The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding RemarksVatsyayana
Philosophy
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Parts With Preface, Introduction and Concluding Remarks
Vatsyayana
Love; Sex
When the wife wants to approach her husband in private her dress should
consist of many ornaments, various kinds of flowers, and a cloth
decorated with different colours, and some sweet-smelling ointments or
unguents. But her every-day dress should be composed of a thin,
close-textured cloth, a few ornaments and flowers, and a little scent,
not too much. She should also observe the fasts and vows of her husband,
and when he tries to prevent her doing this, she should persuade him to
let her do it.
At appropriate times of the year, and when they happen to be cheap, she
should buy earth, bamboos, firewood, skins, and iron pots, as also salt
and oil. Fragrant substances, vessels made of the fruit of the plant
wrightea antidysenterica, or oval leaved wrightea, medicines, and other
things which are always wanted, should be obtained when required and
kept in a secret place of the house. The seeds of the radish, the
potato, the common beet, the Indian wormwood, the mangoe, the cucumber,
the egg plant, the kushmanda, the pumpkin gourd, the surana, the
bignonia indica, the sandal wood, the premna spinosa, the garlic plant,
the onion, and other vegetables, should be bought and sown at the proper
seasons.
The wife, moreover, should not tell to strangers the amount of her
wealth, nor the secrets which her husband has confided to her. She
should surpass all the women of her own rank in life in her cleverness,
her appearance, her knowledge of cookery, her pride, and her manner of
serving her husband. The expenditure of the year should be regulated by
the profits. The milk that remains after the meals should be turned into
ghee or clarified butter. Oil and sugar should be prepared at home;
spinning and weaving should also be done there; and a store of ropes and
cords, and barks of trees for twisting into ropes should be kept. She
should also attend to the pounding and cleaning of rice, using its small
grain and chaff in some way or other. She should pay the salaries of the
servants, look after the tilling of the fields, and keeping of the
flocks and herds, superintend the making of vehicles, and take care of
the rams, cocks, quails, parrots, starlings, cuckoos, peacocks, monkeys,
and deer; and finally adjust the income and expenditure of the day. The
worn-out clothes should be given to those servants who have done good
work, in order to show them that their services have been appreciated,
or they may be applied to some other use. The vessels in which wine is
prepared, as well as those in which it is kept, should be carefully
looked after, and put away at the proper time. All sales and purchases
should also be well attended to. The friends of her husband she should
welcome by presenting them with flowers, ointment, incense, betel
leaves, and betel nut. Her father-in-law and mother-in law she should
treat as they deserve, always remaining dependant on their will, never
contradicting them, speaking to them in few and not harsh words, not
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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