Whilst the cult of Venus sprang up in the interior of Asia and was disseminated from thence over other parts of the world, it is in India that the Lingam ritual took its rise, a ritual more closely corresponding with the egotism of man. The idea that was early formed as the result of observation, that the man’s genitals were the determining element in the process of generation, was bound to conceive these organs themselves as being, in the prevailing system of Pantheism, under the Government of a Deity, and therefore as specially holy66. Now how could this Deity be represented to the eyes of men otherwise than by that organ whereby he pre-eminently showed himself efficacious? The later legend it is true put the matter into another shape; and we find in Sonnerat67 the myth of the Lingam-ritual amongst the worshippers of Vishnu related in the following form:
“The Penitents had by means of their sacrifices and prayers attained great power; but their hearts and their wives’ hearts must ever remain pure, if they would continue in possession of it. Now Siva had heard the beauty of these latter highly extolled, and formed the determination of seducing them. With this aim in view he took on him the form of a young mendicant68 of perfect beauty, bade Vishnu transform himself into a fair maiden and resort to the spot where the Penitents dwelt, in order to make them fall in love with him. Vishnu betook himself thither, and as he passed through their midst threw them such tender glances that they were all enamoured. They left all their sacrifices to follow after the youthful fair one.69
Their passions grew all the fiercer, till at last they seemed all lifeless and their languishing bodies resembled wax that melts near the fire.
Siva himself hied to the dwelling-place of the women. In mendicant guise he carried in one hand a water-bottle, and sang as he went, as beggars do. Now his song was so entrancing, that all women gathered round him, and thereupon under the gaze of the fair singer fell into complete distraction. This was so great with some that they lost their ornaments and clothing, and followed him in the garb of nature without noticing the fact.
When he had marched through the village, he left it, but not unaccompanied, for all followed him into a neighbouring thicket, where he had his will of them. Soon afterwards the Penitents became aware that their sacrifices no longer possessed their former efficacy, and that their power was no more the same as before. After a period of pious contemplation they now learned that it had been Siva who in the form of a Youth had seduced their wives into profligacy, and that they themselves had been led astray by Vishnu in the likeness of a Maid.
Accordingly they determined to slay Siva by means of a sacrifice.
(After many vain attempts), ashamed to have lost their honour without being able to avenge themselves, they made a last desperate effort; they united into one all their prayers and expiations, and directed them against Siva. It was the most terrible of their sacrifices, and God himself could not withstand the effects of its operation. They went forth like a flame of fire and fastened on Siva’s organs of generation and severed them from his body. Enraged with the Penitents, Siva now resolved to set the whole world in conflagration to punish them. The fire was already beginning to seize all around, when Vishnu and Brahma, on whom it was incumbent to save the living creatures in the world, thought of means to put a stop to it. Brahma took the form of a pedestal(?) and Vishnu that of the female organs of generation, and in this way copied Siva’s organs of generation, and thereby the universal conflagration was stayed. Siva suffered himself to be appeased by their prayers, and promised not to burn up the world, if men would pay divine honours to the dissevered organs.”
Now if we consider this myth, as related here, more closely, we can scarcely avoid the suspicion that it is one of those that in later times were fabricated in many forms and foisted in as genuine. For it is entirely adapted to explain the origin of the Venereal disease in a way that leaves little to be desired; for which reason it was used by Schaufus as the basis of his argument that the Venereal disease was introduced into Europe from India. But on the other hand this particular story is so accordant with the ancient creed of the Hindoos in general that, if it is of later origin, it must have been put together with the assistance of older legends. The continued union with the god, the power which the Penitents owed to him, was connected with purity of heart, with avoidance of sensuality70; directly they indulged in the latter, they were deprived of the divine influence, just as in the Mosaic legend resulted from the Fall of Man. This is one part of the legend,—manifestly a double one, while the other includes the punishment of the being who wrought this profanation. His genitals were destroyed by burning, which was attacking the World (i.e. men through the women seduced by Siva?), and ceased only through the prayers of the Penitents, which again became efficacious; thereupon the organs thus happily made sound again were suspended as thank-offerings in the temple of the god.
It would seem then that it was the sickness of the male genitals which gave occasion for their consecration and worship; and this is so far not inconsistent with reason, as the external position of the sexual parts in the male make every affection and injury perceptible at once with but little trouble, while the female organs lie in a more concealed situation. So that to the present day diseases of the male genitals are far more precisely known and appreciated than those of the female.
Should the enquirer push his search for an explanation further still, he might, arguing from what is said as to Vishnu’s having copied Siva’s sexual organs that had been blighted by the fire under the form of female genitals, allege a sort of natural cause for the conflagration, to wit the suggestion of a mode of cure which was frequently recommended and practised in the Middle Ages, when persons thought to drive away the clap by coition with virgins. But this is surely nothing else than an explanation of the Lingam71 superimposed on the symbol of the Juni, the feminine principle, in the form of the triangle, which Böttiger holds to be identical with the navel-stone of the Paphian goddess.
