All this is doubtless true. The
Hindoos appear to have been the only ancient people that took delight
in forests, rivers, and mountains as we do; in reading their
descriptions of Nature we are sometimes affected by a mysterious
feeling of awe, like a reminiscence of the time when our ancestors
lived in India. Their amorous hyperbole, too, despite its frequent
grotesqueness, affects us perhaps more sympathetically than that of
the Greeks. And yet the essentials of what we call romantic love are
so entirely absent from ancient Hindoo literature that such amorous
symptoms as are noted therein can all be readily brought under the
three heads of artificiality, sensuality, and selfishness.
ARTIFICIAL SYMPTOMS
Commenting on the directions for caressing given in the _Kama Soutra_,
Lamairesse remarks (56):
"All these practices and caresses are conventional rather
than natural, like everything the Hindoos do. A bayaderes
straying to Paris and making use of them would be a
curiosity so extraordinary that she would certainly enjoy a
succes de vogue pour rire."
Nail-marks on various parts of the body, blows, bites, meaningless
exclamations are prescribed or described in the diverse love-scenes.
In Hindoo dramas several of the artificial symptoms--pure figments of
the poetic fancy--are incessantly referred to.
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