The original role of geisha was as an assistant to the Oiran, who were high-class courtesans, dressed in amazingly flashy kimono and wearing heavy hairstyles.
A surprising number were built at the behest of women, including princesses, courtesans and merchants' wives, who wished to attain immortality through the gift of water.
When late in the afternoon, beautiful Kamala approached her grove in her sedan-chair, Siddhartha was standing at the entrance, made a bow and received the courtesan's greeting.
They would all three have made alternatively good courtesans or good wives not by the accident of birth but through the greater accident of finding their man or not finding him.
And it seemed that all the mighty dead appeared before her; and she saw grim tyrants, and painted courtesans, and Roman emperors in their purple, and sultans of the East.
Cat knew that the men off the Brazen Monkey would not care about the name of a courtesan's mother, though. Instead, she asked them for tidings of the Seven Kingdoms, and the war.
On one of these days, when so many went on a pilgrimage to the dying Buddha, Kamala also went to him, who used to be the most beautiful of the courtesans.
Influential female intellectuals have included Veronica Franco, a poet and courtesan, Sara Coppio Sullam, a writer and champion of Judaism, and more recently that most eminent of adopted Venetians, Peggy Guggenheim.