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_ Commenting on the directions for caressing given in the _Kama Soutra_, Lamairesse remarks:
"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. 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.
[FOOTNOTE 280: Our poets speak of fright making the hair stand on end--but only on the head. Can the alleged Hindoo phenomenon be identical with what we call goose flesh--French frisson? That would make it none the less artificial as a symptom of love. Hertel says, in his edition of the _Hitopadesa_:
"With the Hindoos it is a consequence of great
excitement, joy as well as fear, that the little hairs
on the body stand erect. The expression has become
conventional."]
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. _
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