In connection with the Lingamic ritual in India, there remain usages now degenerated into symbolism, which cannot be interpreted in any other sense than as “survivals” of very obscene and disgusting practices in the primitive life of that region. In describing the sacrifice called Poojah, Maurice says: “The Abichegam makes a part of the Poojah. This ceremony consists in pouring milk upon the lingam. This liquor is afterwards kept with great care, and some drops are given to dying people that they may merit the delights of the Calaison.” The “salagram of the Vishnuites is the same as the lingam of the Seevites.” “Happy are those favored devotees who can quaff the sanctified water in which either has been bathed.”—(“Ind. Ant.” vol. v. pp. 146, 179.)

Dulaure describes the rites of the Cochi-couris, in which the sacred water of the Ganges is first poured upon the lingam; it is then preserved to be dealt out in drops to the faithful; it is specially serviceable in soothing the last hours of the dying. The Lingam is the Phallic symbol. The water or milk sanctified by it may represent a former employment of urine, such, as will be shown, as prevailed all over Europe. The use of lingam water is perhaps analogous to that of mistletoe water, previously noted.

In speaking of the “mysteries” of the goddess “Cotitta,” a popular Venus of the isle of Chios, Dulaure says: “Les initiés, qui se livraient à tous les excès de la débauche, y employaient le Phallus d’une manière particulière; ils étaient de verre et servaient de vases à boire.” He quotes Juvenal, satire 2, verse 95, as saying of the extreme license of these mysteries: “vitreo bibit ille Priapo.”—(“Des Divinités Génératrices.”)

Does not the preceding paragraph, in the lines from the Roman satirist, conceal under a very gauzy veil, a dirty proceeding akin to the urine dance of the Zuñis?

Frommann quotes the above lines from Juvenal, without attempting to enter upon an explanation of them. (See “Tract. de Fascinatione,” p. 333.) Rev. Lewis Evans, a Fellow of Wadham’s College, Oxford, translates them as follows in his edition of “Juvenal:”—

But Gifford renders it:—

Montfaucon says that in the Festivals of Priapus “celebrated by the women ... the priestess sprinkles Priapus with water.”—(“l’Antiquité expliquée,” lib. i. part 2, c. xxviii.; in the first volume is a representation of a phallic vase with human ears attached.)

“Verser quelques gouttes sur la tête dans la bouche des agonisants.”—(Dulaure, “Des. Div. Generat.,” Paris, 1825, pp. 105, 106, 111.)

“In a manuscript of the church of Beauvais about the year 500, it is said that the chanter and canons shall stand before the gates of the church, which were shut, holding each of them urns full of wine with glass cups, of whom one canon shall begin the Kalends of January.”—(Fosbroke, “British Monachism,” p. 81.)

In out of the way nooks and corners in Europe, intelligent observers may still stumble upon traces of the religious observances alluded to in Juvenal; Mr. Macaulay, of Philadelphia, Penn’a, who lived for a time near Monaco, in the Riviera, imparts the information that, in that section of Italy he had personally noticed such a peculiar custom; i. e. that of assembling each family on Christmas eve, in a semicircle, round the fire; the youngest boy urinated on the blazing log; then the father took a glass goblet, filled with white wine, and sprinkled the log with an olive branch; finally, all sipped from the goblet, the contents of which Mr. Macaulay said he had been told were undoubtedly symbolical of urine.

Among people farther to the north, the same worship of fire by offering food and drinking a libation still obtains without any offensive features.

In Sweden and Norway “early in the morning, the good wife has been up, making her fire and baking; she now assembles her servants in a half-circle before the oven door, they all bend the knee, take one bit of cake, and drink the fire’s health; what is left of cake or drink is cast into the flame.”—(Grimm, “Teut. Mythol.” vol. ii. p. 629.)

“Our German sagen and märchen have retained the feature of kneeling before the oven and praying to it.... The unfortunate, the persecuted, resort to the oven and bewail their woe, they reveal to it some secret which they dare not confess to the world.”—(Idem, p. 629.)

“A leur Coleda, les Serbes font brûler une bûche de chêne, l’arrosent de vin, la frappent en faisant voler les étincelles, et crient: ‘Autant d’étincelles, autant de chèvres et de brebis.’”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 111.)

The resemblance to the customs of the East Indies was, in places, even closer than as above indicated.

Inman tells of sterile women who drank “priapic wine,” i. e. wine poured upon an upright conical stone representing the lingam, and then collected and allowed to turn sour.—(Inman, “Ancient Faiths,” etc., vol. i. p. 305, article “Asher.”)

The same statement is to be found in Hargrave Jennings’ work, “Phallicism,” London, 1884, p. 256, but it seems to be repeated from Inman and Dulaure. Campbell reports that “among the principal relics of the Church at Embrun was the statue of Saint Foutin. The worshippers of this idol poured libations of wine upon its extremity, which was reddened by the practice. This wine was caught in a jar and allowed to turn sour. It was then called ‘holy vinegar,’ and was used by the women as a lotion to anoint the yoni.”—(“Phallic Worship,” Robert Allen Campbell, St. Louis, Mo., 1888, p. 197.)

Among the Apache Indians of Arizona, the Zuñis, Moquis, and Pueblos, the author has seen large arrow or spear shaped pieces of flint which had been obtained under peculiar circumstances, were regarded as possessed of great virtues, and were worn round the necks by the women, generally by those who professed “medicine” powers. Fragments of these flints were ground to fine powder, and administered to women while pregnant, to ensure safe delivery; all that was learned of these stones will be presented in another work; the veneration paid them seems to be closely associated with the worship of lightning. Vallencey, in his “Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis,” No. xiii. 17, says: “In the Highlands of Scotland, a large chrystal, of a figure somewhat oval, was kept by the priests to work charms by; water poured upon it at this day is given to cattle against diseases; these stones are now preserved by the oldest and most superstitious in the country.”—(Brand, “Pop. Antiq.” vol. iii. p. 60, art. “Sorcerer.”)