Downward Pointing Triangle 1--Yoni---Harappa

                                          

The Downward Pointing Triangle Series

Harappan Dancing girl

The downward pointing triangle has been a sign for the female genitals for millennia. I’ll start with an image that Sir John Marshall, the British archeologist who excavated Harappa and Mohenjodaro, wrongly called ‘the dancing girl.’ She is not a dancing girl at all, but merely a nude, confidently posed young female. Marshall, with his British Puritanical point of view, saw such nudity and confidence with a 19^th century ‘male gaze’(and 20th and 21st) —she must have been ‘dancing’ for the enjoyment of men.

Even the Government of India, Department of Health and Family Welfare, has continued this downward triangle motif in their efforts to promote family planning/birth control. 

An image of the worship of a schematic yoni—downward pointing triangle, with clitoris shown as well—from the temple at Kamakhya in Gauhati, Assam

More to be added later....

Havan-fire pit (jan’s collections)

Kobar (childbirth traditions)

Rajasthani wall paintings

Yantra