Yoni
[3][5] Together, they symbolize the merging of microcosmos and macrocosmos,[5] the divine eternal process of creation and regeneration, and the union of the feminine and the masculine that recreates all of existence.
[15] The yoni with linga iconography is found in Shiva temples and archaeological sites of the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia,[16][17][18] as well in sculptures such as the Lajja Gauri.
[23] According to Indologists Constance Jones and James D. Ryan, the yoni symbolizes the female principle in all life forms as well as the "earth's seasonal and vegetative cycles", and thus is an emblem of cosmological significance.
[22] Some in the orthodox Western cultures, states the Indologist Laura Amazzone, have treated the feminine sexual organs and sexuality in general as a taboo subject, but in Indic religions and other ancient cultures the yoni has long been accepted as profound cosmological and philosophical truth, of the feminine potential and power, one mysteriously interconnected with the natural periodic cycles of moon, earth and existence.
[30] The colonial era archaeologists John Marshall and Ernest Mackay proposed that certain polished stones with holes found at Harappan sites may be evidence of yoni-linga worship in Indus Valley civilisation.
[31] 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".
[40] In some Indic literature, yoni means vagina,[40][41] and other organs regarded as "divine symbol of sexual pleasure, the matrix of generation and the visible form of Shakti".
[40] 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 yoni iconography and reverence they witnessed.
[3][42] The 19th and early 20th-century colonial and missionary literature described yoni, 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".
[43] According to Wendy Doniger, the terms lingam and yoni became explicitly associated with human sexual organs in the western imagination after the widely popular first Kama Sutra translation by Sir Richard Burton in 1883.
The yoni iconography is typically represented in the form of a horizontally placed round or square base with a lipped edge and an opening in the center usually with a cylindrical lingam.
The last stage was an anthropomorphic figure of a squatting naked goddess holding lotus and motifs of agricultural abundance spread out showing her yoni as if she is giving birth or sexually ready to procreate.
[48][16] The Shakta tradition believes, states Hugh Urban – a professor of Religious Studies primarily focusing on South Asia, that this temple site is the "locus of goddess' own yoni".
[16] While the temple premises, walls and mandapas have numerous depictions of goddess Kamakhya in her various roles, include those relating to her procreative powers, as a martial warrior, and as a nurturing motherly figure (one image near the western gate shows her nursing a baby with her breast, dated to 10th-12th century).
The sanctum with the yoni of the goddess is one of the most important pilgrimage sites for the Shakti tradition, attracting between 70,000 and 200,000 pilgrims during the Ambubachi Mela alone from the northeastern and eastern states of India such as West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
[6] Yoni typically with linga is found in historic stone temples and panel reliefs of Indonesia,[57] Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.
