Yin and Yang, in Chinese philosophy, the two great-female and male vivifying elements, from which have proceeded all material things. They are constructed by describing two equal semi circles with a circle round them, thus—C3)—the yiu or female side being dark with the eye bright, whilst the yang or male side is bright with the eye dark. This emblem has never been pdrsonified by the Chinese, whose queen of heaven is their Tien-How, called also Ma-tsoo-po ; she is the goddess of the sea, and every ship is furnished with this idol.
Modern Hindus have bad three deities, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, who have been regarded by their respective followe,rs as Supreme; but Brahma is novi neglected, and the latter two alone receive worship. All the believers in Siva entertain the male and female philosophy, of which the lingam and the yoni are the representatives. These emblems are in all the Saiva temples and house holds, iu stone or metal, and are always together. Neither of these emblems have ever been personi fied, though the lingam is the phallus and priapus of the Greeks and Romans. They are innumer able, exposed everywhere in India to the open air.
Parvati, the mountain goddess, daughter of Himavat and wife of Siva, is with the Saiva sect Jagan-mata, mother of the world, a severe deity, addicted to austerities.
Lakshmi is wife of the Hindu god Vishnu, and mother of Kama. She is said, like Aphrodite, to have sprung, from the froth of the ocean in full beauty, with a lotus in her hand, when it was churned by the Daitya and Asuras. In the varied incarnations of Vishnu, she has assumed the forms of Dharani, Sita, and Rukmini. She is the type of womanly beauty, and with the Vaishnava sect is Loka-mata, mother of the world.
Saraswati, wife of Brahma, is goddess.of speech and learning, inventress of the Sanskrit language and Deva-Nagari letters, and patroness of the arts and sciences. As a river goddess, she is lauded for the fertilizing and purifying powers of her waters, and as the bestower of fertility, fatness, and wealth.
In the cosmogony of the modern Hindus, their philosophy has not advanced beyond the idea of the union of the sexes, and is evinced in their custom of manying a new orchard to its well, of marrTing vicariously a man and woman to a tree, of reverencing the junction of rivers and the natural engrafting of trees.
The Buddhists of China have also a queen of heaven. --Shin-mu, or the sacred mother, is fre quently reln.esented sitting in an alcove with a child in her arms, a glory round her head, and with tapers burning constantly before her.