i8 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



having been embraced by a man. 1 In a Hopi story a 

 young woman is fecundated by wet clay while she is 

 kneading and trampling it to prepare it for making 

 pottery. 2 Servius commenting on the ^Eneid has 

 preserved the legend that Calculus the founder of 

 Praeneste, was conceived by a spark that leaped into 

 his mother's bosom. In India we hear of a woman 

 who was fertilised by happening to sit down on a rock 

 on which the childless Rajd Bhishma had lain and 

 slept. 3 



More direct masculine action is sometimes invoked. 

 The Buddhist Birth-stories comprise a narrative to 

 which we shall have occasion to refer in another 

 connection, wherein a childless queen is impregnated 

 by a divine being by means of the touch of his thumb. 4 

 Sagas from New Guinea and British Columbia repre- 

 sent impregnation as effected by the finger. 5 The 

 saliva of the lynx in a tale told by the Indians of 

 Thompson River falling on a girl's navel causes 

 conception. 6 The Todas tell how an eagle fertilised a 

 woman by sitting on her head. In another story a 

 Toda divinity knocks a woman on the head with an 

 iron stick which he habitually carries, and at once she 

 becomes pregnant. 7 In a Balochi tale a remarkable 

 boy is begotten, as he himself subsequently assures 

 his mother's husband, by the shadow of AH, of whom 

 the Balochis are devoted followers. The lady's 

 husband was away at Delhi with his army. As she 

 was one day washing her head a shadow passed in 



1 Dorsey, Wichita, 172. 2 Voth, 155. 



3 N. Ind. N. and Q. Hi. 141 (par. 297). 



4 Jdtaka y v. 144 (Story No. 531). 



6 J. A. I. xix. 465 ; Boas, Ind. Sag. 198. 



Teit, 37 7 Rivers, 196, 191. 



