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Updated: June 9, 2025
He now suggested that this series and Burton's Arabian Nights should be published nominally by a society to which might be given the appropriate name, "The Kama Shastra" that is the cupid-gospel Society, Kama being the Hindu god of love. This deity is generally represented as a beautiful youth riding on an emerald-plumaged lorry or parrot.
Of the books other than The Arabian Nights published by the Kama Shastra Society each of which purported, facetiously, to be printed at Behares, the name which Burton chose to give to Stoke Newington, we shall now give a brief account. Several, we said, are erotic. But it should be clearly understood what is here meant by the term.
They did not form an independent sect; but the doctrines of this shastra, being eclectic, were studied by all Japanese Buddhist sects. This Ku-sha scripture is still read in Japan as a general institute of ontology, especially by advanced students who wish to get a general idea of the doctrines. It is full of technical terms, and is well named The Store-house of Metaphysics.
In 1886 an edition of 220 copies was issued by the French publisher Isidore Liseux, and the same year appeared a translation of Liseux's work bearing the imprint of the Kama Shastra Society. This is the book that Burton calls "my old version," which, of course, proves that he had some share in it.
Cosmopoli MDCCCLXXXV, for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares, and for private circulation only. Dedicated to that small portion of the British Public which takes enlightened interest in studying the manners and customs of the olden East.
The Kama Shastra Society also issued a translation of the first twenty chapters of The Scented Garden. In reality it was a translation of the French version of Liseux, but it was imperfect and had only a few notes. It has been repeatedly denied that Burton had anything to do with it. All we can say is that in a letter to Mr.
Bubbling over with fun, he would pretend to make a great mystery as to the Kama Shastra Society at Benares, where he declared the Nights were being printed. A Visit to Mr. Arbuthnot's. Of all the visits to be made during this holiday Burton had looked forward to none with so much pleasure as those to Mr. Arbuthnot, or "Bunny," as he called him, and Mr. Payne. Mr.
Thus spake the Founder of the Kama Shastra Society. On May 15th, Burton told Mr. Kirby all about the Algiers trip. "Plenty to see and do," he says, "but I was not lucky about my MS. The Scented Garden. No one seemed to know anything about it. Never advise any one to winter in Algiers. All the settled English are selling their villas.
The burden of its philosophy is materialism; that is, the non-existence of self and the existence of the matter which composes self, or, as the Japanese writer says: "The reason why all things are so minutely explained in this shastra is to drive away the idea of self, and to show the truth in order to make living beings reach Nirvana."
The books were to be translated by Rehatsek and a Hindu pundit named Bhagvanlal Indraji, Burton and Arbuthnot were to revise and annotate, and Arbuthnot was to find the money. Burton fell in with the idea, as did certain other members of Arbuthnot's circle, who had always been keenly interested in Orientalism, and so was formed the famous Kama Shastra Society.
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