Originally published 1850 | Publication date 1850 | |
Lazzat Un Nisa (from Arabic: لذات النساء The Pleasure of Woman) is an erotic Indian story. It depicts the art of sex through the role of jewellery and perfume in lovemaking, erotic writing as literature, and pornography as aphrodisiac. The Book was hand-illustrated and hand-copied in Urdu and Persian in 1850 by writer Mohammed Abdul Latif Muzdar Mehdune.
Contents
History
The original manuscript dates back to the Qutb Shahi period. In the fifteenth century, the court of Bidar patronized such erotic works as the Bhog bal, Thadkirat al-Shahawat (List of aphrodisiacs) and Srngaramanjari (erotic Bouquets). Lizzat Un Nisa is one of the few surviving erotics works from the period. There is another Kitab ul-Laddhat un-nisa which was written for a certain vizir Kukapondat by the same content and translated from Parsi into Russian. Actually the book itself has no pornographic or explicit sexual bias. It gives instructions how to classify women from their outer aspect starting from their apparel and ending with some parts of their body. In the Middle Ages Central Asia was the most important urbanized complex of cities and the area thrived of scientific research especially in the medical and terapeutic sciences (Avicenna and Rhazes were born there) and therefore it is very interesting to read which, maybe for a man living in these frantic cities, unexpected defaults could show up in the sexual life when making acquaintance with ladies and how he/she could recur to be treated by a doctor and by which special medical recipes. Lately this book became available in Italian with historical comments as per attached bibliography.
Story
The main subject of the story is a man named Harichand, who under orders of a king, embarks on a journey to collect exotic gifts and beautiful women for the pleasures of the king. The manuscript provides advice on various sexual techniques. It has a section on how to arouse a woman and observations based on sizes of a woman's vagina and also a brief list of lengths of the phallus. It is very interesting to note in the text addressed to vizir Kukapondat how all explanations about genital parts correspond fully to the contemporary anatomical knowledge of AD X cent. mixed here and there with magics.