[556] The passage cited before.
[557] i. 3, 22.—In Russian stories, we frequently find the incident of a serpent, or witch, who endeavours to file, or pierce through, with her tongue the iron doors which enclose the forge in which the pursued hero has taken refuge; he, from within, helped by divine blacksmiths, draws the witch's tongue in with red-hot pincers and causes her death; he then opens the gates of the forge, which represents now the red sky of evening, now the red sky of morning.
[558] i. 792, et seq.—Cfr. also the second Esthonian tale, where the young hero, in the kingdom of the serpents, drinks milk in the cup of the king of the serpents himself.
[559] Mbh. i. 5008, et seq.
[560] i. 1283-1295.
[561] v. 4, 23.
[562] Cfr. Râmâyaṇam, i. 46, and Mahâbhâratam, i. 1053, 1150.—In the Râmâyaṇam (vi. 26), the arrows of the monsters are said to bind like serpents; the bird Garuḍas appears and the serpents untie themselves, the fetters are loosed; Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, supposed to be dead, rise again stronger than before.
[563] As we have seen that mandaras is equivalent to mantharas, a name of the tortoise which, according to the cosmogonic legend, sustains the weight of the mountain, or enormous stick which produces the mountain, so Anantas, in another Hindoo legend (cfr. Mbh. i. 1587-1588) sustains the weight of the world.—The rod of pearls which when placed in fat enables the young prince to obtain whatever he wishes for, seems to have the same originally phallical meaning as the mandaras; it is the king of the serpents who presents it to the young prince. The fat may, in the mythical sky, be the milk of the morning dawn, or the rain of the cloud, or the snee, or the dew; as soon as the thunderbolt touches the fat of the clouds, or of the snee, or as soon as the sunbeam touches the milk of the dawn, the sun, riches, and fortune come forth.
[564] The coitus is also called a game of serpents in the Tuti-Name. Preller and Kuhn have already proved the phallical signification of the caduceus (tripetêlon) of Hermês, represented now with two wings, now with two serpents. The phallical serpent is the cause of the fall of the first man.
[565] Vinatâ is also the name of a disease of women; and, as far as we can judge from the passage of the Mahâbhâratam (iii. 14,480), which refers to it, it is the malignant genius who destroys the fœtus in the womb of the pregnant mother. He is defined as çakunigrâhî, properly the seizer of the bird. Kaçyapas, the universal phallos, the Praǵâpatis, certainly unites himself to Vinatâ in the form of a phallos-bird, as to Kadrû in that of a phallos-serpent.