To go to the webpage containing links to the texts of two Tibetan folk tales (for adults), and commentary, please click here. A Tibetan folk tale: "Uncle
Tompa Sells the Penises"
Once a couple was sowing in their field. They had hired a few field hands to help them. It was lunch time. All the hands were taking lunch, including the couple who owned the field. Tibetans enjoy laughing and making fun of each other. While everyone was busy laughing, having fun, and telling dirty jokes, a very holy Lama walked by. The Lama greeted the couple with the customary Tibetan expression, "What are you doing?" The couple started to say that they were sowing seeds for their crop, but since they were right in the middle of telling dirty jokes, the answer that slipped out was, "We're sowing penises in our field." Everybody else laughed because of the slip, but the Lama was very embarrassed by their reply. So he cursed them, saying "May every seed of your grain grow as a penis!" Having uttered his curse, the Lama went on his way. At harvest time, the couple went to their field. What they saw shocked them. The field was filled with penises growing up out of the earth. They began crying. Not only were they terribly embarrassed, but, since this was their only field, they would not have any grain to live on for the next year. Naturally, so strange a story spread to villages far and wide. It happened that Uncle Tompa also heard about this weird crop. He came to see it. What he saw was really unbelievable! The poor couple's field was filled with penises of all sizes. They were protruding from the ground like mushrooms. Uncle Tompa immediately saw that the couple had a very lucrative crop on their hands. He went to the couple's home. Here he found them crying and rolling on the floor in grief. They could not bear the terrible disaster. Uncle consoled them, "No, no, please don't worry so much! I’ll sell them for you, and from that you’ll get more money than you would have gotten from your regular crop." The couple thanked Uncle Tompa for his comforting words and kind offer. Uncle asked them to bring donkeys with many empty sacks to load all the penises. They started harvesting the penises, taking them out of the ground, and they loaded the bags of penises onto the donkeys just as Uncle had instructed them to do. But the couple still did not know what Uncle had in mind, or where he was going with this embarrassing crop. Uncle Tompa left the couple's house and promised he would return within a few days. Then Uncle went directly to one of Tibet’s largest nunneries with the donkeys. As soon as he arrived in the nunnery's open courtyard, he unloaded the donkeys and let them out of the yard. He put down a few big pieces of cloth and arranged all the penises in rows according to their size. As soon as he was through, he shouted, "Anyone who wants a magic penis to fulfill all sexual desires can purchase one right now!" He shouted again and again. But he did not attract any customers until dark. When it was dark, the first customer who came to him was the Abbess of the nunnery. "What's your price for the one over there?", she asked quietly, covering her mouth with one hand, and pointing to the largest penis with her other hand. Uncle asked a great deal of money for it, but she did not mind paying the full amount. Holding it in her hand, she asked him, "How do I use this?" Uncle warned, "Well you have to keep it away from dogs and cats, because they might eat it." Then he carefully instructed her, "When you want to enjoy yourself, simply say, 'Chhu chhu.' [This is a Tibetan expression that can mean endearment or surprise.] This magic penis will come and f_ck you until you take a deep breath and sigh, 'Hu!' " The Abbess was very happy to have such a useful object in her life. Because, as everyone knows, nuns are not allowed to enjoy men. After the Abbess left, many of the other nuns came and bought the remaining penises. Uncle was very busy pricing them according to size and collecting the money. He also had to give the other nuns the careful instructions on how to use them. Before long, he had sold his entire stock. When he had sold the last one, he fetched the donkeys and went back to the couple. They were astonished to see Uncle Tompa with such a large sum of money. Now they could buy everything they needed, far more than they could have gotten for their grain. The happy couple went off to look for the holy Lama, to get him to put a curse on their field every year. In the meantime, the Abbess followed the instructions given to her by Uncle Tompa. When she called, "Chhu chhu," sure enough, the penis jumped on her and f_cked her. When she wanted it to stop, she would give out a long sigh, “Hu!”, and the penis would fall out. The Abbess enjoyed herself, and loved the Magic Penis so much that she had a special silver box made in which she kept it, wrapped in silk. She felt it was so precious in her life that she would never spend a night without it. The Abbess and the Magic Penis became inseparable. Years passed. One day the Abbess was invited to conduct a special ceremony for a rich family who lived a long distance away. The Abbess forgot to bring the silver box with her. She would have to stay there several days to perform the rituals. The first night without her Magic Penis made her very grumpy and unhappy. The next day, she told the family she did not want to stay for the whole ceremony. She explained that she must return to the nunnery that very day, because she had left a special holy object there without which, according to her religious vows, she was not allowed to spend the night. Even after she told all these lies to the family, they still insisted she stay to complete the ritual. They suggested they send their servant to pick up the needed object. If he rode a horse both ways, he could come back that same day. The Abbess finally agreed. She told the servant, "There's a silver box under my bed. You must not open it. If you do, you’ll be committing a great sin!" The servant promised to obey her. He went to the nunnery, picked up the silver box, and started back. Along the way, he wondered, "What can there be in such a precious box?" He wanted to look inside, but he was afraid he might commit a sin. After some distance, he came to a place where nobody was around. He got down from his horse and rested for a while. Soon his curiosity about what was in the silver box got the better of him. His fear of sinning abandoned him, and he opened the box. He saw something large and thick, shaped like a cylinder, wrapped in silk. He unwrapped the silk and uncovered the huge penis. Awestruck by the sight of it, he uttered in amazement, "Chhu chhu!" Immediately the penis jumped on him and looked for a hole. Since the servant was a male, the penis could find only one hole; it went in and started to f_ck. The poor servant was terrified. He cried out and aimlessly ran every which way until he was absolutely exhausted. Finally he breathed a long sigh, "Hu!", and the penis fell out. The servant got very angry. He shouted every swear word he knew at the dreaded penis. He picked up a big rock and beat the penis until it was flattened out of shape. Then he wrapped it up in the same silk, put it back in the silver box, and continued on his way. As soon as he arrived, he handed the box to the Abbess, saying he had not committed any sin. The Abbess was very happy to have it back with her. When night fell, she went to bed and called, "Chhu chhu." But the penis did not come to her as usual. She called again and again, but still it did not come. She suspected something had happened to it, so she opened the silver box and found her beloved penis beaten completely flat. All night long she could not bear the sadness of what had happened to her lover, but she could not tell anyone because it would have been humiliating for a nun. The next morning she woke up in a very sad mood. The family wanted to know what had happened to her. She told them that she was very ill. The family brought in a physician to examine her. Without saying anything, the Abbess put the beaten penis on a plate and set it in front of the physician, to see if he could examine it and bring it back to life. The physician thought that he had been served some kind of beaten meat dish. So he ate it. The Abbess died from shock. From: The Tales of Aku Tompa: The Legendary Rascal of Tibet. Retold and Translated by Rinjing Dorje. San Rafael, CA: Dorje Ling. 1975. The Tales of Aku Tompa: The Legendary Rascal of Tibet. Retold and Translated by Rinjing Dorje. Second Edition. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Arts, Institute for Publishing Arts, Inc. 1997. . |