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widely attributed, no reliable source

Posted by kit on 2024-January-30 23:37:49, Tuesday
In reply to Re: Where does this 'quote' come from? posted by Manstuprator on 2024-January-30 21:25:13, Tuesday

There seems to be a Persian or Turkic variant, sometimes (spuriously??) attributed to the Babur-nama, which runs something like "women for procreation, boys for pleasure, but a melon for sheer delight."

If the Babur-nama really is the source (and I can't find it in the only English version I can locate) then it is Mughal rather than Mongol - which sounds perhaps a bit less surprising.

But most of the occurrences of this statement seem to come as throw-away quotations in Western sources. Gide cites the line (in English!) in Retour de l'URSS, so it was evidently proverbial by at least 1936.

I don't deny that the line might reflect a genuine proverb - or at least an authentic attitude - among some of the many nations to whom it seems to be attributed. Perhaps someone can dig up the 'original' - or at least a non-English version of the line.

But I suspect that the line served a similar purpose for the British Empire in India that it now seems to serve for the American Empire in (or out of) Afghanistan: a flippant and rather disparaging allusion to a foreign sexual outlook.

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