The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c11.73.4

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.