Every Hindu house has at least a picture ; many have idols; and every man of the Vira Saiva or Jangam sect, of whom there are many millions in India, always wears the liugam in a silver or gold casket, suspended from his neck or tied round his arm. The lingam inside is a small stone cylinder embedded in the yoni. The ordinary lingam, of which there are millions in India, is a stone cylinder rising from the yoni, a stone plat form marked with circular markings ; usually in front of it is a figure of the bull Nandi in stone. Ganapati or Ganesa, with the head of an elephant and the body of a fat man, is an idol frequently to be seen. As the god of wisdom, he is worshipped at the beginning of every undertaking by almost all Hindus. When a Hindu boyor girl begins to read, they make a Ganesa in the form of a small cone of cow-dung, which they place on a purified spot, and ornament it with flowers and naragam and red kanganu, and offer a sacrifice by burning camphor and frankincense, also offering betel-nuts and plantains, cocoanuts and jagari then bow rever entially and pray for the god's aid. The pyramidal figure is then kept for a time or thrown into the water. Any person may see them.
In a Hindu temple, the idol is kept in the centre of the temple, called Sanadi. Daily the Brahman servants anoint it with oil, cleanse it with sikaia, wash it with water, then with curds, milk, lime-juice and honey, and cocoanut water. Before it the dancing girls of the temple, the deva dasa, dance and sing to music morning and evening. On certain festivals, the idol .is taken from the
temple in a palanquin or on a car, and made to perambulate the squares and the streets.
Idols are frequently objects of litigation, and sacrifices of human beings are occasionally made to them. In a village called Kishnagur, some 30 miles from Bikanir, there lived one Maya Ram, a Jat by birth, in whose house was an image of stone, which Maya Ram and his family used to worship. It was a tradition in the village that the idol had been kept formerly in several other houses, one after the other, but that all who worshipped it had come to a violent end ; and Maya Ram one day was seen behaving very strangely before the idol, dancing frantically, says the report. He then forbade the other villagers to enter the house.
He seemed under the influence of some religious homicidal mania, attacking his kinsmen, and threatening to kill them unless they conformed to his worship of the stone image. He killed the child of his elder brother. Suddenly the contagion of madness seemed to seize the whole family : Maya Ram, with two male kinsmen and seven women, threw themselves into a well all together, and shouting Swarga chalo! '—Come to heaven! —the whole ten were drowned.
The Jain idols are usually naked figures of men and women, of gigantic proportions, often erect, but in every attitude. The Buddhist idol is usu ally Buddha or Gaudama, reclining, or sitting in the attitude of preaching. Some of the figures of Gaudama at the great Shooay dagon temple at Rangoon are of vast dimensions.—Moor ; IYard's Hindus ; Tr. of a Hind.; Coleman.