Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
form a wreath, as this like the folds of the Serpent, the stars, or yoni dots on Indra’s
robe (Pl. v., 5), or a priest’s garment seem to have followed certain knowledge of
the times and the mandates of leaders in religion, astronomy and art. As a rule,
they are purely of solar significsnce, but in regard to the terminus in a Serpent body,
my own studies do not admit of my acquiescing in any post-Christian era. The
fish and serpent terminus was, in many lands, a favourite idea, and drawings and
sculptures of such abound, and if not to be found in India in the centuries named, this
could only arise from a temporary feeling on the part of the people or their rulers, of
which we have numerous instances in all faiths. Thus at Sanchi, in the 1st
Century A.C,, it is thought that Boodhism had purged itself both of Tree and Serpent
Faiths, at least, nearly so; yet Mr. Fergusson shows us that at Amravatil,in the 4th
Century A.C., the; pendulum had swung back again; for here we find not only the
Dagoba, or Womb with its Pandora’s box of relics, but our oldest friend, the Holy
Tree, the Chakra or WheeL or Sun of Life aad Eternity; and once again the
persistent Nāga, but this time as Boodha’s co-equal, just as the Nicolaitans said he
was Christ’s, some seven centuries after Jesus is supposed to have lived; for in the case
of Sanchi and Boodha, seven centuries had here also intervened since the pious
man had died, and become deified. Fergusson calls the Sanchi remains “the Boodhist
Illustrated Bible of the Hinayana period,” and considers it to be 500 years prior
to the writing of any Boodhist book which we possess. This opinion, I suspect, is now
very much modified. The Amravati ruin is the pictorial illustration of the Mahāyāna,
three centuries after it promulgation.
On the great bas-relief cut in the well-known Rock, crowned with seven Pagodas,
at Maha-Vilepoor, South of Madras, we have Siva embracing a Serpent Queen, who is
human from the waist, and this too is placed by Fergusson, as belonging to the 13th
Century A.C., although we are assured on all hands that Hindooism here succeeded
Ophiolatry. No doubt Sankar-Achārya did ask his countrymen to go back to Lingam
Worship, pure and simple, and so we may say to rise above its symbol the Serpent, in
the 8th Century A.C., just as Mahomed then also asked Jews and Christians to adopt
the undivided worship of the real “All-Father;” but this practice of peoples does not,
in any way detract from the statement that pure Phallic Worship was the second if not
the first of man’s faiths, and that the Serpent terminus in question, if not as yet,
found by us as aculptnred.before the 13th Century A.C., did then occur in such places,
only in resuscitation of what long ages before had been well known to mankind.
Although Sivaiam may not be clear to us in tho unwritten pre-vedic ages, and dimly so
only, in the Vedic Roodra, yet I have no doubt the masses were then and long ere that,
bowing down to their genital gods, far more fervently than they are even now doing.
I may mention the followmg as an instance of how little we observe the practice
and dogmas of the faiths which surround us, unless our attention, nay studies, are
directed thereto, and it happened the very evening of the day on which I wrote the
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