Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c6.40

c6.40

Let us now see whether a study of coins can prove itself useful in the sphere of mytho-religious history. A short while ago I told you that Gondophares and the Kushana rulers were devotees of Śiva and that this god was represented on the reverse of their coins. Evidently Śiva here figures as an object of worship. But how is Śiva worshipped now-a-days? Do the Hindus worship this deity under his man-like representation, *i.e.*, do they worship his image holding a trident and tiger-skin and standing near his bull, as we no doubt find him on the coins of these Indo-Scythian kings? Do they not invariably worship him under the form of Liṅga? Of course, images of Śiva as on these coins are by no means unknown at the present day or even as far back as the post-Gupta period, but certainly they are not now, and were never then, objects of worship. On the coins of these foreign rulers, however, the figure of Śiva has no significance except as an object of worship, and yet we find on them not a Liṅga but a regular representation of Śiva. This clearly shows that up to the time of the Kushana king Vāsudeva at any rate, Śiva worship had not come to be identified with Liṅga worship. Of course, from Patañjali’s *Mahābhāshya* on Pāṇini’s Sūtra, *jivik-ārthe ch-āpanye* we learn that till his time, *i.e.*, the middle of the second century B.C., an image of Śiva and not phallus was made for worship.¹ But now we know that till the seventh century A.D., at any rate, Śiva in his human form continued to be worshipped, though already in the beginning of the Gupta period phallus worship was being foisted on the Śiva cult. And, in fact, the earliest representation of Liṅga that has been found in a Śiva temple is at Guḍimallam in South India, and, on the grounds of plastic art, it cannot possibly be assigned to any date prior to the 4th century A.D. And even here, it is worthy of note, you do not see a mere Liṅga, but also a standing figure of Śiva attached to it in front² showing clearly that even in this period the representation of Śiva was not entirely forgotten and was not completely supplanted by Liṅga.³ Another very early representation of phallus is that supplied by the Liṅga stone found near the village of Karamḍāṇḍā and inscribed on the base.¹ The epigraph is dated 117 G.E.=436 A.D., and speaks of the Liṅga as Bhagavān Mahādeva, showing a clear identification of phallus with Śiva in this instance. But it must have taken sometime longer for the phallus to completely supersede and supplant, all over India, the human form of Śiva as an object of worship. For Śiva in his human representation certainly occurs, as I have said above, on the coins of Śaśāṅka who flourished in the first half of the seventh century A.D.