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Updated: June 1, 2025
O'Brien, in the "Round Towers of Ireland" states, "The lotus was the most sacred plant of the Ancients, and typified the two principles of the earth fecundation, the germ standing for the lingam; the filaments and petals for the yoni." The sacred images of the Tarters, Japanese or Indians, are all placed upon it and it is still sacred in Tibet and China.
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.
They are said to tolerate the worship of Śivaite deities and of the lingam in their temples and their ascetics dress like Śaivas. Madhva travelled in both northern and southern India and had a somewhat troubled life, for his doctrine, being the flat contradiction of the Advaita, involved him in continual conflicts with the followers of Śaṅkara who are said to have even stolen his library.
"To the flame eternal." And to their mutual satisfaction they agreed the sacred name of Baal-Zeboub, the doctor producing his winged lingam, at which the other fell down in the open streets and adored him.
The Jains appealed to the king of Vijayanagar for protection from persecution and he effected a public reconciliation between them and the Vaishnavas, holding the hands of both leaders in his own and declaring that equal protection would be given to both sects. Another inscription records an amicable agreement regulating the worship of a lingam in a Jain temple at Halebid.
Rama's brother Lakshman, whose duty it was to send him daily a new lingam from Benares, was late in doing so one evening. Losing patience, Rama erected for himself a lingam of sand. When, at last, the symbol arrived from Benares, it was put in a temple, and the lingam erected by Rama was left on the shore.
The present buildings are for the most part barely 200 years old, and remarkable chiefly for the insistency with which the lingam and the bull, the favourite symbols of Shiva, repeat themselves in shrine after shrine. But it attracts immense numbers of pilgrims, especially in every twelfth year, when they flock in hundreds of thousands to Ujjain and camp as near as possible to the river.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. In one of those Benares temples we saw a devotee working for salvation in a curious way. He had a huge wad of clay beside him and was making it up into little wee gods no bigger than carpet tacks. He stuck a grain of rice into each to represent the lingam, I think.
It opens upon a court eight hundred feet long by four hundred feet wide, the walls of which enclose an endless succession of little chapels, each one of which has at its back a rude picture of some incarnation of Vishnu or Krishna, and in front of each picture there stands erect an image in stone of the lingam or phallus.
It is rich in historical memories; rich in British achievement military, political, commercial; rich in the results of the miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And has a cloud kissing monument to one Ochterlony. It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the only large monument in Calcutta, I believe.
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