I was flipping through the Kama Sutra yesterday and turns out to be much more than a sex manual! It’s a guide to etiquette and custom in many areas of life and offers really interesting glimpses into a culture very different from ours. Though some of it is practically timeless, for example:

The following are the kinds of friends:

  • One who has played with you in the dust, i.e. in the childhood
  • One who is bound by an obligation
  • One who is of the same disposition and fond of the same things
  • One who is a fellow student
  • One who is acquainted with your secrets and faults and who’s faults and secrets are also known to you
  • One who is a child of your nurse
  • One who’s brought up with you
  • One who is a hereditary friend

I hadn’t realized, but it’s also very Talmudic in its approach.

  • Here is the rule or custom.
  • The followers of X add an interpretation.
  • The followers of Y disagree.
  • [a digression about the theory and history of the legal principle used by the followers of Y.]

Highly recommended. The edition linked above is especially nice and uses the Richard Burton translation — I’ve also enjoyed Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights which is a book you can dip into again and again as you please, all through your life. John Barth is a big fan of the Arabian Nights as well.