United States or Barbados ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As to the lingam as representing the male organ, in some form or other as upright stone or pillar or obelisk or slender round tower it occurs all over the world, notably in Ireland, and forms such a memorial of the adoration paid by early folk to the great emblem and instrument of human fertility, as cannot be mistaken.
The Phallus has even been found, so universal was this worship, among the savages of America. Dr. Arthaut discovered, in the year 1790, a marble Phallic image in a cave of the island of St. Domingo. CLAVEL, Hist. Pittoresq. des Religions, p. 9. Seely tells us that the Lingam, or Indian Phallus, is an emblem as frequently met with in Hindostan as the cross is in Catholic countries.
"These two great classes of conventional symbols were often represented in conjunction with each other, and thus symbolized in the highest degree the great source of life, ever originating, ever renewed.... A similar emblem is the lingam standing in the centre of the yoni, the adoration of which is to this day characteristic of the leading dogma of Hindu religion.
"The Hindoo reverences the great purpose of nature, the production of organized bodies, in the most disinterested and pious manner. Everything tending to this end is to him venerable and holy, and it is in this respect alone that he worships the Lingam.
The old belief was retained, but in a mysterious or sublimated form. As symbols of the male, or active element in creation, the sun, light, fire, a torch, the phallus or lingam, an erect serpent, a tall straight tree, especially the palm or fir or pine, were adopted.
When you get tired of them in the temples and take a trip on the river, you find idol giants, flashily painted, stretched out side by side on the shore. And apparently wherever there is room for one more lingam, a lingam is there. If Vishnu had foreseen what his town was going to be, he would have called it Idolville or Lingamburg.
Now the Jains officially recognize all the Gods of the Hindu creed, as well as the Lingam and the Snake. They wear the Brahminical thread; they adhere to every claim of Hindu caste-law.
It is often phallic, and we are told by Hargrave Jennings that the serpent possibly was added to the male and female symbols to represent desire. Thus, the Hindu women carried the lingam in procession between two serpents; and in the procession of Bacchus the Greeks carried in a casket the phallus, the egg, and a serpent. The Greeks also had a composite or ideal figure.
Thus only is its meaning obvious, and consistent with the worship of the lingam and phallus which obtained at that time. It is also evident that the phallic worshippers borrowed the simile of "the gate of God" from the worshippers of the yoni, who based their claim to truth upon the indisputable fact, that out of the womb comes the life of plant, and animal, and man.
And there also you will see a very uncommon thing an image of Shiva. You have seen his lingam fifty thousand times already, but this is Shiva himself, and said to be a good likeness. It has three eyes. He is the only god in the firm that has three.
Word Of The Day