F. G. Klein72 professes to have proved from annals of Malabar that long before the discovery of the West Indies Venereal disease was known in the East Indies, for the Malabar physicians Sangarasiar and Alessianambi, who lived more than nine hundred years ago, and other physicians even before them, make mention he says of the Disease and its cure by means of Mercury. But in Antiquity affections of the genitals must have certainly been rarities amongst the inhabitants of India, for the Greeks73 count them amongst the longlived peoples, as owing to their moderation they were subject to few diseases. Again the climate of India is by no means to be considered as a factor favourable to the disease, Munro74 assuring us that simple herbs and moderate mode of life make the Hindoo recover, when no European could fail to succomb.
§ 7.
Whether the Phallus ritual in Egypt, where it is supposed to have arisen from the generative organs of Osiris cut off by Typho, have an Indian origin or no, it is impossible to decide75. But that it existed is certain, for not only are miniature Phalli often found with Mummies, but it was also portrayed in the Temple of Karnak76; and Herodotus77 mentions it, and adds at the same time that in the statutes the Phalli were movable. Perhaps from it was developed in part the cult of Mendes, of which we shall speak later. Although Herodotus78 declares that the Egyptians were the first people who had forbidden the accomplishment of coition in the temples, yet Strabo79 writes that they dedicated to Zeus the fairest and best-born maidens, whom the Greeks called Pallades, and compelled them to give themselves to men until their menstruation began for the first time, whereupon they were married.
As regards Greece on the contrary there is scarcely a doubt that the worship of Bacchus, and with it the Phallic ritual80, was transplanted to that country from India. To explain the occasion of this introduction there is a legend related in the highest degree worthy of attention in connection with the history of affections of the genitals. It is told by Natalis Comes81 in the following terms:
“Fuerunt et Phallica in Dionysi honorum instituta, quae apud Athenienses agebantur, apud quos primus Pegasus ille Eleutheriensis Bacchi cultum instituit, in quibus cantabant quem ad modum Deus hic morbo Athenienses liberavit et quem ad modum multorum bonorum auctor mortalibus extitit. Fama est enim quod Pegaso imagines Dionysi ex Eleutheris civitate Boeotiae in Atticam regionem portante Athenienses Deum neglexerunt neque, ut mos erat, cum pompa acceperunt: quare Deus indignatus pudenda hominum morbo infestavit, qui erat illis gravissimus: tunc eis ab oraculo, quo pacto liberari possent petentibus, responsum datum est: solum esse remedium malorum omnium, si cum honore et pompa Deum recepissent; quod factum fuit. Ex ea re tum privatim tum publice lignea virilia thyrsis alligantes per eam solennitatem gestabant. Fuit enim Phallus vocatum membrum virile. Alii Phallum ideo consecratum Dionyso putarunt, quia sit autor creditus generationis.”
(There were Phallic rites too established in honour of Dionysus, (these were observed among the Athenians; for it was at Athens that the far-famed Pegasus first established the worship of Eleutherian Bacchus)82, at which men chanted hymns telling how the god freed the Athenians from a plague, and how he was the giver of many good gifts to mortals. For the story relates that Pegasus brought the images of Dionysus from Eleutherae, a city of Boeotia, to the land of Attica; but the Athenians slighted the god, and did not, as was the wont, receive him with a procession. Wherefore the god was wroth, and afflicted the men’s private parts with a disease that was most grievous to them. So they consulted the oracle, asking in what way they might be freed from the plague, and received the answer: there was one only remedy for all their ills, viz. that they should welcome the god with due honour and fitting procession. And this they did accordingly. And in commemoration thereof they used to bind virilia (male generative organs) of wood to the thyrsi (Bacchic staves), and carry them thus at the solemnity in question; and this was done both privately and publicly. For Phallus is the name given to a man’s privy member. Others again considered that it was consecrate to Dionysus for this reason, because he was deemed the author of procreation).
Still more striking is the legend which the same author, Natalis Comes83, gives of the introduction of Priapus worship into Lampsacus, though it bears so great a resemblance to the preceding that the one might almost be thought to have been taken from the other. Aphrodité, he says, on the occasion of Bacchus’84 progress to India was made pregnant by him, and on her return to Lampsacus was brought to bed of Priapus, whose deformity was caused by the goddess Juno85, who afforded succour to the mother at the time of his birth:
“Deinde, cum adolevisset (Priapus) pergratusque foret Lampsacenis mulieribus, Lampsacenorum decreto ex agro Lampsaceno exulavit.—Fuerunt qui memoriae prodiderint Priapum fuisse virum Lampsacenum, qui cum haberet ingens instrumentum et facile paratum plantandis civibus, gratissimus fuerit mulieribus Lampsacenis. Ea causa postmodo fuisse dicitur, ut Lampsacenorum omnium ceterorum invidiam in se converterit, ac demum eiectus fuerit ex ipsa insula. At illud facinus aegerrime ferentibus mulieribus et pro se deos precantibus, post cum nonnullis interiectis temporibus Lampsacenos gravissimus pudendorum membrorum morbus invasisset, Dodonaeum oraculum adeuntes percunctati sunt an ullum esset eius morbi remedium. His responsum est: morbum non prius cessaturum, quam Priapum in patriam revocassent. Quod cum fecissent, templa et sacrificia illi statuerunt, Priapumque hortorum Deum esse decreverunt.”
