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&at night the penis broke through his stomach Many a prince came to visit her, but when they
and entered his wifes vagina. He got up and went slept with her she cut off their organs with the two
to her. But the cut-off penis stuck on to his own teeth in hervagina, and many a prince went home
and made it doubleinlength; it was so long that it without his penis. At last came two friends, a
killed the girl.
Rajas son and an Asur boy. The young prince
with the girl and his penis was cut off. He
6. An Agaria story from the Dindori Tah- slept
came out and told his friend. The Asur boy went
sil, Mandla District:
to his smithy and made an iron penis hollow inside;
There were twelve sons of a Dhoba. One day this he fitted over his own organ. When he went to
they met an Agaria and his wife in the forest. The the girl, he pushed this instrument violently into
Agaria had a wound on his penis caused by the her vagina; the teeth closed upon it and broke. He
bamni insect which gradually devours that organ. pulled them out and threw them down; they stuck
The Dhoba boys told him to dip his penis in boiling in the ground and turned into kurkutti roots. These
oil; he did so and it was burnt off.Then the Dhoba roots do not dry all the year round, and your teeth
boys said to the girl, You marry us, as your stick in them. They are the roots of a girls vagina.
husband is no use now. She said that if any one Then the Asur. boy said, Mend my friends penis
of them could exhaust her, she would go with or Ill kill you. She mended it and married the
them. They sent the eldest boy first to her. As he Asur. For the prince she got her fathers brothers
took her, blood flowed from his penis. Ten others daughter as wife.
went and each was defeated. At last only the
8. A Muria story from Koelari, Bastar
youngest boy remained. He opened her vagina
State:
with his fingers and looked in. As he did so, from
the girls mouth a tiny thin snake emerged and
There was a Rakshasas daughter who had teeth
tried to bite him. Happily, the boy killed it in time. in her vagina. She used to live mostly as a tigress
When the boy killed the snake the girl fainted, but and kept ten or twelve tigers with her. When she
he threw black and yellow rice over her; she saw a man, she would turn into a pretty girl, seduce
him, cut offhis penis, eat it herself and give the rest
recovered and he carried her off.
The other brothers were left with their wounds. of his body to her tigers. One day she met seven
Presently from every penis there grew a new little brothers in the jungle and married the eldest SO
penis on one side. They went to the youngest boy that she could sleep with them all. After some time
and he told his wife. She said, I have a sister. she took the eldest boy to where her tigers lived,
Let them go to her, and they will recover. After a made him lie with her, cut off his penis, ate it and
long search in the forest they found the girl and gave his body to the tigers. In the same way she
each boy went to her. She had teeth in her vagina killed six of the brothers till only the youngest was
and cut off the penis of every boy as he went to her. left. When his turn came, the god who helped him
When the youngest brother went there, he looked sent h h a dream. Ifyou go with the girl, said the
at her vagina and saw the two teeth like knives god, make an iron tube, put it into her vagina and
that clashed together. He pushed a stick into the break her teeth. The boy did this, and when the
place, broke off the teeth and ground them up. tigers came for his body, he climbed into a mango
He put a little of the powder on the penis of each tree and made himself very small. The tigers chased
of his brothers and they grew again. The brothers him and girl became too very angry. He cursed her,
killed the girl and. cooked her flesh in a pot. But Let nothing but your face remain! And so it was;
as it was cooking there came a voice from the girls she became a Chamgedri, which eats, excretes,
flesh saying, As I died, so will you die. And urinates and copulates through one and the same
when the brothers lifted the lid ofthe pot to remove aperture. One of the mangoes opened and the boy
the meat, the smell went into their nostrils andthey crept inside. A parrot carried off the mango to a
Rajas palace. It dropped it, the fruit broke open,
fell dead.
the boy emerged, and after various adventures
7. An Asur story from Pathar, Chhuri married the Rajas daughter.
Zamindari, east Bilaspur :
9. A Korku story from Dedhpani, BhainsA Rakshasa was in love with a humaqgirl; from
their congress was born a daughter who built the dehi Tahsil, Betul District :
Two friends set out to find themselves wives.
town qf Dantinpur (the Tooth City). She declared
that whoever would sleep with her for one night After they had married they met one day, and the
could many her and be the Raja of that place. first friend said, How is your wifesvagina? Very
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deceitful, said the other. And how is yours? He returned home angry and miserable. He tied
Mine is very faithful, said the first man. The up his penis in his loin-clotb into a little bundle,
second friend went to the village and distributed showed it to his wife and said, Here are some fish.
