Charles Haynes wrote:
> I have a complete set of the Burton "Thousand Nights and a Night." I
> like to tell people that the thin volume of "Arabian Nights" one sees
So did I, so did I .. lost it somewhere or the other when moving house.
Luckily Project Gutenberg has the full set too. If my eyes can stand reading
that much text off a monitor
> racy. I did get tired of navels "that could hold a dram of rare
> perfume" though - and I like curves! I consider Burton a role model,
Burton kind of edited those tales to make the sexy women in there HIS idea
of sexy.. and that kind of imagery is standard + an ancient ideal anyway, in
India as in Persia.
You want racy, see if you can't translate some of the long prayers in
Sanskrit that lots of people listen to and recite. When praising a goddess
it is kind of de rigueur to mention that her breasts are massive, her waist
is thin etc etc. As poetic a way to say 36 24 36 as there can be. And then
the other slokas that describe a goddess as "madhu preetha, maamsa ishta"
etc (that she likes wine and meat). Kind of amusing when the person
reciting it would shrink from onions and garlic, and consider mushrooms "non
vegetarian"
srs
