Chutney, a characteristically Indian relish, is compounded of fruits, herbs, and seasonings. Apart from its culinary use, chutney is considered a sensual stimulant.
Erotic ingenuities have devised variations in physiological relations. The Arab erotologist the Sheikh Nefzawi, in his The Perfumed Garden, alludes to this ingenuity in the case of Indian practices, where twenty-nine possible forms of intimacy were in vogue.
An eye-salve called collyrium was known among the Romans as, apart from its ophthalmological virtue, a sexual aid. Collyrium was so considered in India too, where it was also credited with possessing magic qualities that were applicable to erotic manifestations.
Macabre concoctions have been the stock in trade of the dispensers of philtres and excitants in all ages among all races. A prescription that is urged in Hindu erotological literature runs as follows: A compound consisting of flowers thrown on a corpse that is being carried to a burning ghat for disposal: along with a mixture compounded of the powdered bones of the peacock and of the jiwanjiva bird, and the leaf of the plant vatodbhranta. A genital application promises, in the opinion of the Hindu manuals, marked physiological vigor.
Many Oriental treatises on erotology deal with the physiological characteristics of men and women, temperamental differences, erotic postures in multiple varieties, and recommendations regarding local inguinal applications. The topic of potions as such is far less extensively treated, largely for the reason that the love-potion, innocuous and effectual, is actually rare. Yet each manual is hopeful and anticipatory in this respect.
The Ananga-Ranga, of which a French translation appeared in Paris in 1920, in the Bibliothèque des Curieux, was originally composed in Sanskrit in the sixteenth century by the poet Kalyanamalla. It covers cosmetic hints and amatory devices, hygienic suggestions, periapts and incantations designed to attract and retain affection. It discusses the four major types of women, their personal characteristics, the hours and days most propitious for intimacy. There are tables and statistics that go into minute detail on these points. There is a table classifying and differentiating the seats of passion, the erotogenic areas. There are several pages of tables that expound different types of embrace with different types of partners. Nothing is left to chance. Nothing is omitted. The text marches forward, with confidence and a sense of authority, from the uprising of the libido to the ultimate consummation.