The Talmudists assert that God cut off Adam's tail and thereof formed Eve.[1]
With this latter fable agrees the ludicrous myth of the Kikapoo Indians, related in my "Curiosities of Olden Times."
In Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium of Plato, a myth is given, that in the beginning there was a race of men of which every member was double, having two heads, four legs and four arms, and each of both sexes. This race, says he, was filled with pride, and it attempted to scale heaven. The Gods desired at once to reduce their might and punish their temerity, but did not wish to destroy the human race; consequently at the advice of Zeus, each androgyne was hewn asunder, so as to leave to each half two arms and a pair of legs, one head and a single sex.
An Indian tradition is to this effect. Whilst Brahma the creator was engaged in the production of beings, he saw Kaya (body) divide itself into two parts, of which each part was of a different sex, and thence sprang the whole human race.[2]
According to another much more explicit version, Viradi, the first man, finding his solitude intolerable, fell into the deepest sorrow; and, yearning for a companion, his nature developed into two sexes united in one. Then he separated into two individuals, but found in that separation unhappiness, for he was conscious of his imperfection; then he reunited the existence of the two portions and was happy, and from that reunion the world was peopled.[3]
In Persia, Meschia and Meschiane, the first man and the first woman, were said to have formed originally but one body; but they were cut apart, and from this voluntary reunion all men are sprung.[4]
The idea so prevalent that man without woman, or woman without man, is an imperfect being, was the cause of the great repugnance with which the Jews and other nations of the East regarded celibacy. The Rabbi Eliezer, commenting on the text "He called their name Adam" (Gen. v. 2.), laid down that he who has not a wife is not a man, for man is the recomposition of male and female into one.[5]
Bramah, says an Indian legend, being charged with the production of the human race, felt himself a prey to violent
