Forlong - Rivers of Life

44
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
can trace, is that of the Bo tree. which he describes as upon a bas-relief in a cave called
the Jodea-Gopa (Katak, Bengal), “proving,” he says, “how early that worship was
introduced, and how pre-eminent it was among Boodhists of those days,” and I would
add before Vedic days. In comparison with it, the faith of the princeling ascetic of
Oud was young. and could not, any more than its predecessors, clear or purify itself
of the old loves of mankind. Not only did the holy tree find an early place in Boodha’s
pure faith, if indeed he ever entirely cast it off, but almost every temple and cave
showed also its (the Tree’s) allied Phallic faith; see Fergusson’s own drawings, which
very distinctly embrace Tree, Fire, Phallic, and Serpent worship. The latter
must of course follow Phallic worship, even as the shadow can only follow the
substance.
Within certain limits the further a Faith is removed from the time of a Founder’s
era, the stronger is often the rush back to old paths. One has only got to glance through
the beautifu1 pictures of temples and caves in Fergusson’s volumes, to see this truth
in Boodhism. Everywhere will be observed the long cist or vagina, with its “holy of
holies,” the womb or mundane Egg of eternity,—and likewise, ever standing at the
entrance, of these “Houses of God,” the Phallic pillar or pillars. It is the old story,
whether we turn to Solomon’s temple, 1000 B.C., where some writers seem to have missed
the pillars of which I shall presently speak, or to the Karli Boodhist temples which
gaze down upon us as we sweep on the Iron-way up the Westem Ghata from Bombay
to Poona, and which date from about the Christian era. Fergusson is here a safe and
unbiassed writer, and let us pause for a moment to see how he describes this holy shrine.
The subject is not strictly Arboreal, yet it leads to Sylvan. decoration without which
architects could not get on, and neither archeologists.
The Kārli temple as a Boodhist shrine, is supposed, by those who ought to know,
to have been elaborated as we now have it, in the first centmy C.E. Fergusson in his
Architecture, vol. I. 24, says:—“The building resembles to a very great extent an
early Christian church in its arrangements, consisting of a Nave (navis, boat, or ark of
life), and side aisles, terminating in an apse or semi-dome, round which the aisle is
carried; its arrangments and dimensions are very similar to those of the choir of
Norwich cathedral.”
Now listen to ita Phallic decorations, which, were they not so ve:ry costly to
engrave, and to be found in many special works on the subject, I should very much
like to give, and remark upon in some detail; for pillars, elephants, males and
females are here very serious matters and always full of meaning. “The aisle pillars
have a tall base octagonal shaft and richly ornamented capital, on which kneel twc
elephants, each bearing two figures, generally a man and woman but sometimes two
females,” all strictly Phallic representations of Power and Creation!
“Under the semi-dome of the apse and .early where the altar stands in Christian
churches, is placed the shrine,” in this instance “a plain dome slightly stilted on a