PREFACE
The following pages contain a Hindu “Art of Love,” which may fairly be pronounced unique. From the days of Sotades and Ovid to our time, western authors have treated the subject either jocularly or with a tendency to hymn the joys of immorality, and the gospel of debauchery. The Indian author has taken the opposite view, and it is impossible not to admire the delicacy with which he has handled an exceedingly delicate theme. As he assures his readers before parting, the object of the book, which opens with praises of the gods, is not to encourage chambering and wantonness, but simply and in all sincerity to prevent the separation of husband and wife. Feeling convinced that monogamy is a happier state than polygamy, he would save the married couple from the monotony and satiety which follow possession, by varying their pleasures in every conceivable way, and by supplying them with the means of being psychically pure and physically pleasant to each other. He recognizes, fully as Balzac does, the host of evils which result from conjugal infidelity; and, if he allow
