POISON DAME. VISH KANYA.

POISON DAME.    VISH KANYA.

Vish-Kanya.

Reference to Vish-Kanya is found in Kalidasa drama 'Mudra Rakshasa'.                                 

It was not unusual to find depiction of Vish-Kanya  playing with snakes, their life was                            

about sex and snakes, and they were trained to be seductive.

The Vish-Kanya were young women used as assassins, often against powerful enemies,                    

during the reign of Chandra Gupta Maurya, 321–185 BC.

Their blood was purportedly poisonous                                      

to other humans, and was mentioned in the ancient Indian treatise on politics,

 the Artha-Shastra by Kautilya, the.Prime Minister of Mauryan Emperor Chandra Gupta.

.

A reference to Vish-Kanya in the Kalki-Purana states that  they can kill a person                                          

 just by looking at them, and talks about a Vish Kanya named Sulochana,                                                 

the wife of a gandharva, Chitra-greeva.

However, in time, 'Poison Damsel' passed into a folkfore, became an arche-type                                

explored by many writers, resulting in  popular  literary character that appears

 in many works, including classical  Sanskrit texts, like Suka-Saptati.

The myth states that girls were made poisonous by exposing them to low intensity                                           

Poison at a very young age. Many of them used to die but the ones who had                                                             developed the immunity to poison would survive.  

Body fluids of these girls would be poisoned and sexual contact was lethal to other humans.

Vish-Kanya were woman of beauty. Some had training and possible relationship with snakes.