sweets in honour of this faithful wife. But there Come and take them. Shecaught his penis, pulled
was a man there called Thaggu. He did not believe it off and threw it in the fire. The boy died and the
the story and decided to put the matter to the penis jumped phit phit phit phit in the fire and so
test. He was a good-looking fellow, so he went to jumped into the girls mouth and then out through
the house of the faithful wife and persuaded her to her vagina. She too died. The penis went jumping
lie with him. Above her vagina was a saw, and along to where the girls mother was cooking fish.
with this she cut off his penis. He shouted with It got into the pot and when the old woman stirred
pain and the husband came crying, Whats the it jumped out. The mother thought it was a fish
matter? Your wifes cut off my penis. Of and tried to catch it. But it went into her mouth
course, said the husband. Thats why I said she and out through the vaginaand killed her too. Then
was so faithful. After that everyone in the village came a boy and caught it in a basket. He tied it up
used to laugh at Thaggu.
with a bit of string and kept it in his pocket.
10. A Doma story from a wandering minstrel who toured through south Chhattisgarh.
Recorded in Bastar:
An old woman once forgave a monkey a beating
and it became her devoted servant. After a t+e it
brought a wife for the womans son. This wife was
the daughter of a Rakshasin and had teeth in her
vagina. But the boy also had teeth sticking out on
either side of his penis. After marriage the boy
and his wife slept together in a corner of their hut.
When the boys penis entered his wifes vagina, the
teeth bit her so that she died. But at the same time
the teeth in her own vagina cut off his penis. The
boy cried, 0mother, mother! What has happened
to me? and he showed his bleeding penis toehis
mother. The mother wept looking at the dead body
of her daughter-in-law and cried, 0 monkey,
monkey! The monkey went to find another girl
and brought her to the house.
The boy married this new girl. He thought,
Here am I without a penis, what am I to do?
There were still teeth there in the place of the penis
and when the boy went to his new wife she died
also. Again he wept, Omother, mother! What has
happenedto your son? Once again the old woman
sent the monkey to find a bride for the boy. The
monkey ran hard through the jungle and quickly
brought another girl and when the boy went to her,
he killed her also with the teeth in the place where
the penis should have been. At this-the monkey
grew very angry, and when it brought a fourth
girl, it piled a lot of wood round the house, and the
boy and his bride with his mother were burnt to
death.
11. A Bharia story from Rewa State:
A youth found himself in trouble at home
because he was often impotent. One day he went
to catch fish, but could not even do this properly.
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I have included in the above material everything which seems to me to have a bearing on
the fundamental problems of the Vagina Dentata legend. Not all the stories and dreams are
about teeth, but they all testify to the wide-.
spread belief in. the dangers of sexual intercourse and the primitive dread of losing any
part of the body. What are we to make of this
evidence? How did the legend arise? What
deep-rooted human fears and nightmares does
it symbolizs? Even more difficult, what are
we to say of the reverse of the legend, the
stories of the Penis Aculeatus and the danger
to the woman?
These questions are for the psycho-analyst;
it is the business of the ethnographer and fieldworker to collect and publish his material
which can then be interpreted by those who
have greater access to the literature and clinical
records of the subject. The ethnographer in the
field should have no theories, for these may
unconsciously colour his facts. And indeed on
this subject, I myself have no theories and
have come to no conclusions. But it may be
convenient for the general reader if I suggest
certain ways in which this very remarkable
material may be interpreted.
