Lingam

[1][7] It is often represented within a disc-shaped platform,[1][8] the yoni – its feminine counterpart,[9][10] consisting of a flat element, horizontal compared to the vertical lingam, and designed to allow liquid offerings to drain away for collection.

[13] The lingam-yoni iconography symbolizes the merging of microcosmos and macrocosmos,[10] the divine eternal process of creation and regeneration, and the union of the feminine and the masculine that recreates all of existence.

[11][14] The lingam is typically the primary murti or devotional image in Hindu temples dedicated to Shiva, also found in smaller shrines, or as self-manifested natural objects.

[27][28] In the Samkhya sutras, and in Gaudapada's commentary on Samkhyakarika, the term linga has many contextual meanings such as in verses 1.124.136, 3.9.16 and 5.21.61, as it develops its theory of the nature of Atman (Self) and Sarira (body, prakriti) and its proposed mechanism of rebirth.

[44] Anthropologist Christopher John Fuller states that although most sculpted images (murtis) are anthropomorphic or theriomorphic, the aniconic Shiva Linga is an important exception.

[47] The lingam and yoni together symbolize the merging of microcosmos and macrocosmos,[10] the divine eternal process of creation and regeneration, and the union of the feminine and the masculine that recreates all of existence.

[50] It is only the outward symbol of formless being, Shiva, who is eternal, ever-pure, immortal essence of this vast universe, who is your innermost Self or Atman, and who is identical with the Supreme Brahman, states Sivananda Saraswati.

[51] According to Shaiva Siddhanta, the linga is the ideal substrate in which the worshipper should install and worship the five-faced and ten-armed Sadāśiva, the form of Shiva who is the focal divinity of that school of Shaivism.

This view contrasts with the traditional abstract values they represent in Shaivism wherein the lingam-yoni connote the masculine and feminine principles in the entirety of creation and all existence.

[9] The colonial era Orientalists and Christian missionaries, raised in the Victorian mold where sex and sexual imagery were a taboo subject, were shocked by and were hostile to the lingam-yoni iconography and reverence they witnessed.

[9][58][59] The 19th and early 20th-century colonial and missionary literature described lingam-yoni, and related theology as obscene, corrupt, licentious, hyper-sexualized, puerile, impure, demonic and a culture that had become too feminine and dissolute.

Swami Vivekananda called for the revival of the Mother Goddess as a feminine force, inviting his countrymen to "proclaim her to all the world with the voice of peace and benediction".

[60] According to Doniger, the terms lingam and yoni became explicitly associated with human sexual organs in the western imagination after the widely popular first Kamasutra translation by Sir Richard Burton in 1883.

"[66] To the Shaivites, a linga is neither a phallus nor do they practice the worship of erotic penis-vulva, rather the linga-yoni is a symbol of cosmic mysteries, the creative powers and the metaphor for the spiritual truths of their faith.

[69]The traditional lingam rituals in major Shiva temples includes offerings of flowers, grass, dried rice, fruits, leaves, water and a milk bath.

In the Hindu tradition, special pilgrimage sites include those where natural lingams are found in the form of cylindrical rocks or ice or rocky hill.

[1][70] The colonial-era archaeologists John Marshall and Ernest Mackay proposed that certain artifacts found at Harappan sites may be evidence of yoni-linga worship in Indus Valley Civilization.

Similarly, states Chakravarti, the Kalibangan site of Harappa has a small terracotta representation that "would undoubtedly be considered the replica of a modern Shivlinga [a tubular stone].

[78][79] According to Encyclopædia Britannica, while Harappan discoveries include "short cylindrical pillars with rounded tops", there is no evidence that the people of Indus Valley Civilization worshipped these artifacts as lingams.

[73] He quotes Dales 1984 paper, which states "with the single exception of the unidentified photography of a realistic phallic object in Marshall's report, there is no archaeological evidence to support claims of special sexually-oriented aspects of Harappan religion".

[85][86] In the text Linga Purana, the same hymn is expanded in the shape of stories, meant to establish the glory of the great Stambha and the superiority of Shiva as Mahadeva.

[87] According to Swami Vivekananda, the Shiva-linga had origins in the idea of Yupa-Stambha or Skambha of the Vedic rituals, where the term meant the sacrificial post which was then idealized as the eternal Brahman.

[71][86] Shvetashvatara Upanishad states that, of the three significations of Lingam, the primary one is "the imperishable Purusha", the absolute reality,[20] whereby the linga is "sign", a mark that provides the existence of Brahman,[4][88] which is itself formless.

[4] The insight of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad conveyed through the word liūga is formulated explicitly in Samkhya and schools of Yoga or ways of looking at things, that is, looking at their appearance and at Ultimate Reality.

The stone lingam is clearly a representation of an anatomically accurate phallus, with a figure of Lakulisha, the ascetic manifestation of Shiva,[78] carved on the front, holding an antelope and axe in his hands.

[99][100][101][102][103] Lakulisa as an ascetic manifestation of Shiva is seen in later peninsular Indian scriptures whose ithyphallic aspects connotes asceticism and conserved procreative potentialities (Brahmacarya or celibacy), rather than mere eroticism.

[78][104] According to Stella Kramrisch, the pictorial symbol of the Gudimallam lingam should not be mistaken for fertility or eroticism, due to incomplete or impure understanding of the underlying refined principles.

The Bhumara Temple near Satna Madhya Pradesh, for example, is generally dated to late 5th-century Gupta Empire era, and it features an Ekamukha Lingam.

[93] The Linga Purana (5th-10th century CE) states, "Shiva is signless, without color, taste, smell, that is beyond word or touch, without quality, motionless and changeless".

[50] A similar interpretation is also found in the Skanda Purana: "The endless sky (that great void which contains the entire universe) is the Linga, the Earth is its base.