Is kissing a vedic habit?

To Devika Rani, the first lady of Indian cinema, goes the credit of the big smooch on the Indian screen in her 1933 hit, Karma. According to a Wikipedia entry, it was four minutes long and the longest kissing scene in the movie world. There was nothing low about it-or her.

For those of you who do not know who this diva is, some background information.

Devika Rani was the great grandniece of Rabindranath Tagore, had won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and later founded the Bombay Talkies film studio which produced stars of the caliber of Ashok Kumar and Prithviraj Kapoor.

Behaviour analysts are also divided on where the habit [of kissing] originated. Some believe that kissing, in fact, is a Vedic habit. Vaughn Bryant, an anthropologist from Texas quoted in the International Herald Tribune, believes that the first recorded kiss, around 1500 BC, is in scriptures which mention people sniffing with their mouths; later Vedic texts describe lovers “setting mouth to mouth”.

Far from being a European import, he says, kissing went west from India, after Alexander’s conquest of Punjab in 326 BC. If such is the case then the Romans and Latins, whose kisses range from the overtly sexual to the deeply spiritual, are truly the kissing cousins of the Aryans.

But why go so far asks Sunil Setty in his article. No one has counted but there could well be 1,140 pillars in Konarak and Khajuraho with couples kissing -- and utterly oblivious of who's looking.