In the first place these stories and dreams
witness to that element of cruelty in sex which
has so often attracted the notice of psychiatrists. Sadism is not wholly unnatural; it has
its roots in normal, if rather primitive, sexuality. We may take an eloquent statement of
this point of view from Briffault. Lions and
tigers, he says, which furnish favourite
examples of mating among Carnivora, commonly kill and, devour their mates.* He
quotes instances of this to show how the
danger of allowing the Sexes to aSSOCiate is a
commonplace of menageries. With both the
male and the female, love or sexual attraction, is originally and pre-eminently
sadic; it is positjvely gratified by the infiction ofpain; it is as cruel as hunger. That is
the direct, fundamental, and longest established sentiment connected with the sexual
impulse. The male animal captures, mauls and
bites the female, who in turn uses her teeth
and claws freely, and the lovers issue from the
sexual combat bleeding and mangled. Crustaceans usually lose a limb or two in the encounter. All mammals without exception use
their teeth on these occasions. Pallas describes
the mating of camels: as soon as impregnation has taken place, the female, with a vicious
snarl, turns round and attacks the male with
her teeth, and the latter is driven away in
terror.. . .The congress of the sexes is assimilated by the impulse to hurt, to shed blood, to
kill, to the encounter between a beast of prey
and its victim and all distinction between the
two is not infrequently lost. It would be more
accurate to speak of the sexual impulse as pervading nature with a yell of crue!ty than with
a hymn of love. The circumspection which is
exhibited by many female animals in yieldin3
to the male, the haste which is shown by most
to separate as soon as impregnation has taken
place, -would appear to be due in a large
measure to the danger attending such relations
rather than to coyness.?
This desire to inflict pain becomes in human
beings the sadistic perversion. It is generally
said that while male sadists avoid, female
* BrifTault, The Mothers (London, 1923, I,
p. 118.
t Ibid. p. 119.
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VERRIER ELWIN
*
t
449
custom of the people to engage some other cavernous bodies of the invading penis. In
man to have the wifes maidenhood. And
ther ben certain men in every Town that serven
of non other thing; and thei clepen hem Cadeberiz, that is to seyne, the Foles of Wanhope.
For thei of the Contree holden it so gret a
thing and so perilous, for to have the Maydenhode of a Woman, that hem semethe that thei
that haven first the Maydenhode, puttethe him
in aventure ofhis Lif. The woman must
never again speak to the man that performs
this office. The reason given for this custom is
very germane to our present discussion. Of
old tyme, men hadden ben dede for deflourynge of Maydenes that hadden Serpentes
in hire Bodyes, that stongen men upon hire
Zerdes, that thei dyeden anon.
In the Indian stories recorded above, there
are several in which the danger arises from a
snake living in the vagina, the belly or the
mouth. Penzer also remarks that apart from
the custom of employing proxies for the first
night of marriage, there has always been a
curious connection between snakes and intercourse.* In India the snake is often represented as encircling the Zinga. In a paper read
before the Asiatic Society, J. H. Rivett-Carnact
refers to certain paintings in Nagpur and says
that the positions of the women with the
snakes were of the most indecent description
and left no doubt that, so far as the idea represented in these sketches was concerned, the
cobra was regarded as the phallus.
Are we then to suppose that the Vagina
Dentata legends arose out of the fear of defloration and the hymeneal blood? There is
much that is attractive in the idea. The physical
distress of both man and woman might well
suggest teeth in the vagina or a thorn on the
penis. A Konyak Naga told Dr C. von FiirerHaimendorf that the first intercourse with a
virgin was like walking barefoot over sharppointed flints. A girl who was being forced
into premature intercourse might well so exercise the constrictor cunni as to burst the
* Penzer, op. cit. 2, 307.
t RoughNotes on the Snake Symbol in India
in J. R. Antbop. SOC.Ben& 1879.
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VERRIER ELWIN
antagonism. Penis-envy may undoubtedly victim shouts with pain and makes an approplay its part in what I believe is an essentially priate demonstration, but I do not think that
we can trace the stories to the pain caused by
complex situation.
Much more plausible is the suggestion that a urethritis, though this undoubtedly is a
sexual intercourse is regarded as dangerous contributory factor to the psychological situabecause of the dread of menstrual blood. For tion that produced them.
We may finally note that during intercourse
a man to have intercourse with a woman
during her menstrual period is regarded not men are specially subject to the attacks of
only as aesthetically disgusting-It is dirty, witches. Such an attack may be symbolized
it is sinful, it has a bad smell, as a Baiga once by the Muria story of the rat which bit off the
told me-but also as highly dangerous for the blacksmiths penis and carried it home to its
man. Worms may attack his feet and he may hole-a significant detail which may well reget an acute attack of gonorrhoea. It is of present the witchs well-known desire to
course well known that a urethritis may be attract all the libido of the neighbourhood to
excited by the toxic character of the menstrual herself.
