insatiables, Hell, Earth and the Parts feminine (_os vulvæ_); and
Rabbinical learning has embroidered these and other texts, producing a
truly hideous caricature. A Hadis attributed to Mohammed runs, “They
(women) lack wits and faith. When Eve was created Satan rejoiced
saying:—Thou art half of my host, the trustee of my secret and my shaft
wherewith I shoot and miss not!” Another tells us, “I stood at the gate
of Heaven, and lo! most of its inmates were poor, and I stood at the
gate of Hell, and lo! most of its inmates were women.”[340] “Take care
of the glass-phials!” cried the Prophet to a camel-guide singing with a
sweet voice. Yet the Meccan apostle made, as has been seen, his own
household produce two perfections. The blatant popular voice follows
with such “dictes” as, “Women are made of nectar and poison”; “Women
have long hair and short wits” and so forth. Nor are the Hindus behind
hand. Woman has fickleness implanted in her by Nature like the flashings
of lightning (Kathá s.s. i. 147); she is valueless as a straw to the
heroic mind (169); she is hard as adamant in sin and soft as flour in
fear (170) and, like the fly, she quits camphor to settle on compost
(ii. 17). “What dependence is there in the crowing of a hen?” (women’s
opinions) says the Hindi proverb; also “A virgin with grey hairs!”
(_i.e._ a monster) and, “Wherever wendeth a fairy face a devil wendeth
with her.” The same superficial view of holding woman to be lesser (and
very inferior) man is taken generally by the classics; and Euripides
distinguished himself by misogyny, although he drew the beautiful
character of Alcestis. Simonides, more merciful than Ecclesiastes, after
naming his swine-women, dog-women, cat-women, etc., ends the decade with
the admirable bee-woman thus making ten per cent. honest. In mediæval or
Germanic Europe the doctrine of the Virgin mother gave the sex a status
unknown to the ancients except in Egypt, where Isis was the help-mate
and completion of Osiris, in modern parlance “The Woman clothed with the
Sun.” The kindly and courtly Palmerin of England, in whose pages
“gentlemen may find their choice of sweet inventions and gentlewomen be
satisfied with courtly expectations,” suddenly blurts out, “But in truth
women are never satisfied by reason, being governed by accident or
appetite” (chapt. xlix).
The Nights, as might be expected from the emotional East, exaggerate
these views. Women are mostly “Sectaries of the god Wünsch”; beings of
impulse, blown about by every gust of passion; stable only in
instability; constant only in inconstancy. The false ascetic, the
perfidious and murderous crone and the old hag-procuress who pimps like
Umm Kulsum[341], for mere pleasure, in the luxury of sin, are drawn with
an experienced and loving hand. Yet not the less do we meet with
examples of the dutiful daughter, the model lover matronly in her
affection, the devoted wife, the perfect mother, the saintly devotee,
the learned preacher, Univira the chaste widow and the self-sacrificing
heroic woman. If we find (vol. iii. 216) the sex described as:—
An offal cast by kites where’er they list,
and the studied insults of vol. iii. 318, we also come upon an admirable
sketch of conjugal happiness (vol. vii. ? 43); and, to mention no other,
Shahryar’s attestation to Shahrazad’s excellence in the last charming
pages of The Nights.[342] It is the same with the Kathá whose praise and
dispraise are equally enthusiastic; _e.g._, “Women of good family are
guarded by their own virtue, the sole efficient chamberlain; but the
Lord himself can hardly guard the unchaste. Who can stem a furious
stream and a frantic woman?” (i. 328). “Excessive love in woman is your
only hero for daring” (i. 339). “Thus fair ones, naturally feeble, bring
about a series of evil actions which engender discernment and aversion
to the world; but here and there you will find a virtuous woman who
adorneth a glorious house as the streak of the moon arrayeth the breadth
of the Heavens” (i. 346). “So you see, King, honourable matrons are
devoted to their husbands and ’tis not the case that women are always
bad” (ii. 624). And there is true wisdom in that even balance of
feminine qualities advocated by our Hindu-Hindi class-book the
Toti-námeh or Parrot volume. The perfect woman has seven requisites. She
must not always be merry (1) nor sad (2); she must not always be talking
(3) nor silently musing (4); she must not always be adorning herself (5)
nor neglecting her person (6); and, (7) at all times she must be
moderate and self-possessed.
