Is a copy of a small Hindoo statuette in the Mayer Collection in the
Free Museum, Liverpool. It probably represents Parvati, the Hindoo
virgin, and her child. The right hand of the figure makes the symbol
of the yoni with the forefinger and thumb, the rest of the fingers
typifying the triad. In the palm and on the navel is a lozenge,
emblematic of woman. The child, perhaps Crishna, equivalent to the
Egyptian Horus and the Christian Jesus, bears in its hand one of
the many emblems of the linga, and stands upon a lotus. The monkey
introduced into the group plays the same part as the cat, cow, lioness,
and ape in the Egyptian mythology, being emblematic of that desire which
eventuates in the production of offspring.
Fig. 1, the cupola, is well known in modern Europe; it is equally so in
Hindostan, where it is sometimes accompanied by pillars of a peculiar
shape. In one such compound the design is that of a cupola, supported by
closely placed pillars, each of which has a "capital," resembling "the
glans" of physiologists; in the centre there is a door, wherein a nude
female stands, resembling in all respects Figure 61, except in dress and
the presence of the child. This was copied by the late Mr. Sellon, from
a Buddhist Dagopa in the Jumnar Cave, Bombay Presidency, a tracing of
his sketch having been given to me by William Simpson, Esq., London.
The same emblem may be found amongst the ancient Italians. Whilst I
was staying in Malta during the carnival time in 1872, I saw in all
directions men and women selling cakes shaped like the yoni shown in
Fig. 1. These sweetmeats had no special name, but they came in and went
out with the carnival.
Fig. 2 represents Venus standing on a tortoise, whose symbolic import
will be seen by referring to Fig. 74, infra. It is copied from Lajard,
Sur le Culte de Venus, plate iiia., fig. 5, and is stated by him to be
a drawing of an Etruscan candelabrum, existing in the Royal Museum at
Berlin. In his account of Greece, Pausanias mentions that he saw one
figure of Venus standing on a tortoise, and another upon a ram, but he
declines to give the reason of the conjunction.
Is a representation of Siva, taken from Moor's Hindu Pantheon, plate
xiii. Siva is supposed to be the oldest of the Indian deities, and to
have been worshipped by the aborigines of Hindostan, before the Aryans
invaded that country. It is thought that the Vedic religion opposed this
degrading conception at the first, but was powerless to eradicate it.
Though he is yet the most popular of all the gods, Siva is venerated,
I understand, chiefly by the vulgar. Though he personifies the male
principle, there is not anything indecent in pictorial representations
of him. In one of his hands is seen the trident, one of the emblems
of the masculine triad; whilst in another is to be seen an oval
sistram-shaped loop, a symbol of the feminine unit. On his forehead he
bears an eye, symbolic of the Omniscient, the sun, and the union of the
sexes.
As it has been doubted by some readers, whether I am justified in
regarding the sistrum as a female emblem, I append here a quotation from
Socrates' Ecclesiastical History, Bohn's translation, p. 281, seq. In
Rome, in the early time of Theodosius, "when a woman was detected in
adultery.... they shut her up in a narrow brothel, and obliged her to
prostitute herself in a most disgusting manner; causing little bells
to be rang at the time.... As soon as the emperor was apprised of this
indecent usage, he would by no means tolerate it; but having ordered the
Sistra (for so these places of penal prostitution were denominated) to
be pulled down," &c. One can as easily see why a female emblem should
mark a brothel in Rome as a male symbol did at Pompeii.