_F. G. Klein_[72] 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 Greeks[73] 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, _Munro_[74] assuring us that simple herbs and moderate mode of life make the Hindoo recover, when no European could fail to succomb.
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 decide[75]. 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 Karnak[76]; and Herodotus[77] 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 _Herodotus_[78] declares that the Egyptians were the first people who had forbidden the accomplishment of coition in the temples, yet _Strabo_[79] 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 ritual[80], 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 Comes_[81] 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.”