Forlong - Rivers of Life

Tree Worship.
circular drum.” As my readers advance they will find many similar examples of
“plain domes,” and “circular drums,” and. even now, will doubtless be reminded of
curious articles of the kind in Vesta’s shrine on Tiber’s banks, which I shall hereafter
enlarge upon.
Fergusson says that “the great window which lights all this temple is arched in
the form of a horse shoe” which is the Isian head-dress, and
Maiya’s holy sign, and after which the Roman church adopts
one of Mary’s favourite head dresses. I give here the Solo-phallic
idea from Dr Inman; he calls it the “crown of Venus Urania.”
Of the Phallic pillars in front, placed precisely as Solomon placed
his Jakin and Roaz (1 Kings vii.), Fergusaon says only one now
exists at Karli, but he thinks that a small temple has replaced the
other. He calls the column “a lion pillar, shaft plain with a capital carrying four
lions,” it representing Power and cat-like salaciousness. The general plan is unmistakably
Phallic.
These pillars are a prominent feature of Boodhist sacr.d buildings, and are called
under the name of Topes, which also signifies. towers and tumuli, and is a corruption of
the Sanskrit word, Stoopa meaning mounds, heaps, karns, or kairns. When the pillar
is of a single stone it is called a Lat. It is common to find the pillar witb the
beautiful honey-suckle ornament of the Asyrian, which, says Fergusson, the Greeks
borrowed from them with the IOnic order. This Ornament is very suggestive, see
Fergusson’s drawing of it (I. p. 7-2), he says the “oldest monument hitherto discovered
in India, is a group of these monoliths set up by Asoka (the Constantine of
Boodhism) in the middle of third cencury B.C. They were all alike in form, and all
havc the same inscription, being four short edicts containing the creed and principal
doctrines of Boodbism.” They all had the honey-suckle ornament which he calls
“the earliest known monument of Boodhist art.” There was also the Head and Reel
ornament so familiar to us from Persian-Greek Architecture, and they are otherwise so
similar to those at Persepolis as to leave no doubt of their common origin. It is
almost certain that these pillars of Asoka stood originally in. front of some sacred
buildings which have perished.
Cunningham in his “Bilsa Topes” tells us, that all the pillars were set up about
the year 236 B.C., and the rock inscriptions cut 250 B.C., of which the oldest are
at Dānti in Kutak, at Gernār in Goojarat, and at Kapoordigiri near Peshawar. The
pilIars are polished, always forty-five feet high, and are generally surmounted by a
lion, symbolizing power and salaciousness, and thus making the pillar in eastern eyes
strictly Phallic. The Chinese pilgrim Fabian, writing 400 A.C. says that Asoka erected
snch a lion pillar hehind the “Boodhist Chapel” which he built at Samkiem, and as
Egyptian fleets used to anchor in hia great sea-port; Barygāsa, which we call
Braroch or Broach, we easily perceive where Europe, and especiaIly Venetian
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Fig. 9.
CROWN OF MARY OR MAYA.