Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world.

Kipling’s line uses the euphemism “the most ancient profession” to identify Lalun as a prostitute or courtesan, framing her work as something perennial and socially embedded rather than anomalous. The phrasing is characteristically ironic: it simultaneously normalizes the profession’s antiquity and hints at the moral and colonial hypocrisies surrounding it—especially in Kipling’s Anglo-Indian settings, where British respectability coexisted with a thriving sex trade. By naming Lalun through a wry, generalized formula, the sentence also reduces an individual to a social role, inviting readers to notice how class, gender, and power determine who gets described as a “professional” and who is stigmatized.