Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.24

v1.c5.24

written in Old India beside what was written in the Middle Ages, or beside Romance, in particular old and even modern French literature; in spite of so many, not always edifying, though nearly always interesting refinements, there is wafted to us from the world of the Old Indian books a deeply ethical spirit, one might even say a wholesomeness, which has a very pleasing effect in contrast with the so often empty frivolity—the nauseating filthiness and vulgarity—that meets us out of those other literatures. To put it otherwise and not to wander abroad: the Old Indian loose tales, indeed, in spite of the cautionary thread running all through them, have not been trimmed and put together by literary tailors working for girls' schools; and yet they are like real moral strait-waistcoats, when compared with a great many of the more or less highly praised productions of the later and latest German writers.