MERU
The learned Higgins, an English judge, who for some years spent ten hours a day in antiquarian studies, says that Moriah, of Isaiah and Abraham, is the Meru of the Hindus, and the Olympus of the Greeks. Solomon built high places for Ashtoreth, Astarte, or Venus, which because mounts of Venus,mons veneris—Meru and Mount Calvary—each a slightly skull-shaped mount, that might be represented by a bare head. The Bible translators perpetuate the same idea in the word “calvaria.” Prof. Stanley denies that “Mount Calvary” took its name from its being the place of the crucifixion of Jesus. Looking elsewhere and in earlier times for the bare calvaria, we find among Oriental women, the Mount of Venus,mons veneris, through motives of neatness or religious sentiment, deprived of all hirsute appendage. We see Mount Calvary imitated in the shaved poll of the head of a priest. The priests of China, says Mr. J. M. Peebles, continue to shave the head. To make a place holy, among the Hindus, Tartars, and people of Thibet, it was necessary to have a mount Meru, also a Linga-Yoni, or Arba.
LINGAM IN THE TEMPLE OF ELORA
This marvellous work of excavation by the slow process of the chisel, was visited by Capt. Seeley, who afterwards published a volume describing the temple and its vast statues. The beauty of its architectural ornaments, the innumerable statues or emblems, all hewn out of solid rock, dispute with the Pyramids for the first place among the works undertaken to display power and embody feeling. The stupendous temple is detached from the neighbouring mountain by a spacious area all round, and is nearly 250 feet deep and 150 feet broad, reaching to the height of 100 feet and in length about 145 feet. It has well-formed doorways, windows, staircases, upper floors, containing fine large rooms of a smooth and polished surface, regularly divided by rows of pillars; the whole bulk of this immense block of isolated excavation being upwards of 500 feet in circumference, and having beyond its areas three handsome figure galleries or verandas supported by regular pillars. Outside the temple are two large obelisks or phalli standing, “of quadrangular form, eleven feet square, prettily and variously carved, and are estimated at forty-one feet high; the shaft above the pedestal is seven feet two inches, being larger at the base than Cleopatra’s Needle.”
In one of the smaller temples was an image of Lingam, “covered with oil and red ochre, and flowers were daily strewed on its circular top. This Lingam is larger than usual, occupying with the altar, a great part of the room. In most Ling rooms a sufficient space is left for the votaries to walk round whilst making the usual invocations to the deity (Maha Deo). This deity is much frequented by female votaries, who take especial care to keep it clean,washed, and often perfume it with oderiferous oils and flowers, whilst the attendant Brahmins sweep the apartment and attend the five oil lights and bell ringing.” This oil vessel resembled the Yoni (circular frame), into which the light itself was placed. No symbol was more venerated or more frequently met with than the altar and Ling, Siva, or Maha Deo. “Barren women constantly resort to it to supplicate for children,” says Seeley. The mysteries attended upon them is not described, but doubtless they were of a very similar character to those described by the author of the “Worship of the Generative Powers of the Western Nations,” showing again the similarity of the custom with those practised by the Catholics in France. The writer says:—“Women sought a remedy for barrenness by kissing the end of the Phallus; sometimes they appear to have placed a part of their body, naked, against the image of the saint, or to have sat upon it. This latter trait was perhaps too bold an adoption of the indecencies of Pagan worship to last long, or to be practised openly; but it appears to have been innocently represented by lying upon the body of the saint, or sitting upon a stone, understood to represent him without the presence of the energetic member. In a corner in the church of the village of St. Fiacre, near Monceaux, in France, there is a stone called the chair of St. Fiacre, which confers fecundity upon women who sit upon it; but it is necessary nothing should intervene between their bare skin and the stone. In the church of Orcival in Auvergne, there was a pillar which barren women kissed for the same purpose and which had perhaps replaced some less equivocal object.”
The principal object of worship at Elora is the stone, so frequently spoken of; “the Lingam,” says Seeley, and he apologises for using the word so often, but asks to beexcused, “is an emblem not generally known, but as frequently met with as the Cross in Catholic worship.” It is the god Siva, a symbol of his generative character, the base of which is usually inserted in the Yoni. The stone is of a conical shape, often black stone, covered with flowers (theBeliaandAsucashrubs). The flowers hang pendant from the crown of the Ling stone to the spout of theArghaorYoni(mystical matrix); the same as the Phallus of the Greeks. Five lamps are commonly used in the worship at the symbol, or one lamp with five wicks. The Lotus is often seen on the top of the Ling.
VENUS-URANIA.—THE MOTHER GODDESS
The characteristic attribute of the passive generative power was expressed in symbolical writing, by different enigmatical representations of the most distinguished characteristic of the female sex: such as the shell orConcha Veneris, the fig-leaf, barley corn, and the letter Delta, all of which occur very frequently upon coins and other ancient monuments in this sense. The same attribute personified as the goddess of Love, or desire, is usually represented under the voluptuous form of a beautiful woman, frequently distinguished by one of these symbols, and called Venus, Kypris, or Aphrodite, names of rather uncertain mythology. She is said to be the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, that is of the male and female personifications of the all-pervading Spirit of the Universe; Dione being the female Dis or Zeus, and therefore associated with him in the most ancient oraculartemple of Greece at Dodona. No other genealogy appears to have been known in the Homeric times; though a different one is employed to account for the name of Aphrodite in the “Theogony” attributed to Hesiod.
