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Sexual matters, meanwhile, were rather more skilled and sensual in Southeast Asia.

Ancient Balinese culture revered sex as an important religious practice, which meant that Saturday-night quickies were ruled firmly out. Babies were made by mixing male and female fluids with the elements of air, fire, water, earth and space – along with the odd reincarnated soul. The magic only worked if the couple orgasmed at the same time. And they needed to perform synchronized sex consistently, as part of a regime of meditation, chanting and mutual pleasure. What’s more, the quality of the sex was thought to affect the quality of the children. Hence the need for detailed manuals.

Bali’s first erotic guides were written in around AD 900 at the latest, according to recent studies. They originated from Java, where Islam eventually suppressed them. But Islam never reached Bali, and the islanders revered their manuals as living texts, so generations of scholars and scribes updated them continually over many centuries. The books were called Tutur and could only be read as part of several years’ study under close guidance from a teacher. Tutur were considered top-shelf stuff, and were usually marked with the words aywa wera: ‘Do not disseminate indiscriminately.’ The books also warned that if a man failed to follow their guidelines, then he was having sex not as a human but as an animal.

Foreplay was a lengthy business. One guide, Rahasyasanggama, stipulated that lovers must meditate themselves into a state of union with the divine before even starting sex – otherwise it would prove neither pleasurable nor productive. For first sexual encounters, the preliminaries could take weeks, if not months. Six stages were required: chatting up, to ensure compatibility; fantasizing (or in religious terms, visualizing the beloved day and night in order magically to attract the desired person); and then touching – a strict 30-day regime of caressing one part of their potential partner per day, running up one side of the body from big toe to forehead and then, when the moon turned from waxing to waning, coming back down the other side. Stage four required male suitors to pull their lovers towards them psychically through intense meditation: the length of time required was determined by the woman’s tincture – it took three days if they were light-skinned, forty if they were dark. At this point, albino females must have been at something of a premium. Stage five, at last, was sex, though it demanded that the man be skilled and respectful in sexual relations, using (sadly unexplained) positions such as ‘boxing’, ‘squirrel eats a nut’, ‘frog climbs a banana tree’ and ‘thrusting pig’. Stage six required the couple to start again, right from the beginning.

Even after that, properly married couples could not simply dive in willy-nilly whenever they pleased. The guides stressed that they had to practise sex at the right times. The rules forbade lovemaking on the wife’s birthday, as well as the day before a full moon, and on new moons.

Across the water in Java, the ancient sex guides adopted early Islamic rules, which were based on the Prophet’s guidance: no sex standing up, or sitting, or with the woman on top; no talk during intercourse; and sex during menstruation was banned because it created ugly children. Other written advice probably survived from older local folklore: you can tell the shape and size of a man’s penis by looking at his thumb, while a woman’s vagina reflects the shape of her mouth. Or perhaps they got those ones from the playground.

My Place or Yours?

How to pull

Philaenis, papyrus sex manual (2 BC)

Pick the woman’s worst feature and then make it appear desirable. Tell an older woman that she looks young. Tell an ugly woman that she looks ‘fascinating’.

Top womanizers

Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (3rd century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot (1883)

The following generally obtain success with women:

Men well versed in the science of love

Raconteurs

Ones acquainted with women from their childhood

Guys who send women presents

Slick talkers

Men who have not loved other women previously

Chaps who know their weak points

Good-looking men

Men who have grown up with women

Men who live next door to women

Men who are devoted to sexual pleasures, even though these are with their own servants

The lovers of the nursemaid’s daughters

Men who have been recently married

Men who like picnics and parties

Liberals

Men who are celebrated for being very strong

Enterprising and brave men

Men who are better looking, cleverer and kinder than your husband

Girls go mad for burnt skulls

Ananga Ranga of Kalyanamalla (Stage of the Love God), by the Indian poet Kalyan Mall (16th century)

Take a human skull from the cemetery or burning ground on the eighth day of the moonlit fortnight of the seventh month Ashvini (September-October), expose it to fire, and collect the soot upon a plate held over it; let this be drawn over the inner surface of the eye-lids, instead of the usual antimony, and the effect will be to fascinate all the women.

Turn yourself into a sex god

Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (3rd century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton and F.F. Arbuthnot (1883)

First, get some fashionable gold hyena bones:

Good looks, good qualities, youth, and liberality are the chief and most natural means of making a person agreeable in the eyes of others. But in the absence of these a man or a woman must have resort to artificial means ...

If the bone of a peacock or of a hyena be covered with gold, and tied on the right hand, it makes a man lovely in the eyes of other people.

Or smear either of these on your penis:

The application of a mixture of the leaf of the plant vatodbhranta, of the flowers thrown on a human corpse when carried out to be burnt, and the powder of the bones of the peacock.

The remains of a kite who has died a natural death, ground into powder, and mixed with honey.

Then enlarge yourself:

Rub your penis with the bristles of certain insects that live in trees, and then, after rubbing it for ten nights with oils, rub it with the bristles as before.

By continuing to do this a swelling will be gradually produced in the penis and you should then lie on a hammock with a hole in it, and hang it down through the hole. After this you should take away all the pain from the swelling by using cool concoctions. The swelling lasts for life.

How to be a failure

Perfumed Garden of Sheik Nefzaoui (16th century), translated by Sir Richard F. Burton

Know, O My Brother (to whom God be merciful), that a man who is misshapen, of coarse appearance, and whose member is short, thin and flabby, is contemptible in the eyes of women.

When such a man has a bout with a woman, he does not do her business with vigour and in a manner to give her enjoyment. He lays himself down upon her without previous toying, he does not kiss her, nor twine himself round her; he does not bite her, nor suck her lips, nor tickle her.

He gets upon her before she has begun longing for pleasure, and then he introduces with infinite trouble a member soft and nerveless. Scarcely has he commenced when he is already done for; he makes one or two movements, and then sinks upon the woman’s breast to spend his sperm, and that is the most he can do. This done he withdraws his affair, and makes all haste to get down again from her.

Such a man is quick in ejaculation and slow as to erection; after the trembling, which follows the ejaculation of the seed, his chest is heavy and his sides ache.