Phallic Miscellanies / Facts and Phases of Ancient and Modern Sex Worship, as Illustrated Chiefly in the Religions of India

by Hargrave Jennings

There are some considerations, however, which render it probable that it was in India where its earliest manifestations were exhibited. Whatever impurities and abominations may have clustered round it in comparatively modern times, the fact must not be lost sight of, that in its earlier phases in that country nothing was associated with it that was calculated to cause any offence to the most refined and modest of minds. Very little judgment is needed to understand that the tendency of practices thus appealing to the most easily excited of the animal passions would be downward rather than upward, that instead of growing pure and free from the taint of lustful desires, the almost inevitable fruit would be impurity and licentious indulgence; it is not likely therefore that the more respectable worship of early India would be the product of the gross practices of the other nations we have named. We can see clearly enough, we think, the origin of this worship resting upon the highest aspirations of the human soul. In endeavouring to frame a theological system and arrange a method of worship to meet the cravings of the mind for intercourse with the creative powers of the universe, men would be sure to fix their thoughts upon those means and agents by which living beings and things were brought into existence, and which, to say the least of it, acted as secondary causes in the creative work. These, of course, would be the generative organs of men and animals in general, and for want of better and more exalted teaching, they would easily enough persuade themselves that it was a proper thing to worship the power symbolized by such objects, if they did not actually worship the objects themselves. Perhaps originally, the first of these two ideas was all that was intended or contemplated, for it is undeniable that many cases have come under our notice in which men were really rendering adoration to an unknown spiritual power when they appeared to be doing nothing but worshipping a graven image.

There is no doubt the religious system of the Hindus is very ancient, and it has been supposed by some that it was formed about the same time as that of the Egyptians, from which that of the Greeks and other western nations was in some measure derived. Many points of resemblance have been observed between them, too many, and too striking, to have been fortuitous. Even some of the inhabitants of Ethiopia appear to have been of the same origin with those of Hindostan, and both the Ethiopians and Egyptians seem to have had some connection or intercourse with the Hindoos; but of what kind it was, or when it subsisted, we have no certain account; and they appear to have been so long separated, that at present they are in total ignorance of each other.

According to Eusebius and Syncellus, some people from the river Indus settled in the neighbourhood of Egypt in the reign of Amenophis, the father of Sesostris, and many Egyptians, banished by their princes, settled in other countries and went as far as India. It is also supposed that many of the priests of Egypt left the country on the invasion of it by Cambyses. But such circumstances as these are not sufficient to account for the great resemblance between the two systems. The Hindoos themselves say that their sacred books came from the West, but they themselves, no doubt, as well as their books, came from that quarter, and their sacred books, it is supposed, were probably composed while the seat of the empire was in Persia.

There are a few Egyptian words similar to those in the ancient language of Hindostan, which seem to shew that the two people had some affinity to each other. Brama, pronounced birouma in Malabar, signifies man, and so did pirouma in the language of Egypt. The name of the river of Egypt, Nile, is probably Sanscrit, since nila in that language, signifies blue, and the ancients say it had its name from that colour.

But circumstances of much more importance than these discover some early connection between Hindostan and Egypt. The names and figures of the twelve signs of the Zodiac among the Hindoos are nearly the same with ours, which came from Egypt through Greece, and each of these signs is divided into thirty degrees. Both the Egyptians and Hindoos had also the same division of time into weeks, and they denominated each of the days by the names of the same planets.

The resemblance between the Oriental and Occidental systems extends much farther than Egypt. The office and power of the Druids in the northern parts of Europe, did not differ much from those of the Brahmins; and the Etruscans, from whom the Romans derived the greatest part of their learning and religion, had a system which had a near affinity with that of the Persians and Indians, and they wrote alternately to the right hand and the left.

Several remarkable general principles were held alike by the ancient Egyptians and the Hindoos. They both believed that the souls of men existed in a prior state, and went into other bodies after death. They had the same ideas of the body being a prison to the soul, and imagined that they could purify and exalt the soul by the mortification of the body; and from the idea of the great superiority of spiritual to corporeal substances, they held all matter in great contempt. They also believed (according to La Croze) that plants had a principle of animation.

Several religious ideas and customs were common to both countries. The Egyptians of Thebais represented the world under the figure of an egg, which came from the mouth of Cneph, and this resembled the first production according to the Hindoo system. Several of the Egyptian deities were both male and female, which corresponds with the figure of the lingam with the Hindoos. This obscene figure, at least the phallus, was much used in the Egyptian worship, and from Egypt it was carried into Greece, where it was used in the mysteries of Bacchus. As the Hindoos worshipped their god Siva under this figure, and carried it in procession, the Egyptians and Greeks did the same with the phallus. Also, the lascivious postures of the Egyptian women before their god Apis, were the same as those of the Hindoo women before their idols. The Hindoos also chose their sacred bulls by the same marks as were used by the Egyptians.

Then, again, the account of the flight of the Egyptian gods, as given by the Greeks, and their concealing themselves under the forms of animals, bears some resemblance to the various transformations of Vishnu. Also, the Egyptians worshipped the Nile and the Hindoos the Ganges. Some of the Hindoo temples have the same remarkable form, viz., that of a pyramid, or cone. That the pyramids of Egypt had some religious use can hardly be doubted. All the pagodas are in that form, or have towers of that form in the buildings which surround them. The temples in Pegu are also of a conical form. Sir William Jones says that the pyramids of Egypt, as well as those discovered in Ireland, and probably also the tower of Babel, seem to have been intended for images of Mahadeva, or Siva. One other thing, the onion, which was held in veneration by the Egyptians, is not eaten by the Hindoos.

Not only do we find the same general principles, and the same, or similar, religious customs, but some of the same gods among the Hindoos, Egyptians, and Greeks. The Egyptian Cneph was the Supreme intelligence, which was never lost sight of by the Hindoos. With the Egyptians, Isis represented not only the moon, but sometimes the powers of Nature, which were supposed to have been in a great measure derived from the moon; and in Bengal and Japan, also, the same is called Isari, or Isi, and is described as a goddess with many arms. According to Sir William Jones, Iswara of the Hindoos is the Osiris of the Egyptians, and Nared, a distinguished son of Brahma, resembles Hermes, or Mercury. A statue of Jupiter had a third eye in its forehead, and Siva has three eyes. Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch say that Osiris signifies a person that has many eyes, and Siva is drawn with an additional eye in his forehead, though the phallus is his usual form. Osiris was said to have been killed by Typhon, and Chib cut off the head of Brahma.