The legal status of womankind in Al-Islam is exceptionally high, a fact
of which Europe has often been assured, although the truth has not even
yet penetrated into the popular brain. Nearly a century ago one Mirza
Abú Tálib Khán, an Amildár or revenue collector, after living two years
in London, wrote an “apology” for, or rather a vindication of, his
countrywomen which is still worth reading and quoting.[343] Nations are
but superficial judges of one another: where customs differ they often
remark only the salient distinctive points which, when examined, prove
to be of minor importance. Europeans seeing and hearing that women in
the East are “cloistered” as the Grecian matron was wont ἔνδον μένειν
and οἰκουρεῖν; that wives may not walk out with their husbands and
cannot accompany them to “balls and parties”; moreover, that they are
always liable, like the ancient Hebrew, to the mortification of the
“sister-wife,” have most ignorantly determined that they are mere
serviles and that their lives are not worth living. Indeed, a learned
lady, Miss Martineau, once visiting a Harem went into ectasies of pity
and sorrow because the poor things knew nothing of—say trigonometry and
the use of the globes. Sonnini thought otherwise, and my experience,
like that of all old dwellers in the East, is directly opposed to this
conclusion.
I have noted (Night cmlxii.) that Mohammed, in the fifth year of his
reign,[344] after his ill-advised and scandalous marriage[345] with his
foster-daughter Zaynab, established the Hijáb or veiling of women. It
was probably an exaggeration of local usage: a modified separation of
the sexes, which extended and still extends even to the Badawi, must
long have been customary in Arabian cities, and its object was to
deliver the sexes from temptation, as the Koran says (xxxii. 32), “purer
will this (practice) be for your hearts and their hearts.”[346] The
women, who delight in restrictions which tend to their honour, accepted
it willingly and still affect it; they do not desire a liberty or rather
a licence which they have learned to regard as inconsistent with their
time-honoured notions of feminine decorum and delicacy, and they would
think very meanly of a husband who permitted them to be exposed, like
hetairæ, to the public gaze.[347] As Zubayr Pasha, exiled to Gibraltar
for another’s treason, said to my friend, Colonel Buckle, after visiting
quarters evidently laid out by a jealous husband, “We Arabs think that
when a man has a precious jewel, ’tis wiser to lock it up in a box than
to leave it about for anyone to take.” The Eastern adopts the
instinctive, the Western prefers the rational method. The former
jealously guards his treasure, surrounds it with all precautions, fends
off from it all risks and if the treasure go astray, kills it. The
latter, after placing it _en evidence_ upon an eminence in ball dress
with back and bosom bared to the gaze of society, a bundle of charms
exposed to every possible seduction, allows it to take its own way, and
if it be misled, he kills or tries to kill the misleader. It is a fiery
trial; and the few who safely pass through it may claim a higher
standpoint in the moral world than those who have never been sorely
tried. But the crucial question is whether Christian Europe has done
wisely in offering such temptations.
The second and main objection to Moslem custom is the marriage-system
which begins with a girl being wedded to a man whom she knows only by
hearsay. This was the habit of our forbears not many generations ago,
and it still prevails amongst noble houses in Southern Europe, where a
lengthened study of it leaves me doubtful whether the “love-marriage,”
as it is called, or wedlock with an utter stranger, evidently the two
extremes, is likely to prove the happier. The “sister-wife” is or would
be a sore trial to monogamic races like those of Northern Europe, where
Caia, all but the equal of Caius in most points mental and physical and
superior in some, not unfrequently proves herself the “man of the
family,” the “only man in the boat.” But in the East, where the sex is
far more delicate, where a girl is brought up in polygamy, where
religious reasons separate her from her husband, during pregnancy and
lactation, for three successive years; and where often enough like the
Mormon damsel she would hesitate to “nigger it with a one-wife-man,” the
case assumes a very different aspect and the load, if burden it be,
falls comparatively light. Lastly, the “patriarchal household” is mostly
confined to the grandee and the richard, whilst Holy Law and public
opinion, neither of which can openly be disregarded, assign command of
the household to the _equal_ or first wife and jealously guard the
rights and privileges of the others.
Mirza Abu Talib “the Persian Prince”[348] offers six reasons why “the
liberty of the Asiatic women appears less than that of the Europeans,”
ending with,
I’ll fondly place on either eye
The man that can to this reply.
He then lays down eight points in which the Moslem wife has greatly the
advantage over her Christian sisterhood; and we may take his first as a
specimen. Custom, not contrary to law, invests the Mohammedan mother
with despotic government of the homestead, slaves, servants and
children, especially the latter: she alone directs their early
education, their choice of faith, their marriage and their establishment
in life; and in case of divorce she takes the daughters, the sons going
to the sire. She has also liberty to leave her home, not only for one or
two nights, but for a week or a fortnight, without consulting her
husband; and whilst she visits a strange household, the master and all
males above fifteen are forbidden the Harem. But the main point in
favour of the Moslem wife is her being a “legal sharer”: inheritance is
secured to her by Koranic law; she must be dowered by the bridegroom to
legalise marriage and all she gains is secured to her; whereas in
England a “Married Woman’s Property Act” was completed only in 1882
after many centuries of the grossest abuses.
