YONI. SANSK. The place or elements of birth, from Sanskrit root Yu, to mix. In the physiolog ical religion or philosophy of the Hindus, the ling,ain and the yoni represent organs of the human body, and the symbols are to be seen in almost every street of every town of British India. The yoni is the symbol of the bhaga, and the lingam, priapus, or phallus, is that of the bija. It is a cosmic philosophy based on the union of the sexes, and Hindu writers represent Narayana moving (as his name implies) on the waters, in the character of the first male, and the principle of all nature, which was wholly surrounded in the beginning by tanias, or darkness, the chaos, or primordial night of the Greek mythologists. The chaos is called pmkriti, or crude nature ; and the male deity has the name of Purusha, froin whom proceeded sakti or power ; that power, in its first state, was an aptitude, and lay dormant or inert until it NM% excited by the bija or vivifying principle. This power or aptitute of nature is
represented under the symbol of the yoni or bliaga, while the bija or animating principle is expressed by the ling-a. The symbols of the lingam and yoni are constructed of stone or inetal of some kind, the ling= surrounded by the yoni. At the very extremity of Malabar Poiut, on the island of Bombay, is a cleft rock, to which pilgrims resort for the purpose of regeneration by the efficacy of a passage through this sacred type. This aperture is of considerable elevation, situated among rocks of no easy access, and, in the stormy season, incessantly buffeted by the surf of the ocean. The devotee, leaving his clothes and his sins at one side, passes through cleansed and regenerated.—Moor ; Coleman; Colebrooke ; Wil ford ; As. Res. ii. p. 471, iii. p. 365, iv. p. 366, vii. p. 256, viii. p. 274.