orms part of the private devotions of the strictest Brahmans, and
despite the significance of the emblem, the worship offered to it is
perfectly decorous.[349] The evidence thus suggests that this cultus
grew up among Brahmanical Hindus in the early centuries of our era.
The idea that there was something divine in virility and generation
already existed. The choice of the symbol--the stone pillar--may have
been influenced by two circumstances. Firstly, the Buddhist veneration
of stupas, especially miniature stupas, must have made familiar the
idea that a cone or column is a religious emblem,[350] and secondly
the linga may be compared to the carved pillars or stone standards
erected in honour of Vishnu. Some lingas are carved and bear one or
four faces, thus entirely losing any phallic appearance. The wide
extension of this cult, though its origin seems late, is remarkable.
Something similar may be seen in the worship of Ganesa: the first
records of it are even later, but it is now universal in India.

It may seem strange that a religion whose outward ceremonies though
unassuming and modest consist chiefly of the worship of the linga,
should draw its adherents largely from the educated classes and be
under no moral or social stigma. Yet as an idea, as a philosophy,
Sivaism possesses truth and force. It gives the best picture which
humanity has drawn of the Lord of this world, not indeed of the ideal
to which the saint aspires, nor of the fancies with which hope and
emotion people the spheres behind the veil, but of the force which
rules the Universe as it is, which reproduces and destroys, and in
performing one of these acts necessarily performs the other, seeing
that both are but aspects of change. For all animal and human
existence[351] is the product of sexual desire: it is but the
temporary and transitory form of a force having neither beginning nor
end but continually manifesting itself in individuals who must have a
beginning and an end. This force, to which European taste bids us
refer with such reticence, is the true creator of the world. Not only
is it unceasingly performing the central miracle of producing new
lives but it accompanies it by unnumbered accessory miracles, which
provide the new born child with nourishment and make lowly organisms
care for their young as if they were gifted with human intelligence.
But the Creator is also the Destroyer, not in anger but by the very
nature of his activity. When th