Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
verted thousands all over Kashmeer, and that Asoka and some of his successors erected
Stoopas or Topes, Chaityas and Vihars, all about and around this valley, it is nevertheless
strange that as yet we have only been able to discover, so far as I am aware, one
Boodhist ruin of any importance—the Vihar of Jayendra (whose date is put down as 500
A.C.), whilst in this lovely valley we have the magnificent ruin of Martand—a temple
of the Sun which probably dates from the rise of Boodhism in India, although some
insist that it was the work of King Arya of the fifth century A.C. All local authorities
and traditions concur in ascribing its dedication to Matan, or Martand, or Vivasvat
—names for the Sun; but Gen. Cunningham 1 thinks it is reared upon an ancient
Sivaik temple, dedicated to Rān-esa or Rāna-poora-Swāmi—names of Maha-Deva, of
course the earliest god of the two, in the eyes of all rude peoples. Siva, however, was
and is the Sun, viewed as the Fertilizer, with which Ran, Ram, Raya, Raja, &c., are
all mixed up in idea and etymology. Eswara, Siva’s usual name, is “Holder” or “Lord
of Love or Heat;” but Ran-esa may be written Ran-Aditya or Lord of the Sun, so
that the older temple below the presen.t ruins of Martand was really also a temple to
the Sun. We know of a powerful king in those parts, and a great Sivaite of the fifth
century A.C., called Ránaditya, and hence it is that Martand is put down as of this
date, but the name is a common one. Lieut. Cole, in his drawings and descriptions of
the Martand Temples, says that there are niches there with male and female figures
representing the Sun with its female energy or consort—“the moon in conjunction
as intellect or brightness,” terms which were constantly applied to Sophia as a good
mother. Some writers, I may mention, who look upon Asyrians as the most complete
and persistent of Sun-worshippers, try to make out that they, or their missionaries,
carried Solar worship into India, and even built Martand; hut no one conversant with
the histoty of the Shemitic inhabitants of the valleys and water-sheds of “the two old
world rivers” will maintain such for an instant. Asyria was by no means peculiarly
pure in its Sun-faith, indeed, I should rather call it “pure” in its Phallic fuiths. Persia,
in later days, was a purer Solar worshipper, but I suspect research will yet prove that
India was both earlier and more mature than all these lands
in its Sabeanism.
We have a temple with an amphitheatre, somewhat similar
to Martand, in “Old Delhi,” the site being known as Toglookabad,
in front of which, it is said, stood a very celebrated stone
column, no doubt that called Ferozshah’s Lat, of which this is
an outline sketch as it existed in 1797. The emperor clearly
erected this building for it. or placed it thus to sanctify the
building, for Mahomedans, like others, well know the health-giving
properties of an Adām and Adama; the base and sides of
489
Fig 186—FEROZSHAH’S LAT, DELHI,
AS IN 1797
this phallus may be more than mere accident or coincidence. If the Emperor did
not understand his subject, probably the builders did, and the hit is as happy a one
1 Anc. Geog. of India.