# Placing coins on the Brides nipples wedding custom **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 8, 2006, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872 "2006-05-08T13:01:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872/21 "2006-05-09T03:05:19Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > We haven’t even established for sure whether the coins on the nipples custom is of African origin. I don’t think that we have established whether or not it is a custom at all. hh ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872/22 "2006-05-09T11:36:12Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Um, cite? No offense, but this sounds a _lot_ like the Marija Gimbutas-inspired habit of assigning gynocentric religion to pre-Indo-European people in Europe. Once again, a women-centered culture is marginalized by invading Indo-Europeans, right? > > I don’t normally doubt what you say, but this _really_ sounds like anthropology filtered through the lens of feminist ideology. Are you blind? I cited two book titles before I even got warmed up. I front-loaded my cites so that no one would respond with “Cite?” George L. Hart III is not a feminist. He’s a scholar of literature. He has no feminist agenda. This concept was found in ancient Tamil literature, as I wrote, if you were paying attention rather than knee-jerk reacting every time Johanna uses the words “ancient” and “Goddess” in the same sentence. Really, I expect better of Dopers than this. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872/23 "2006-05-09T17:58:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Are you blind? I cited two book titles before I even got warmed up. You didn’t address any of his other points. Come on – Dravidian as an African language family? Ancient Tamil culture as the source of a possible Creole custom? You’ve gotta be taking the piss – your post reads like free association. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872/24 "2006-05-09T19:08:19Z")
> [@yBeayf](#): > > Dravidian as an African language family? I agree that this is pretty entirely unsupported, although not entirely impossible, and I don’t think that Clyde Ahmad-Winters is considered a recognized authority. > [@yBeayf](#): > > Ancient Tamil culture as the source of a possible Creole custom? **Johanna** didn’t actually say that: she said, “The localization of the power of life in women’s breasts, which I found studying ancient Tamil, could explain the symbolism in the Creole ritual you noticed, if their culture used that concept.” In other words, **if** Creole culture uses the concept of the breast as a life source, in the same way that Tamil culture does, then it could have something to do with this custom. I think this all sounds very dubious and speculative (as **Johanna** admitted in her post), but it doesn’t actually assert that the Tamil concept is the **source** of the possible Creole custom. ---
**Author:** ![yBeayf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e274bd/32.png) [@yBeayf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yBeayf)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872/25 "2006-05-09T19:14:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Johanna didn’t actually say that It was the whole point of her post! That’s why she ended it with “None of this adds up to more than speculation about a possible Dravidian explanation for a possibly African custom.” ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872/26 "2006-05-11T05:52:37Z")
You’re all right. **Excalibre** , you were mistaken about my bringing a feminist agenda into this. It so happens that Tamil literature is a topic I know plenty about. If anything, my post was biased in favor of the _[cankam](http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/sangam/index.htm)_ poems (the second oldest stratum of Tamil literature, dating from ca. 100 BC and earlier, prior to Sanskrit influences). “The buds of her breasts have blossomed, and soft thick hair falls from her head. Her compact rows of white teeth are full, (having completely replaced) her baby teeth, and (on her body) spots have appeared (a sign of puberty)… I know her, so she afflicts (ananku, here used as a verb) me.” (_Kuruntokai_ 337) “She weeps so that cold drops wet her finely rising young breasts, vexing because ananku is there.” (_Akananuru_ 161) “Breasts with ananku.” (_Akananuru_ 220) “You think that there are spots on your breasts, but my afflicted (_anankuru_) heart thinks that there is ananku.” (_Ainkurunuru_ 363) “Put bright shoots of lovely _punku_ with its dotted flowers on your spotted breasts so that ananku stays there, and come with no regrets, O you whose teeth are bright.” (_Narrinai_ 9) The history and prehistory of religion in Tamil Nadu are nothing like the theories Marija Gimbutas had about Old Europe. Gimbutas has nothing to do with the Dravidian world; to bring her up here would be a hijack. The Goddess was never banished from India at any time. Even when Muslims ruled India, some of them wrote hymns to Kali. The matrilineal and matrifocal culture recorded in the earliest era of Dravidian writing is found to the present day in Kerala and Lakshadweep. The Dravidian concept of female power (e.g. found in the _cankam_ poems) is thought by many scholars of Hinduism like Klostermaier and Feuerstein to have taken shape in Sanskrit as the Tantras and Shaktism. The hymns to Shakti by the 20th-century Tamil poet Bharati consciously draw upon this tradition of the _cankam_ poems, and his feminist poems too, like this line from the poem “Penmai” (Womanhood): “Mother’s breasts give strength!” Ancient Tamil Nadu did not worship many distinct deities, and many of those they did were deities of war. The main Tamil goddess of the earliest times was Korravai, the goddess of violent death in battle. In _Purananuru_ 295, an old woman sees the slain body of her son on a battlefield and was overjoyed he fought with valor and did not run from the enemy. Her breasts flowed with milk again: “her joy is so profound that the seat of her ananku, long since impotent, is suddenly charged with power again.” (Hart p. 99) Then there’s Kali. Obviously, this culture does not resemble the theories of Gimbutas in the slightest. So please don’t prejudge. > [@Excalibre](#): > > And any of the various macrofamily theories involving Dravidian and any of the African languages also involve Indo-European, so you could then apply exactly the same reasoning to the PIE culture and look for the same cultural symbols to exist amongst white Europeans. Yes, this is quite logical. Most versions of Nostratic include Afro-Asiatic along with Indo-European, so Hebrew is related to German. Take that, Nazis! No, I don’t take any of Winters’s theories seriously, sorry. He’s interesting to read because of the wealth of historical and linguistic facts he’s researched, but I don’t accept his conclusions. I was just musing how could any connection be drawn between African and Dravidian cultures, and Winters was the only person I’ve ever heard of who even attempted this. I’m afraid I must conclude there’s no there there. **handsomeharry** , you’re right, I would like to know whether it’s really a custom. I have heard of other customs involving money and bodies, like in India when someone goes on a journey, they circle a coin around your head. Then when news arrives that you arrived safely, they give the coin in charity. As for African ritualization of parts of women’s bodies, the Yoruba festival called _gelede_ pays homage to the vulva to bring blessings and prosperity. So the OP being a custom of African origin is not far-fetched at all. **yBeayf** , yes, I was free associating. I also admitted that we don’t know enough to answer the OP for sure, so all I can offer is speculation. The example of powerful breasts that I happened to know of came from Tamil Nadu. Just to show that such a concept already existed. > [@kimstu](#): > > doesn’t actually assert that the Tamil concept is the source of the possible Creole custom. Yes, of course, **kimstu** , I didn’t mean to say that was the source, just that the concept wasn’t unheard of somewhere in the world. By “explanation” I meant explicating the possible meaning of the symbolism by analogy with an example from elsewhere, not “origin.” ---
**Author:** ![KPatton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@KPatton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KPatton)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872/27 "2006-05-11T19:22:20Z")
I agree with the feminist take on things…Breasts Rule!! What other gland would rate a crisp $100 for a mere glance? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2006, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872/28 "2006-05-11T19:25:22Z")
> [@](#): > > What other gland would rate a crisp $100 for a mere glance? Ahhh, but you haven’t seen my Adrenal Glands. It’s not the glands, you know, it’s the packaging. Attractive packaging can triumph over mere function. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/placing-coins-on-the-brides-nipples-wedding-custom/355872.md?page=1)