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 bayadères
straying to Paris and making use of them would be a
curiosity so extraordinary that she would certainly enjoy a
succès 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. One of the most
ludicrous of them is the drops of perspiration on the cheeks or other
parts of the body, which are regarded as an infallible and inevitable
sign of love. Urvasi's royal lover is afraid to take her birch-bark
message in his hand lest his perspiration wipe away the letters. In
Bhavabhuti's drama, _Malati and Madhava_, the heroine's feet perspire
so profusely from excess of longing, that the lacquer of her couch is
melted; and one of the stage directions in the same drama is:
"Perspiration appears on Madayantika, with other things indicating
love."
Another of these grotesque symptoms is the notion that the touch or
mere thought of the beloved makes the small hairs all over the body
stand erect. No love-scene seems to be complete without this detail.
The drama just referred to, in different scenes, makes the hairs on
the cheeks, on the arms, all over the body, rise "splendidly," the
author says in one line.[280] A Hindoo lover always has twitching of
the right or left arm or eye to indicate what kind of luck he is going
to have; and she is equally favored. Usually the love is mutual and at
first sight--nay, preferably _before_ first sight. The mere hearsay
that a certain man or maiden is very beautiful suffices, as we saw in
the story of Nala and Damayanti, to banish sleep and appetite, and to
make the lover pale and wan and most wretched. Sakuntala's royal lover
wastes away so rapidly that in a few days his bracelet falls from his
attenuated arm, and Sakuntala herself becomes so weak that she cannot
rise, and is supposed to have sunstroke! Malati dwindles until her
form resembles the moon in its last quarter; her face is as pale as
the moon at morning dawn. Always both the lovers, though he be a
king--as he generally is--and she a goddess, are diffident at first,
fearing failure, even after the most unmistakable signs of fondness,
in the betrayal of which the girls are anything but coy. All these
symptoms the poets prescribe as regularly as a physician makes out a
prescription for an apothecary.
A peculiar stare--which must be sidelong, not direct at the
beloved--is another conventional characteristic of Hindoo amorous
fiction. The gait becomes languid, the breathing difficult, the heart
stops beating or is paralyzed with joy; the limbs or the whole body
wither like flower-stalks after a frost; the mind is lamed, the memory
weakened; cold shivers run down the limbs and fever shakes the body;
the arms hang limp at the side, the breast heaves, words stick in the
throat; pastimes no longer entertain; the perfumed Malayan wind crazes
the mind; the eyelids are motionless, sighs give vent to anguish,
which may end in a swoon, and if things take an unfavorable turn the
thought of suicide is not distant. Attempts to cure this ardent love
are futile; Madhava tries snow, and moonlight, and camphor, and lotos
roots, and pearls, and sandal oil rubbed on his skin, but all in vain.