(Subsequently when he—Priapus—had come to man’s estate, and was now exceedingly pleasing to the women of Lampsacus, by a decree of the Lampsacenes he was exiled from the territory of Lampsacus.—Some there are to tell the tradition that Priapus was a man of Lampsacus who had a huge “instrument” ready and willing for the making of new citizens, and who on that account was most pleasing to the Lampsacene women. Wherefore it is said afterwards to have come about that he incurred the envy and hatred of all the rest of the men of Lampsacus, and eventually was expelled from the island altogether. But this was a disaster that the women most bitterly regretted; so they prayed to the gods to help them, and after some interval of time had elapsed a most grievous disease of the private parts attacked the men of Lampsacus. Then they reported to the oracle of Dodona, and enquired of the god if there were any remedy for this plague. The reply was to the effect that the disease would not cease till they had recalled Priapus to his native land. This they did; and furthermore built temples and established sacrifices in his honour, and decreed that Priapus should be the god of gardens).86
Whatever interpretation we may give to these legends of Bacchus and Priapus, this much at any rate may be gathered from them without fear of contradiction, that affections of the male genitals at the time when they first became prevalent were taken to be the original cause of the introduction of Phallic worship,—in connection with the defloration of virgins mentioned in § 4. This is not without importance as bearing on the antiquity of the well-known Indian legend of the Lingam-ritual; and at the same time shows clearly that those affections of the genital organs must have borne a malignant character that men could not explain to themselves otherwise than as proceeding from the wrath of a Deity, a deity who on the other hand alone possessed the power to remove these ills. Another factor of great importance in connection with affections of the genitals in Antiquity, and of all the greater importance in as much as it leads us to the conclusion that resort was had for their cure not to human but to divine assistance, partly indeed depends on reasons which we shall discuss more exactly later on. However these reasons may in part be gathered at once from the following supremely important poem in the Priapeia87, to which de Jurgenew first called attention in his Dissertation, p. 11, but without communicating it in its entirety:
Voti solutio.
Cur pictum memori sit in tabella
Membrum quaeritis unde procreamur?
Cum penis mihi forte laesus esset,
Chirurgique manum miser timerem,
Diis me legitimis, nimisque magnis
Ut Phoebo puta, filioque Phoebi
Curatum dare mentulam verebar.
Huic dixi, fer opem, Priape, parti,
Cuius tu, pater, ipse par videris:[88]
Qua salva sine sectione facta,
Ponetur tibi picta, quam levaris,
Parque consimilisque concolorque.
Promisit fore: mentulam movit
Pro nutu deus et rogata fecit.
Paying a Vow.
(Why, you ask, is portrayed on the tablet the member whereby we are begotten? When, as it befell, my penis was damaged, and like a wretched coward I dreaded the Surgeon’s hand, I was afraid to entrust myself and the cure of my organ to the great official gods, that were too high for me, such I mean as Phoebus and Phoebus’ son. “To the member, I said, do thou, Priapus, give aid,—the member that thou art fashioned in the likeness of88. Then when it has been healed without the knife, a painted image of the part thou has relieved shall be dedicated to thee,—a match, a perfect match in form and in hue.” Thus he made his vow; the god nodded his penis in token of assent, and answered his prayers.)
This poem, whoever its author may have been89, testifies most explicitly that the Poet’s genital organs were seriously affected (by Phimosis and Ulcers?), that he from fear (timerem) of the Surgeon’s knife, from shame (verebar) before the regular physician in view of the part affected and of the way in which he had got the disease, had recourse to prayer and vow before the image of Priapus, and thereupon happily recovered without medical assistance!
The veneration of Priapus was pretty well universal in Italy, as the Roman poets teach us, and equally so the Phallic worship, of which the frequent representations of the Phallus that we find at Pompeii bear witness; in fact the latter, as Knight shows, maintained itself in connection with the veneration of Saints Cosmus and Damian down to the last Century at Isernia. The just quoted Poem from the Priapeia might perhaps serve to afford us an indication as to how the Phallus ritual has come to be connected with these Christian Saints; for probably patients attacked by the Venereal disease prayed to them, just as the Romans did to Priapus. Possibly examples of such cures by the saints in question are found in the “Acta Sanctorum Bollandi”. (Bollandist Lives of the Saints),—under Sept. 27.; but we are not able to consult the book. These Saints however were not the only ones that were venerated in the Middle Ages in the same way as the Priapus of the Ancients. In France unfruitful wives used to pray to St. Guerlichon, in Normandy to St. Giles, in Anjou to St. René, in connection with whom they practised rites which Stephanus declares himself ashamed to specify90.
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