254

RISE OF HINDUISM.

Phallicemblemsin Hindu­ ism .

The Hindu linga andyoni.

than a revival of the coarser superstitions of the aboriginalraces, purified and refined by the application of Aryanmorality .’ 1

The great monastery of Nalanda owed its foundation to thesupposed influence of a tailed monster, or Naga, in a neigh-bouring tank. Many Hindu temples still support colonies ofsacred crocodiles ; and the scholar who has approached thesubject from the Chinese point of view, comes to the con-clusion that ‘ no superstition was more deeply embedded inthe [ancient] Hindu mind than reverence for Nagas ordragons. Buddhism from the first had to contend as muchagainst the under current of Naga reverence in the popularmind, as against the supercilious opposition of the philosophicBrahman in the upper current. At last, as it would seem,driven to an extremity by the gathering cloud of persecution,the Buddhists sought escape by closing with the popular creed,and endeavouring to enlist the people against the priests ; butwith no further success than such a respite as might be in-cluded within some one hundred years.’ 2

This conception of the process is coloured by modernideas, but there can be no doubt that Hinduism incorporatedmany aboriginal rites. It had to provide for the non-Aryanas well as for the Aryan elements of the Indian people, and itcombined the Brahmanism and Buddhism of the Aryans withthe fetish-worship and religion of terror which swayed the non-Aryan races. Some of its superstitions seem to have beenbrought by Turanian or Scythian migrations from Central Asia . Serpent-worship is closely allied to, if indeed it doesnot take its origin in, that reverence for the symbols of humanreproduction which formed one of the most widely-spreadreligions of pre-historic man. Phallic or generative emblemsare on earth what the sun is in the heavens. The sun, as thetype of celestial creative energy, was a primitive object ofAryan adoration. Later Brahmanism, and its successor Hindu­ ism , have adopted not only the self-erecting serpent, but thelinga and yoni, or the organs of male and female creativeenergy, from the non-Aryan races.

The worship of the phallic emblem or linga finds only adoubtful sanction, if any at all, in those ancient scriptures ; 3

1 Fergusson’s Tree and Serpent Worship, pp. 62, with footnote, el seq.(4to, 1868). This view must be taken subject to limitations.

2 Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, pp. 415, 416. BySamuel Beal (Triibner, 1871).

3 II. H. Wilson’s Religion of the Hindus , vol. i. p. 220 (ed. 1862).