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of the tenth century, when twelve celebrated Lingas were enshrined in as many of the capital cities of India. Somnath was one of them, the destruction of whose temple by Mahmúd, of Ghizní, is narrated by Gibbon. The worship of the Linga is now in a somewhat dubious condition in different parts of India. In the south, it gives a name and a principle of combination to a particular sect-the Jangamas or Lingáyits, whose chief priests are Pariahs, outcasts, although the votaries include Brahmans, and Brahmans are in some of the temples ministering priests under a Pariah pontiff. In Bengal, although the temples are numerous, they are ordinarily mean and are little frequented, and the worship is recommended to the people by no circumstances of popular attraction. It has no hold upon their affections, it is not interwoven with their amusements, nor must it be imagined that it offers any stimulus to impure passions. The emblem-a plain column of stone, or, sometimes, a cone of plastic mud-suggests no offensive ideas; the people call it Śiva, or Mahadeva, and there's an end. They leave to Europeans speculations as to its symbolical purport. It is enough for them that it is an image, to which they make a prostration or to which they cast a few flowers. There are no secret rites, no mysterious orgies celebrated in its honour.
Vishnu, the preserving power, is a much more popular divinity, not in his own person, however, but
# [See above Vol. I, 216 ff. Lassen, Ind. Alt., IV, 623.]
RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