Lastly, Moslems and Easterns in general study and intelligently study
the art and mystery of satisfying the physical woman. In my Foreword I
have noticed among barbarians the system of “making men”[349] that is,
of teaching lads first arrived at puberty the nice conduct of the
instrumentum paratum plantandis civibus; a branch of the knowledge-tree
which our modern education grossly neglects, thereby entailing untold
miseries upon individuals, families and generations. The mock virtue,
the most immodest modesty of England and of the United States in the
xix^{th} century, pronounces the subject foul and fulsome: “Society”
sickens at all details; and hence it is said abroad that the English
have the finest women in Europe and least know how to use them.
Throughout the East such studies are aided by a long series of volumes,
many of them written by learned physiologists, by men of social standing
and by religious dignitaries high in office. The Egyptians especially
delight in aphrodisiac literature treating, as the Turks say, de la
partie au-dessous de la taille; and from fifteen hundred to two thousand
copies of a new work, usually lithographed in cheap form, readily sell
off. The pudibund Lane makes allusion to and quotes (A. N. i. 216) one
of the most outspoken, a 4to of 464 pages, called the Halbat al-Kumayt
or “Race-Course of the Bay Horse,” a poetical and horsey term for
grape-wine. Attributed by D’Herbelot to the Kazi Shams al-Din Mohammed,
it is wholly upon the subject of wassail and women till the last few
pages, when his reverence exclaims:—“This much, O reader, I have
recounted, the better thou mayst know what to avoid;” and so forth,
ending with condemning all he had praised.[350] Even the divine and
historian Jalál al-Dín al-Siyuti is credited with having written, though
the authorship is much disputed, a work entitled, “Kitáb al-Ízáh fi ’ilm
al-Nikáh” = The Book of Exposition in the Science of Coition: my copy, a
lithograph of 33 pages, undated, but evidently Cairene, begins with
exclaiming “Alhamdolillah—Laud to the Lord who adorned the virginal
bosom with breasts and who made the thighs of women anvils for the
spear-handles of men!” To the same amiable theologian are also ascribed
the “Kitáb Nawázir al-Ayk fi al-Nayk” = Green Splendours of the Copse in
Copulation, an abstract of the Kitáb al-Wisháh fí fawáid al-Nikáh = Book
of the Zone on Coitionboon. Of the abundance of pornographic literature
we may judge from a list of the following seven works given in the
second page of the “Kitáb Rujú’a al-Shaykh ila Sabáh fi ’l-Kuwwat
al-Báh”[351] = Book of Age-rejuvenescence in the power of Concupiscence:
it is the work of Ahmad bin Sulayman, surnamed Ibn Kamál Pasha.
1. Kitáb al-Báh by Al-Nahli.
2. Kitáb al-’Ars wa al-’Aráis (Book of the Bridal and the Brides) by
Al-Jáhiz.
3. Kitáb al-Kiyán (Maiden’s Book) by Ibn Hájib al-Nu’mán.
4. Kitáb al-Ízáh fí asrár al-Nikáh (Book of the Exposition on the
Mysteries of married Fruition).
5. Kitáb Jámi’ al-Lizzah (The Compendium of Pleasure) by Ibn
Samsamáni.
6. Kitáb Barján (Yarján?) wa Janáhib (??)[352]
7. Kitáb al-Munákahah wa al-Mufátahah fí Asnáf al-Jimá’ wa Álátih
(Book of Carnal Copulation and the Initiation into the modes of
Coition and its Instrumentation), by Aziz al-Din al-Masíhí.[353]
To these I may add the Lizzat al-Nisá (Pleasures of Women), a text-book
in Arabic, Persian and Hindostani: it is a translation and a very poor
attempt, omitting much from, and adding naught to, the famous Sanskrit
work Ananga-Ranga (Stage of the Bodiless One _i.e._ Cupido) or Hindu Art
of Love (Ars Amoris Indica).[354] I have copies of it in Sanskrit and
Maráthi, Guzrati and Hindostani: the latter is an unpaged 8vo of p. 66,
including eight pages of most grotesque illustrations showing the
various Ásan (the Figuræ Veneris or positions of copulation), which seem
to be the triumphs of contortionists. These pamphlets lithographed in
Bombay are broad cast over the land.[355]
It must not be supposed that such literature is purely and simply
aphrodisiacal. The learned Sprenger, a physician as well as an Arabist,
says (Al-Mas’údi p. 384) of a tractate by the celebrated Rhazes in the
Leyden Library “The number of curious observations, the correct and
practical ideas and the novelty of the notions of Eastern nations on
these subjects, which are contained in this book, render it one of the
most important productions of the medical literature of the Arabs.” I
can conscientiously recommend to the Anthropologist a study of the
“Kutub al-Báh.”
