on a journey she should make him swear that he will
return quickly. [399]... When the man does return home she should
worship the God Kama." Ladies will be interested to learn that there are
twenty-seven artifices by which a woman can get money out of a man.
One is "Praising his intelligence to his face." Then there are useful
directions for the personal adornment of both sexes. "If the bone of a
peacock or of a hyena be covered with gold and tied to the right hand,
it makes a man lovely in the eyes of other people."

Of the essential portions of the book it is sufficient to say that they
are similar to those of the other avowedly erotic Eastern works, the
contents of the principal of which have been touched upon by Burton
in the Terminal Essay to his Arabian Nights and in some of his notes.
Finally we are told that the Kama Sutra was composed for the benefit of
the world by Vatsyayana, while leading the life of a religious student,
and wholly engaged in the contemplation of the Deity. At the same time,
the teaching of this holy man amounts to very much the same as that of
Maupassant, which is, to use Tolstoy's words, "that life consists in
pleasures of which woman with her love is the chief, and in the double,
again reflected delight of depicting this love and exciting it in
others." [400]

The work lets a flood of light on Hindu manners and customs; and it must
be borne in mind that the translation was issued privately at a high
price and intended only for "curious students." In the Preface, Burton
and Arbuthnot observe that after a perusal of the Hindoo work the reader
will understand the subject upon which it treats, "At all events from a
materialistic, realistic and practical point of view. If all science
is founded more or less on a stratum of facts, there can be no harm in
making known to mankind generally certain matters intimately connected
with their private, domestic and social life. Alas! complete ignorance
of them has unfortunately wrecked many a man and many a woman, while a
little knowledge of a subject generally ignored by the masses would have
enabled numbers of people to understand many things which they believed
to be quite incomprehensible, or which were not thought worthy of their
consideration."

Writing to Payne, 15th January, 1883, Burton says, "Has Arbuthnot sent
you his Vatsyayana? [401] He and I and the Printer have started a Hindu
Kama Shastra (Ars Amoris Society). It will make the Brit(ish