Nearly two decades ago, I acquired a definitive version of Kama Sutra, one of my favorite books since adolescence. Translated by Alain Daniélou and published by Park Street Press in Rochester, Vermont, in 1994, it boasts of a title quite to my liking: The Complete Kama Sutra. Wow! Hailing from as far back as the Seventh Century before Christ, it has had myriad versions and as many commentaries over the millennia, not to mention all the translations into English. Daniélou’s translation thus includes Vatsyayana’s compilation of the original text from around the Fourth Century after Christ, Yashodhara’s commentary from the Twelfth Century, and a modern Hindi commentary by Devadatta Shastri, all of which are rendered in different fonts for ease of distinction. Predictably, I am most attracted to Vatsyayana’s sutras, most of which are a single sentence in length. The length, as it were.

One of the things that I am currently looking for is the old age rule, which purports that a woman right for a man is half his age plus seven years (“The Old Age Rule,” January 10, 1989). To the best of my recollection, I came across it in a version of Kama Sutra that I received as a gift from one of my father’s cousins, who had spent a number of years in India when I was still a boy. I must have been in my mid-teens when I started reading it in earnest. Years later, I even extended the age rule, albeit half in jest (“Kamasutra Extended,” November 2, 2002). Interestingly, this extension came only a few months after I acquired Daniélou’s translation. At any rate, I cannot find a word about the felicitous rule in this definitive version of Kama Sutra. And I am baffled, it goes without saying.

In the case I indeed found the age rule in the first version of Kama Sutra that came my way about sixty years ago, it must have belonged to a mere commentary. But it is also possible that I have concocted the connection between the age rule and the Indian masterpiece quite a few years after my first reading. For some reason, the rule struck me as too ingenious to be of recent vintage. One way or another, Daniélou’s translation is a revelation of sorts. As it turns out, some things I am pretty sure about are actually on pretty thin legs. In the case of Kama Sutra, figuring out that something is amiss with my memory is easy enough. After all, it is a matter of a few more than five-hundred pages, which are easy enough to browse through over a few days. In many cases, though, the conundrum is much more difficult to resolve, for memory is not only fickle, but it appears to grow ever more fickle with age. Long live the old age rule!