We must now briefly consider a much more
,discharges or by intercourse with a woman
subject to chronic leucorrhoea. The danger is fundamental cause for these stories, I mean
not only physical; any infringement of the the manifest or latent fear of castration and
menstrual taboo is visited with supernatural impotence which is said to be preient in every
penalties.* In dreams Nos. 1 and 2 of this primitive or civilized human being. Let us
paper there is an obvious reference to venereal hear a psycho-analyst who has made a careful
disease. Penzer discusses the possibility of study of anthropology; in quoting him I d o
syphilis being the origin of the Poison-damsel not mean to suggest that I follow him in all
motif, but he concludes that the time the his conclusions. The one great terror in the
disease takes to show itself is greatly against life of primitive mankind, says Roheim, is
its use in a story where the effect has to be the same that plays such a fundamental part in
immediate and causing practically instan- individual neurosis: the dread of castration.*
taneous.death.t
It seems, he says again, that the fundamental
But in our stories and dreams from central fear of savages is connected with the idea of a
India, the bite of the vagina does not always part being separated from the whole.? This
cause death and is often curable. Moreover, fear is not associated with some catastrophic
Penzer was thinking chiefly of syphilis which disaster effected by an enemy, but is inherent
has an incubation period of some three weeks in the very act of coitus and the loss of semen.
and which in any case does not resemble a Actually it is the seminal fluid which leaves
bite. Gonorrhoea or some other form of ure- the body, but there is an unconscious tendency
thritis more closely resembles the sharp, acute, to dread the total cutting off of the penis, i.e.
sudden bite of a tooth or serpents sting. But castration, as the inevitable consequence of
it is significant that in many of the central coitus. Following the recent researches of Dr
Indian stories there is little emphasis on the Ferenczi, we may regard this as the survival of
pain caused by the amputation of the penis. the archaic multiplication by fission, the phase
In Story 3 the victim makes no outcry, in of development in which the propagation of
Story 4 he does not even notice what has the species was also the death of the inhappened, in Story 5 he does not seem greatly dividual. 1
It is noticeable that in several of our stories
affected, and in Story 12 he hardly realizes his
fate at first. In other stories, of course, the castration is associated with death, an equation
* I have recorded many of these in The Baku,
* G. Roheim, Animism, Ma&,
and the Divine
-.
p. 211.
King (London, 1930), p. 55.
t Ibid. p. 4.
4 Ibid. p. 25.
t P e e r , op. cit. 2, 310.
45 1
THE VAGINA DENTATA LEGEND
to Roheim-is
common conjugation, there is a narcissisticallyresentsd
which-according
throughout the world. Some of his remarks
about this form an interesting parallel to the
Indian stories and I will quote him in full, in
order to illustrate one line of possible interpretation of our stories.
The hero of the folk-tale has frequently to pass
through crushingrocks or smitingdoor and usually
he does not come quite unscathed from the ordeal.
The doves fly through the Symplegades to bring
Zeus ambrosia, but the last is always crushed by
the relentless rocks., . .In a folktale of the Tarantschi, a Tartar tribe in Central Asia, we find the hero
passing through the moving rocks on his way to his
sister-wife. The tail of his camel is cut off.
If we know what the moving door means we
shall understand the missing tail. The motif is very
frequent in tlie mythology of north-westherica,
and its unmnscious meaning can be studied there
with advantage. The Chilcotin and Shuswap
tradition of LittleDog containsa series of episodes
which evidently all have the same meaning.. . .
Little Dog and his children come to a house with
a great stone door. Inside the house sits a woman
who is weaving a basket. Suddenly, while they are
talking to her they notice the stone door beginning
to shut q d Little Dog quickly places his staff so
that it holds the door open. The boys slip through,
and Little Dog after them, but when he pulls the
magic staffout behind him his little finger is caught
by .the door and the end cut off. Now they come
to a woman whose vagina is full of teeth. She
wants our hero to have intercourse with her, but
he first inserts his magic staff into the vagina and
breaks her teeth. Then he and all his boys cohabit
with her.. . .
If the door is the vagina, the pigeons tail or
the little finger snapped off can only mean the
penis.. . .The passage of the soul is coitus, the soul
itself the semen, yet at the gate of the other world
we find castration. But primitive views on dejith
are modelled on the castration anxiety, and therefore if by castration we mean death it is natural
enough that this should be the preliminary to the
entry into heaven.
If there should still be any doubt our meaning
is made perfectly clear by the (Maori) myth of
Mad, crushed between the opening and closing
legs, in the vagina of his ancatrm Great Mother
Night.*
Another significant link with castration in
our tales is the notion of eating. In the act of
* Roheim, op. cit. p. 53.
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