C.—PORNOGRAPHY.
Here it will be advisable to supplement what was said in my Foreword (p.
xv.) concerning the _turpiloquium_ of The Nights. Readers who have
perused the ten volumes will probably agree with me that the naïve
indecencies of the text are rather _gaudisserie_ than prurience; and,
when delivered with mirth and humour, they are rather the “excrements of
wit” than designed for debauching the mind. Crude and indelicate with
infantile plainness; even gross and, at times, “nasty” in their terrible
frankness, they cannot be accused of corrupting suggestiveness or subtle
insinuation of vicious sentiment. Theirs is a coarseness of language,
not of idea; they are indecent, not depraved; and the pure and perfect
naturalness of their nudity seems almost to purify it, showing that the
matter is rather of manners than of morals. Such throughout the East is
the language of every man, woman and child, from prince to peasant, from
matron to prostitute: all are as the naïve French traveller said of the
Japanese; “si grossiers qu’ils ne sçavent nommer les choses que par leur
nom.” This primitive stage of language sufficed to draw from Lane and
Burckhardt strictures upon the “most immodest freedom of conversation in
Egypt,” where, as all the world over, there are three several stages for
names of things and acts sensual. First we have the _mot cru_, the
popular term, soon followed by the technical and scientific, and,
lastly, the literary or figurative nomenclature, which is often much
more immoral because more attractive, suggestive and seductive than the
“raw word.” And let me observe that the highest civilization is now
returning to the language of nature. In La Glu of M. J. Richepin, a
triumph of the realistic school, we find such “archaic” expressions as
la petée, putain, foutue à la six-quatre-dix; une facétieuse pétarade;
tu t’es foutue de, etc. Eh vilain bougre! and so forth.[356] To those
critics who complain of these raw vulgarisms and puerile indecencies in
The Nights I can reply only by quoting the words said to have been said
by Dr. Johnson to the lady who complained of the naughty words in his
dictionary—“You must have been looking for them, Madam!”
But I repeat (p. xvi.) there is another element in The Nights and that
is one of absolute obscenity utterly repugnant to English readers, even
the least prudish. It is chiefly connected with what our neighbours call
_Le vice contre nature_—as if anything can be contrary to nature which
includes all things.[357] Upon this subject I must offer details, as it
does not enter into my plan to ignore any theme which is interesting to
the Orientalist and the Anthropologist. And they, methinks, do abundant
harm who, for shame or disgust, would suppress the very mention of such
matters: in order to combat a great and growing evil deadly to the
birth-rate—the main-stay of national prosperity—the first requisite is
careful study. As Albert Bollstoedt, Bishop of Ratisbon, rightly
says:—Quia malum non evitatum nisi cognitum, ideo necesse est cognoscere
immundiciem coitus et multa alia quæ docentur in isto libro. Equally
true are Professor Mantegazza’s words:[358] Cacher les plaies du cœur
humain au nom de la pudeur, ce n’est au contraire qu’hypocrisie ou peur.
The late Mr. Grote had reason to lament that when describing such
institutions as the far-famed ἱερὸς λόχος of Thebes, the Sacred Band
annihilated at Chaeroneia, he was compelled to a reticence which
permitted him to touch only the surface of the subject. This was
inevitable under the present rule of Cant[359] in a book intended for
the public: but the same does not apply to my version of The Nights, and
now I proceed to discuss the matter sérieusement, honnêtement,
historiquement; to show it in decent nudity not in suggestive fig-leaf
or feuille de vigne.
D.—PEDERASTY.
