"If your bībī is from Hindūstān": Geography as a Marker of Sexual Behaviour in North India - Seminar

What do  Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra (2nd-3rd c. CE) and a 19th century masnawi titled Dilifrūz ('The Heart-Kindler') have in common?  Both include detailed sections categorizing women based on their sexual behaviour concomitant upon their geographical location.  This is not novel- usually, in travel narratives written by men, comments about women were specifically oriented towards the evaluation of woman's morality, bound tightly to her physical form and sexuality.  They reveal as much about the woemen who are subject to constance (usually pejorative) scrutiny-as they do about the author's own time, inherent biases, and contemporaneous sexual ethos.  This talk explores how Dilafruz's author, likely part of the tumultuous Mughal state edifice in the laate 18th-early 19th century, observed and sexualised the bodies of real and imagined women through is mas̱nawīs. 

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