The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c11.73

Language: English

v1.c11.73.1

**Rudra identified with the Lingam** : With this development of Rudra as the destroyer, a new idea was associated with him, that of the male principle in nature, or the source of creation, which the *Liṅgam* symbolizes. The two ideas are distinct, and in many respects highly discordant; the one typifies attraction, the other repulsion; the one invokes love and affection, the other hatred; the one is founded on the desire of creation, the other of destruction; and their concentration in the same individual is irreconcilable with all principles of poetical logic which governs the formation of myths; and it is difficult to conceive how it was brought about. The extracts quoted above show that the Purāṇas do not attempt to fuse the two ideas into one, but, simply assign to Rudra, the destroyer, a disgusting symbol as the result of an accident. They say nothing about the idea of the creative principle being associated with it. The Tantras are not so reticent; they not only acknowledge the esoteric meaning of the symbol, but insist upon it for the glorification of the divinity. They have not, however, as far as I am aware of, anywhere attempted to reconcile the conflict between the two ideas.

v1.c11.73.2

The Tantras are much more recent than the Vedas and the Brāhmaṇas, and this fact at once shows that the new role of Rudra was an after-thought, adopted at a time when his original charater had lost its vividness by age, and had become susceptible of modification, or amplification, without causing any shock to the feelings of the people. When this was first attempted, it is impossible now to determine. The influence of the phallic idea on the religious systems of the Semitic and the Turanian races was predominant from a very early age. In the cults of the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, it was all-pervading, and it seems to have passed from some one of them to Europe, and found a footing among the early Aryan races of that continent. The myth of Rudra got currency among them some little time after, and its trace still exists in the names of various places, such as Rhoden, Rhodenacher, Rodenburg, Rottenfel, Rhode, Rolte, and Rathburg, in Germany, Rutland and Ruthwel, and Ruthin, in England; Rot, Rotholet, and Rotnoe, in Norway. The Colossus of Rhodes was probably no other than a gigantic figure of that Rudra.²⁹ As in India, so in Scandinavia, Rudra is the chief of storms; but here he drives a swift-moving car through mid-air, while in Europe he rides “a furious horse flying across the sky, with a grand cortege behind him”.

v1.c11.73.3

In an old catalogue of Pagan antiquities, he occurs in the form of a *Liṅgam*, and is described as a “Rot”, and some Pagan families, before the introduction of Christianity in Norway, are said to have “worshipped the *Liṅgam* of a horse preserved in a glass case”, (*ante* p. [66]). Here the union of Rudra with Priapus is intimate, and other instances could be easily multiplied, were the subject not so repulsive, to show that it was so united from long before the commencement of the Christian era. That the Vedas originally abhorred the phallic idea is evident, and that it was engrafted on the Vedic cult in later times is also undeniable; but there is wanting that mass of irrefragable evidence which can prove unquestionably that the worship of the *Liṅgam* was taken from the aborigines of India. The Semites of the West and the Turanians of the North cherished the dogma very extensively, and much may be said in favour of the loan having proceeded from them and not from the original inhabitants of India. It may be even questioned whether or not it was evolved by the dreamy mystic sages of India in the course of their own cogitations.

v1.c11.73.4

The assimilation of sensuous, worldly ideas with the divine has been the failing of mankind in most of its conceptions concerning the Godhead, and nothing is easier to conceive than a sexual origin of creation without any prompting save that of the individual mind, and that at a time of primitive, unsophisticated innocence, when the world was viewed from a very different standpoint to ours. The human mind, being essentially the [146] same everywhere, must lead, when set to any particular train of ideas, to very much the same result: ethnic and local causes may tinge it with race or local peculiarities, but its general character cannot but be alike. But whether borrowed or selfevolved, the worship of the *Liṅgam* had been incorporated with Hinduism long before the time when the Śivite temples of Orissa were raised, and there is no reason, therefore, to suppose any aboriginal influence in their erection.