The “execrabilis familia pathicorum” first came before me by a chance of
earlier life. In 1845, when Sir Charles Napier had conquered and annexed
Sind, despite a fraction (mostly venal) which sought favour with the now
defunct “Court of Directors to the Honourable East India Company,” the
veteran began to consider his conquest with a curious eye. It was
reported to him that Karáchi, a townlet of some two thousand souls and
distant not more than a mile from camp, supported no less than three
lupanars or bordels, in which not women but boys and eunuchs, the former
demanding nearly a double price,[360] lay for hire. Being then the only
British officer who could speak Sindi, I was asked indirectly to make
enquiries and to report upon the subject; and I undertook the task on
express condition that my report should not be forwarded to the Bombay
Government, from whom supporters of the Conqueror’s policy could expect
scant favour, mercy or justice. Accompanied by a Munshi, Mirza Mohammed
Hosayn of Shiraz, and habited as a merchant, Mirza Abdullah the
Bushiri[361] passed many an evening in the townlet, visited all the
porneia and obtained the fullest details which were duly despatched to
Government House. But the “Devil’s Brother” presently quitted Sind
leaving in his office my unfortunate official: this found its way with
sundry other reports[362] to Bombay and produced the expected result. A
friend in the Secretariat informed me that my summary dismissal from the
service had been formally proposed by one of Sir Charles Napier’s
successors, whose decease compels me parcere sepulto. But this excess of
outraged modesty was not allowed.
Subsequent enquiries in many and distant countries enabled me to arrive
at the following conclusions:—
1. There exists what I shall call a “Sotadic Zone,” bounded
westwards by the northern shores of the Mediterranean (N. Lat. 43°)
and by the southern (N. Lat. 30°). Thus the depth would be 780 to
800 miles including meridional France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy
and Greece, with the coast-regions of Africa from Marocco to Egypt.
2. Running eastward the Sotadic Zone narrows, embracing Asia Minor,
Mesopotamia and Chaldæa, Afghanistan, Sind, the Punjab and Kashmir.
3. In Indo-China the belt begins to broaden, enfolding China, Japan
and Turkistan.
4. It then embraces the South Sea Islands and the New World where,
at the time of its discovery, Sotadic love was, with some
exceptions, an established racial institution.
5. Within the Sotadic Zone the Vice is popular and endemic, held at
the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and
South of the limits here defined practise it only sporadically amid
the opprobrium of their fellows who, as a rule, are physically
incapable of performing the operation and look upon it with the
liveliest disgust.
Before entering into topographical details concerning Pederasty, which I
hold to be geographical and climatic, not racial, I must offer a few
considerations of its cause and origin. We must not forget that the love
of boys has its noble sentimental side. The Platonists and pupils of the
Academy, followed by the Sufis or Moslem Gnostics, held such affection,
pure as ardent, to be the beau idéal which united in man’s soul the
creature with the Creator. Professing to regard youths as the most
cleanly and beautiful objects in this phenomenal world, they declared
that by loving and extolling the chef-d’œuvre, corporeal and
intellectual, of the Demiurgus, disinterestedly and without any
admixture of carnal sensuality, they are paying the most fervent
adoration to the Causa causans. They add that such affection, passing as
it does the love of women, is far less selfish than fondness for and
admiration of the other sex which, however innocent, always suggest
sexuality[363]; and Easterns add that the devotion of the moth to the
taper is purer and more fervent than the Bulbul’s love for the Rose.
Amongst the Greeks of the best ages the system of boy-favourites was
advocated on considerations of morals and politics. The lover undertook
the education of the beloved through precept and example, while the two
were conjoined by a tie stricter than the fraternal. Hieronymus the
Peripatetic strongly advocated it because the vigorous disposition of
youths and the confidence engendered by their association often led to
the overthrow of tyrannies. Socrates declared that “a most valiant army
might be composed of boys and their lovers; for that of all men they
would be most ashamed to desert one another.” And even Virgil, despite
the foul flavour of Formosum pastor Corydon, could write:—
Nisus amore pio pueri.
The only physical cause for the practice which suggests itself to me and
that must be owned to be purely conjectural, is that within the Sotadic
Zone there is a blending of the masculine and feminine temperaments, a
crasis which elsewhere occurs only sporadically. Hence the male
_féminisme_ whereby the man becomes patiens as well as agens, and the
woman a tribade, a votary of mascula Sappho,[364] Queen of Frictrices or
Rubbers.[365] Prof. Mantegazza claims to have discovered the cause of
this pathological love, this perversion of the erotic sense, one of the
marvellous list of amorous vagaries which deserve, not prosecution but
the pitiful care of the physician and the study of the psychologist.
According to him the nerves of the rectum and the genitalia, in all
cases closely connected, are abnormally so in the pathic who obtains, by
intromission, the venereal orgasm which is usually sought through the
sexual organs. So amongst women there are tribads who can procure no
pleasure except by foreign objects introduced a posteriori. Hence his
threefold distribution of sodomy; (1) Peripheric or anatomical, caused
by an unusual distribution of the nerves and their hyperæsthesia; (2)
Luxurious, when love a tergo is preferred on account of the narrowness
of the passage; and (3) the Psychical. But this is evidently
superficial: the question is what causes this neuropathy, this abnormal
distribution and condition of the nerves.[366]