The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 10 by Sir Richard Francis Burton (essential reading TXT) 📖

teaching lads first arrived at puberty the nice conduct of the instrumentum paratum plantandis avibus: 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 xixth 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 out spoken, 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.[FN#350] Even the divine and historian Jal�l al-D�n al-Siyuti is credited with having written, though the authorship is much disputed, a work entitled, “Kit�b al-�z�h fi ‘ilm al-Nik�h” =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 “Kit�b Naw�zir al-Ayk fi al-Nayk” = Green Splendours of the Copse in Copulation, an abstract of the “Kit�b al-Wish�h f� faw�id al-Nik�h” = Book of the Zone on Coition-boon. Of the abundance of pornographic literature we may judge from a list of the following seven works given in the second page of the “Kit�b Ruj�‘a al-Shaykh ila Sab�h fi ‘l-Kuwwat al-B�h[FN#351]” = Book of Age-rejuvenescence in the power of Concupiscence: it is the work of Ahmad bin Sulayman, surnamed Ibn Kam�l Pasha.

 

1. Kit�b al-B�h by Al-Nahli.

 

2. Kit�b al’-Ars wa al’-Ar�is (Book of the Bridal and the Brides) by Al-J�hiz.

 

3. Kit�b al-Kiy�n (Maiden’s Book) by Ibn H�jib al-Nu’m�n.

 

4. Kit�b al-�z�h f� asr�r al-Nik�h (Book of the Exposition on the Mysteries of married Fruition).

 

5. Kit�b J�mi’ al-Lizzah (The Compendium of Pleasure) by Ibn Samsam�ni.

 

6. Kit�b Barj�n (Yarj�n?) wa Jan�hib (? ?)[FN#352]

 

7. Kit�b al-Mun�kahah wa al-Muf�tahah f� Asn�f al-Jim�’ wa �l�tih (Book of Carnal Copulation and the Initiation into the modes of Coition and its Instrumentation) by Aziz al-Din al-Mas�h�.[FN#353]

 

To these I may add the Lizzat al-Nis� (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).[FN#354] I have copies of it in Sanskrit and Mar�thi,Guzrati and Hindostani: the latter is an unpaged 8vo of pp. 66, including eight pages of most grotesque illustrations showing the various san (the Figur� Veneris or positions of copulation), which seem to be the triumphs of contortionists.

These pamphlets lithographed in Bombay are broad cast over the land.[FN#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’�di 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-B�h.”

 

C.—Pornography.

 

Here it will be advisable to supplement what was said in my Foreword (p. xiii.) concerning the turpiloquium of The Nights.

Readers who have perused the ten volumes will probably agree with me that the na�ve indecencies of the text are rather gaudis-serie 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 na�ve French traveller said of the Japanese: “si grossiers qu’ils ne s�avent 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 civilisation 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 pet�e, putain, foutue � la six-quatre-dix; un fac�tieuse p�tarade; tu t’es foutue de, etc. Eh vilain bougre! and so forth.[FN#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. xiv.) 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.[FN#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 mainstay 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 alla qu�

docentur in isto libro. Equally true are Professor Mantegazza’s words:[FN#358] Cacher les plates du c�ur 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 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[FN#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 s�rieusement, honn�tement, 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 Kar�chi, a townlet of some two thousand souls and distant not more than a mile from camp, supported no less than three lupanars or borders, in which not women but boys and eunuchs, the former demanding nearly a double price,[FN#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[FN#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[FN#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 Chald�a, 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 practice 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 id�al 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’�uvre, 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;[FN#363] and Easterns add that the devotion of the moth to