Kiss Me

This is part of my ongoing series on the Mahabharat, an epic poem of ancient India. For links to all previous Mahabharat posts go here. Or you can simply click on the Mahabharat page link above.


Who doesn't love to kiss? Roughly 90% of humans around the world kiss each other as a show of love or passion.

But it hasn't always been like this. In many cultures all over the world people didn't kiss each other for a long time and even today there are indigenous cultures where mouth to mouth kissing is not practiced. In some cultures it's even taboo because it's considered dirty. And if you think about it, kissing is rather disgusting. I mean, who knows what bacteria another person has in their mouth? Who knows what bacteria YOU have in your mouth?

So how did all this rampant kissing come about then?

Well, the first recorded kiss - mouth to mouth - in human history comes from the Mahabharat.

Of course, you're all thinking. Where else?

But it's true. There are actually several kissing references in the Mahabharat. For me, one of the most touching is when Savitri, a princess, kisses her husband Satyavan as he lays dying in her lap. Her kiss is passionate and loving and tragic because she knows that soon he'll never feel her kiss again.

Then there are references to kissing in the four Vedas. And the Kama Sutra describes different types of kissing.

All these sources come from Ancient India. No other culture's art or literature mentions kissing until centuries later.

Many anthropolists believe that kissing was introduced to the Greeks when Alexander the Great invaded India in 326BC. The Greeks then introduced it to the rest of Europe. But kissing still wasn't popularised in the west as a way of showing passion or eroticism. (That's not to say that it didn't happen, but it wasn't as popular or as commonplace as it was in India.)

"Why?" you might ask.

The answer is very simple. Hygiene. Most people in the world had no notion of oral hygiene. Rich or poor, they all had appalling teeth. Even royalty didn't bother with oral hygiene. Elizabeth I had a mouth full of the most vile rotting teeth you can imagine.

Consider what would it be like to kiss a person who never brushed their teeth. Can you imagine the stinking breath? The gingivitis? The limitless possibilities of disease?

The truth is that kissing, mouth to mouth, didn't become popular in Europe until the 17th Century. Why? Because that was when French dentists started to advocate the use of toothbrushes. People started to clean their teeth. They suddenly had mouths that weren't rotting. Their breath didn't reek.

People could kiss each other without being grossed out. And they began to kiss passionately. It turned into a sexy titillating trend that spread all over Europe. But it started in France.

That's why it's called a FRENCH kiss.

But it's not a French kiss, is it? It's an Indian kiss. Because oral hygiene in India has been a standard for millenia. Indian dentistry goes back as far as 7000BC with many methods of hygiene and oral care prescribed in Hindu texts like the Ayurveda. Hindus brush their teeth religiously because their scriptures say that personal hygiene is a matter of purity and Godliness.

So brush your teeth. And the next time you kiss your loved one, remember the Mahabharat.

Check out this link for Ayurvedic oral care.


*Hindus, as part of their oral hygiene regimen, clean their tongues by scraping it of dirt after brushing using a thin metal strip. This is important because it prevents bad breath. This practice has only in the last decade been introduced in the west by dentists who now advocate scraping the tongue clean after brushing.


Go here for last week's Mahabharat post entitled Anamika = Nameless One.
Go here for next week's Mahabharat post entitled Little Krishna.