Page:The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana.djvu/20

xviii being as respectful and religious as she is clever and courteous, she is ever anxious to worship the gods, and to enjoy the conversation of Brahmans. Such, then, is the Padmini or Lotus-woman.

Detailed descriptions then follow of the Chitrini or Art-woman; the Shankhini or Conch-woman, and the Hastini or Elephant-woman, ''their days of enjoyment, their various seats of passion, the manner in which they should be manipulated and treated in sexual intercourse, along with the characteristics of the men and women of the various countries in Hindostan. The details are so numerous, and the subjects so seriously dealt with, and at such length, that neither time nor space will permit of their being given here.''

''One work in the English language is somewhat similar to these works of the Hindoos. It is called "Kalogynomia; or the Laws of Female Beauty," being the elementary principles of that science, by T. Bell, M.D., with twenty-four plates, and printed in London in 1821. It treats of Beauty, of Love, of Sexual Intercourse, of the Laws regulating that Intercourse, of Monogamy and Polygamy, of Prostitution, of Infidelity, ending with a catalogue raisonne of the defects of female beauty.''

''Another work in English also enters into great details of private and domestic life. It is called "The Elements of Social Science or Physical, Sexual and Natural Religion, with a Solution of the Social Problem," by a Doctor of Medicine. London, Edward Truelove, 256, High Holborn. To persons interested in the above subjects this work wilt be found to contain such details as have been seldom before published, and which ought to be thoroughly understood by all philanthropists and benefactors of society.''

''After a perusal of the Hindoo work, and of the English books above mentioned, the reader will understand the subject, at all events from a materialistic, realistic, and practical point of view. If all science is founded more or less on a stratum of facts, there can be no harm in making known to mankind generally certain matters intimately connected with their private, domestic, and social life.''

''Alas! complete ignorance of them has unfortunately wrecked many a man and many a woman, while a little knowledge of a subject generally ignored by the masses would have enabled numbers of people to have understood many things which they believed to be quite incomprehensible, or which were not thought worthy of their consideration.''