sensual pleasure when he ejaculates, but a woman does not have that kind of sensual pleasure, because she does not have semen. Why, then, does she make love with the man? To answer this, he says the next passage.
11 There is a verse about this:
Tiny worms, born of menstrual blood,
some with mild powers, some average, some terrible,
cause an itch in the abodes of erotic love,
according to their strength.
The itch is scratched continually when the penis goes on moving without interruption.*
12 Scratching the itch is just like scratching an ear with a twig. The different feeling is a different sensual pleasure, caused by the scratching of the itch combined with kissing and so forth. She thinks, ‘What sensual pleasure I feel!’ But the scratching of the itch is not a true perception of sensual pleasure, and the difference is that this experience bears no fruit, because she has no seed. And so the two sexes are not alike in the matter of their form or their timing, and therefore there are not nine couplings with respect to endurance and climax.
13 Since the workings of someone’s mind are not accessible to someone else’s sense perceptions and cannot be recognized by an eyewitness, what man can know a woman’s different feeling? The word ‘and’ indicates, ‘a woman’s ecstasy, too’. When a woman acts the part of a man and produces her own ecstasy by her own movements, how can he know what her ecstasy is in its very essence, since he cannot perceive this sensually? And no one can ask, ‘Does your sensual pleasure come from an ejaculation, like ours, or from something else?’ Since the woman cannot sensually perceive the sensual pleasure of ejaculation, and the man cannot sensually perceive a different form of sensual pleasure, it is not possible for one to ask the other about this. Even if someone could speak of it, the other would have no experience through which to understand the perception. To answer this doubt, Auddalaki describes, in the next passage, a means by which one person can know another’s sensual pleasure.
14 When a man has ejaculated he has accomplished what he set out to do and stops moving, even if she is still working quite hard at it. And if a woman experienced the sensual pleasure of ejaculation like a man, she would then loosen his penis from her and stop. But this does not happen. When the man stops, she wants another man. For sometimes when a woman has made love with one man she may make love with other men who happen to be there. And so it is said:
A fire is never sated by logs,
nor the ocean by the rivers that flow into it;
death cannot be sated by all the creatures in the world,
nor a fair-eyed woman by men.
Therefore, since a woman does not stop of her own accord, she does not reach a sensual pleasure of ejaculation like a man’s sensual pleasure just before ejaculation.
15 The man whose sexual energy lasts for a long time thrusts inside the woman for a long time before he reaches the sensual pleasure of ejaculation and stops. With him, women become affectionate, just as they become wet.* So the love of the women shows that they have achieved their sensual pleasure, and their hatred shows that they are unhappy because they have not achieved their sensual pleasure. For even men whose sexual energy lasts for a long time achieve sensual pleasure and experience love if the woman plays the man’s part and works for a long time before she stops. But if she stops suddenly, the men lose their passion for her, since they are unhappy because they have not achieved their sexual pleasure. The fact that women experience love for long-lasting men shows that, like men, they know the sensual pleasure of ejaculation.
16 Because of this ambiguity—’Has she just had her itch scratched or achieved her climax?’—the resentment that women have for quick men is no sign that women do or do not achieve the sensual pleasure of ejaculation.
17 He expresses this opinion by quoting a verse from the ‘Song of Auddalaki’.
18 Both he and she experience the sensual pleasure of ejaculation, but hers takes place from the very beginning, from the moment when he penetrates her with his penis, and goes on continually, without any interruption. For as the man moves inside her, she gradually gets wet; water flows from her as it flows from a broken pot. This is evident from eyewitnesses. And so she ejaculates from the very start, like a man. But he has his climax only at the end, when he emits his semen. And so, since the timing of the two of them is different, there are not nine couplings with regard to endurance, but there are nine according to climax, because of the similarity in the sensual pleasure of ejaculation.
For the physician Charaka says that ‘satisfaction and keeping the semen in her womb are among the signs that a woman has just become pregnant’, and by satisfaction he means climax. That is, conception is not possible without the ejaculation of semen. Now, some people say, ‘She emits a menstrual discharge, not semen. For it is said:
When a man and women mingle their bodies together mutually
and their hearts are heated by the flame of desire,
the embryo is churned out of the mixture of semen and menstrual blood,
like fire by the twirling of the two fire sticks.’
But if the woman had no semen, how could she conceive? For a woman can be impregnated by making love with another woman just as she can by making love with a man. As Sushruta says:
‘When a woman and a woman
make love together,
and emit semen into
one another,
a child is born without bones.’*
For blood is formed out of the basic liquid of the body and becomes, under certain circumstances, menstrual blood, while semen is formed out of the marrow of the bones.
19 Women love producing the climax even if it takes a long time, because the climax is the most important thing. Women hate a quick man because he cannot take a long time to produce the climax. Indeed, women want a climax that takes a long time to produce, because their desire is eight times that of a man. Given these conditions, it is perfectly right to say that ‘a fair-eyed woman cannot be sated by men’, but this is true because men’s desire is just one-eighth of women’s, not because women do not experience the sensual pleasure of ejaculation.
20 These entirely different conditions of a woman would not be evident if she achieved this feeling constantly.
21 A top is a wooden toy that little boys spin with a long string. In the same way, although a woman’s sensual pleasure in ejaculation, caused by the man’s thrusts, remains the same at the beginning, middle, and end of love-making, at the beginning she experiences only a dull sexual energy and gentle sexual pleasure but gradually she achieves full sexual energy and the greatest sexual pleasure.
But if her climax continues without interruption, why is there a wish to stop? Because the fluids are used up. When the erotic climax begins, the fluid, that is, the semen, falls from its own place and moves through its own channel. Because it flows constantly from the very start, eventually it is used up, and then all passion is stilled and there is a desire to stop.
22 He makes this point by quoting a verse from the ‘Song of Babhravya’.
24 Two people of different species, such as a man and a mare,* would have different kinds of sensual pleasure; and so he specifies the same species, the human species. But even two people of the same species might have different goals, such as bathing or eating, and so he specifies a single goal, namely sex.