Secondary Tales of the Two Great Epics

Author(s): Rajendra I Nanavati
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Secondary Tales of the two Great Epics of a horse with a lion's tail and with a straight, and spirally twisted horn".47 It will be noted that the first explanation hints at the unicorn-legend, while the second explanation is the later development of the animal. The standard legend of the Unicorn runs as follows: "The Unicorn, something between a horn and a kid, is amazingly powerful for his size. He has one long sharp conically shaped horn on his brow. He cannot be taken by force, but only through the following trick: The hunters. lead a virgin, into the woods, and as soon as the Unicorn smells and sees her runs to her and lays his horn in her lap. She fondles him until he falls asleep. Then the hunters approach and either capture him and lead him to the palace of the king, or kill him, cut off his horn, and bring it to the king." Noel Conti, sixteenth century Italian writer, puts it rather bluntly: "The wild beast desires the virgin's sexual embrace," A fifteenth century tapestry, placed now in the historic museum of Basle, Switzerland, shows a bare-breasted virgin caressing with her hand the single. spirally twisted horn on the head of a Unicorn. (We may note here, that though this Unicorn is supposed to be originally from India, where it was identified with the Indian rhinoceros, and then to assimilate various characterstics of the snakes, horses, antelopes, goats and asses, he, as depicted in the tapestry of Basle Historic Museum, very much appears to be like a deer.) In a Far-Eastern version he is seduced, loses hist powers and is taken to the royal palace with the girl riding him. The Tibetan version is noteworthy in that it puts a number of different aspects of the tale together. According to it, the Unicorn "is first angered by his son who breaks his (the Unicorn's) vessels which contain water, and then, in his fury, he stops the rain in the land and causes a drought. The daughter of the king intoxicates and seduces him; and as long as he has intercourse with her it rains thereby securing the fertility of the land."48
Two things go to prove that all these versions have sprung from the same origin. One is the extremely peculiar characteristic of the possesion of a single horn on the forehead either by a sage or an animal. The second is his seduction by a female - either virgin or a courtesan or a nymph. His ignorance of the female sex in Indian versions is introduced to emphasise his great strength of penance, his great chastity, as well as to rationalise his seduction by a member of the female sex which, in normal conditions, would be a contradiction of chastity. The motif of the sage's ignorance of the female sex thus serves to combine rationally two contradictory details of strong chastity and seduction. In the continental versions, the Unicorn is merely an animal acting instinctively, and therefore, no contradiction is felt in its being a symbol of chastity and purity and at the same time its feeling amorously attracted towards the virgin.
The first characterstic shows that the name of the sage itself is symbolically significant. The name of the sage which is appropriate to his characteristic of possessing a deer-horn is a phallic symbol, Horns have had sexual significance since the dawn 47 Random House Dictionary, p. 1552.
48 "The Unicorn as a Phallic Symbol", David Bar - Illan, in EROS. Ed. Ralph Ginzburg, Autumn 1962, Vol. I, No. 3, p. 30