Alfred Russel Wallace : Alfred Wallace : A. R. Wallace :
Russel Wallace : Alfred Russell Wallace (sic)
Comments on Phallic Worship (S106: 1865)
Editor Charles H. Smith's Note: A short comment offered in discussion of a paper by E. Sellon
titled 'Linga Puja, Or Phallic Worship in India,' read at the 17 January 1865 meeting of the
Anthropological Society of London. The comment was later printed in Volume Two of the
Society's Journal series. Original pagination indicated within double brackets. To link directly
to this page, connect with: http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S106.htm
[[p. cxviii]] Mr. Wallace said, that from what he had seen in his travels among savage
nations, he was inclined to think that the practice of making indecent figures was connected with
race character. Through the whole of the Valley of the Amazons he saw numerous figures cut on
the rocks, but among them there was nothing indecent, nor any indication of phallic worship.
Among the Malays also he saw [[p. cxix]] nothing of the kind, and those people he considered
possessed similar mental characteristics to the South American tribes. But in the Papuan races
the case was very different. These people resemble those of India, and in their representations of
the human figure the parts of generation were always prominently indicated. He referred to
Dorey, in New Guinea, a representation of which village is given in a recent work by Sir Charles
Lyell, as being an illustration of the Swiss lake-dwellings. The largest building in the place, a
council-house, was decorated with human figures, in which the parts of generation, both male
and female, are very large; and in the front of the house there were the figures of a man and
woman in the act of copulation. That was the grossest example of rudimentary phallic worship
that he had seen. Whether similar representations were to be found in Africa he was unable to
say.
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