Note 130.3 — Chapter V · THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN SAGAS.

Impregnation, however, by an unusual part of the body is often attended by the inconvenience of birth by other than the natural exit. In the Sanskrit books kings are mentioned as born from hand, or right arm, or from the thigh or the top of the head, just as Bacchus was born from the thigh, and Athene from the head, of Zeus. The divine Parvati herself was conceived by a look and spit forth upon the world. The old French poem already referred to represents Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, as born from her father Phanuel’s thigh, which he touched with a knife after cutting an apple, and thus caused it to conceive.130.3 Buddha, in the form of a white elephant, entered his mother’s right side, and from her right side he was born.131.1 Cases like these are frequent in cosmogonic myths which we need not discuss.