Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | страница 626

AIDS TO SEDUCTION
586
In fact no shame what-
to the duties of motherhood.
ever is attached to parents whose daughters adopt this
career.
The courtesans are the only women in India who enjoy
he privilege of learning to read, to dance, and to sing.
A well-bred and respectable woman would for this reason
blush to acquire any one of these accomplishments \
The deva-dasis receive a fixed salary for the religious
but as the amount is small
duties which they perform
they supplement it by selling their favours in as profitable
a manner as possible. In the attainment of this object
they are probably more skilful than similar women in other
countries.
They employ all the resources and artifices of
coquetry. Perfumes, elegant costumes, coiffures best suited
to set off the beauty of their hair, which they entwine with
a profusion of jewels worn with
sweet-scented flowers
much taste on different parts of the body graceful and
voluptuous attitudes such are the snares with which these
sirens allure the Hindus, who, it must be confessed, rarely
display in such cases the prudence and constancy of a
Ulysses.
Nevertheless, to the discredit of Europeans it must be
confessed that the quiet seductions which Hindu pro-
stitutes know how to exercise with so much skill resemble
in no way the disgraceful methods of the wretched beings
who give themselves up to a similar profession in Europe,
and whose indecent behaviour, cynical impudence, obscene
and filthy words of invitation are enough to make any sensible
man who is not utterly depraved shrink from them with horror.
Of all the women in India it is the courtesans, and especially
those attached to the temples, who are the most decently
clothed.
Indeed they are particularly careful not to expose
any part of the body. I do not deny, however, that this
is merely a refinement of seduction.
Experience has no
doubt taught them that for a woman to display her charms
damps sensual ardour instead of exciting it, and that the
imagination is more easily captivated than the eye.
t
;
;
;
:
1
In these days female education
is
slowly extending to
all classes,
and the prejudice which formerly existed no longer applies to women
learning to read and sing, though dancing is still restricted to the pro-
fessional dancing-girls, and is not considered respectable.
Ed.