TheGenelullidesorGenoidaiwere the original and appropriate ministers or companions of Venus, who was however, afterwards attended by the Graces, the proper and original attendants of Juno; but as both these goddesses were occasionally united and represented in one image, the personifications of their respective subordinate attributes were on other occasions added: whence the symbolical statue of Venus at Paphos had a beard, and other appearances of virility, which seems to have been the most ancient mode of representing the celestial as distinguished from the popular goddess of that name—the one being a personification of a general procreative power, and the other only of animal desire or concupiscence. The refinement of Grecian art, however, when advanced to maturity, contrived more elegant modes of distinguishing them; and, in a celebrated work of Phidias, we find the former represented with her foot upon a tortoise; and in a no less celebrated one of Scopas, the latter sitting upon a goat. The tortoise, being an androgynous animal, was aptly chosen as a symbol of the double power; and the goat was equally appropriate to what was meant to be expressed in the other.
The same attribute was on other occasions signified by a dove or pigeon, by the sparrow, and perhaps by the polypus, which often appears upon coins with the head of the goddess, and which was accounted an aphrodisiac, though it is likewise of the androgynous class. The fig was a still more common symbol, the statue of Priapus being made of the tree, and the fruit being carried with thePhallus in the ancient processions in honour of Bacchus, and still continuing among the common people of Italy to be an emblem of what it anciently meant: whence we often see portraits of persons of that country painted with it in one hand, to signify their orthodox elevation to the fair sex. Hence, also arose the Italian expressionfar la fica, which was done by putting the thumb between the middle and fore-fingers, as it appears in many Priapic ornaments extant; or by putting the finger or thumb into the corner of the mouth and drawing it down, of which there is a representation in a small Priapic figure of exquisite sculpture, engraved among theAntiquities of Herculaneum.
LIBERALITY AND SAMENESS OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS
The same liberal and humane spirit still prevails among those nations whose religion is founded on the same principles. “The Siamese,” says a traveller of the seventeenth century, “shun disputes and believe that almost all religions are good” (“Journal du Voyage de Siam”). When the ambassador of Louis XIV asked their king, in his master’s name, to embrace Christianity, he replied, “that it was strange that the king of France should interest himself so much in an affair which concerns only God, whilst He, whom it did concern, seemed to leave it wholly to our discretion. Had it been agreeable to the Creator that all nations should have had the same form of worship, would it not have been as easy to His omnipotence to have created all men with the same sentimentsand dispositions, and to have inspired them with the same notions of the True Religion, as to endow them with such different tempers and inclinations? Ought they not rather to believe that the true God has as much pleasure in being honoured by a variety of forms and ceremonies, as in being praised and glorified by a number of different creatures? Or why should that beauty and variety, so admirable in the natural order of things, be less admirable or less worthy of the wisdom of God in the supernatural?”
The Hindus profess exactly the same opinion. “They would readily admit the truth of the Gospel,” says a very learned writer long resident among them, “but they contend that it is perfectly consistent with their Shastras. The Deity, they say, has appeared innumerable times in many parts of this world and in all worlds, for the salvation of his creatures; and we adore, they say, the same God, to whom our several worships, though different in form, are equally acceptable if they be sincere in substance.”
The Chinese sacrifice to the spirits of the air, the mountains and the rivers; while the Emperor himself sacrifices to the sovereign Lord of Heaven, to whom all these spirits are subordinate, and from whom they are derived. The sectaries of Fohi have, indeed, surcharged this primitive elementary worship with some of the allegorical fables of their neighbours; but still as their creed—like that of the Greeks and Romans—remains undefined, it admits of no dogmatical theology, and of course no persecution for opinion. Obscure and sanguinary rites have, indeed, been wisely prescribed on many occasions; but stillas actions and not as opinions. Atheism is said to have been punished with death at Athens; but nevertheless it may be reasonably doubtedwhether the atheism, against which the citizens of that republic expressed such fury, consisted in a denial of the existence of the gods; for Diagoras, who was obliged to fly for this crime, was accused of revealing and calumniating the doctrines taught in the Mysteries; and from the opinions ascribed to Socrates, there is reason to believe that his offence was of the same kind, though he had not been initiated.
These were the only two martyrs to religion among the ancient Greeks, such as were punished for actively violating or insulting the Mysteries, the only part of their worship which seems to have possessed any vitality; for as to the popular deities, they were publicly ridiculed and censured with impunity by those who dared not utter a word against the populace that worshipped them; and as to the forms and ceremonies of devotion, they were held to be no otherwise important, then as they were constituted a part of civil government of the state; the Pythian priestess having pronounced from the tripod, thatwhoever performed the rites of his religion according to the laws of his country, performed them in a manner pleasing to the Deity. Hence the Romans made no alterations in the religious institutions of any of the conquered countries; but allowed the inhabitants to be as absurd and extravagant as they pleased, and to enforce their absurdities and extravagances wherever they had any pre-existing laws in their favour. An Egyptian magistrate would put one of his fellow-subjects to death for killing a cat or a monkey; and though the religious fanaticism of the Jews was too sanguinary and too violent to be left entirely free from restraint, a chief of the synagogue could order anyone of his congregation to be whipped for neglecting or violating any part of the Mosaic Ritual.
The principle underlying the system of emanations was, that all things were of one substance, from which they were fashioned and into which they were again dissolved, by the operation of one plastic spirit universally diffused and expanded. The polytheist of ancient Greece and Rome candidly thought, like the modern Hindu, that all rites of worship and forms of devotion were directed to the same end, though in different modes and through different channels. “Even they who worship other gods,” says Krishna, the incarnate Deity, in an ancient Indian poem (Bhagavat-Gita), “worship me although they know it not.”—Payne Knight.
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