Why is lingam in that shape

The Shiva Purana describes the lingam as a pillar of light or fire whose base and top are unfindable. Lingams that symbolise this pillar of light are called Jyotir lingams. There are twelve in different parts of India and they are the most revered of all Shiva lingams. Shiva appearing in the pillar of light — Puddukotai, Tamil Nadu. The Siva Mahapurana, an ancient mythological and religious scripture, tells of a quarrel between Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver.

Each claimed to be the Supreme Lord and a terrible battle ensued, plunging the universe in confusion and causing great distress to living creatures.

Shiva was moved by compassion and manifested in a blazing pillar of light, challenging Brahma and Vishnu to find the base and top of the pillar. Brahma took the form of a sign and vanished into the sky, hoping to see the top of the pillar.

Vishnu took the form of a boar and dug down into the earth to find its base. Neither could find what they were looking for. They came back exhausted and disoriented. At that moment, the central part of the pillar opened up and Shiva was revealed in all his glory. Brahma and Vishnu realised they were wrong and acknowledged Shiva as the Supreme Being. Somnath in Gujarat, one of the 12 Jyotir Lingam. The Jyotirlingams are located in places where Shiva appeared as a pillar of light.

Each one bears the name of the deity that lives there; each of these deities represents a different aspect of Shiva and a different energy. A Swayambhu lingam rock in Siddhpur, Gujarat.

Most of these are oval-shaped stones. In most cases they have not been moved, a temple having been built around them where they were found. Banalingams are another type of Swayambhu lingams. Those lingams are shaped naturally by the river itself. Hindus consider these unique stones sacred because of their lingam shape but some also regard them as having special energy properties…. In Hinduism, there are various ways of realizing God, which indicates Hinduism is liberal and have no rigid principles.

According to Hinduism, God becomes manifest in various aspects and forms and is known by various names. Shiva Lingam consists of three parts. The bottom part which is four-sided remains underground, the middle part which is eight-sided remains on a pedestal.

The top part, which is actually worshipped, is round. The height of the round part is one-third of its circumference. The three parts symbolize Brahma at the bottom, Vishnu in the middle and Shiva on the top. The pedestal is provided with a passage for draining away the water that is poured on the top. The Lingam symbolizes both the creative and destructive power of Lord Shiva and great sanctity is attached to it by the devotees.

This does not mean others should give a false meaning to the image of Shiva Lingam. It is unfortunate for some critics to have an imaginary invention on the image of Shiva Lingam as a male organ and viewed with obscenity, but had conveniently forgotten how a phallus could have appeared from the base.

Moreover, since Lord Shiva is described as having no form, it is ridiculous to maintain that Lingam represents a phallus. Swami Vivekananda cited Atharva Veda that the worship of Shiva Lingam was sung in praise of sacrificial post — a description of the beginningless and endless of the Eternal Brahman and refuted it as an imaginary invention. Hinduism does not oppose Science.

It does not even oppose other religions. Science is a continuing effort to discover and increase human knowledge of the physical or material world through experiment and observation. But Hinduism has the force of providing answers to certain issues that Science could not. There are two types of Shiva Lingam. One is a black meteorite egg-shaped stone. It is said that such a stone is installed at Kabba in Mecca.

The other one is man-made and is solidified mercury. Solidifying mercury is an ancient Vedic science. Shiva Lingam represents the totality of the Cosmos and the Cosmos, in turn, being represented as a Cosmic Egg. Again an egg is an ellipsoid depicting with no beginning, nor end. A glance at the image of Shiva Lingam shows there is a pillar with three marks and a Disc beneath it and sometimes with a coiling cobra snake around the Pillar and shows its fangs above the pillar.

The truth behind the scientific research by the Danish scientist, Neils Bohr, demonstrates that Molecules the smallest part of everything made up of Atoms which consists of Proton, Neutron and Electron, all of which play a vital part in the composition of Shiva Lingam.

In those days instead of using these English words such as Proton, Neutron, Electron, Molecules and Energy, the ancient sages employed the usage of the words like Lingam, Vishnu, Brahma, Sakthi which in turn is divided into Renuka and Rudrani , Sarppa, etc. According to Hinduism, the Pillar is described as the column of fire which represents the three Gods — Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara while the Disc or Peedam represents Sakthi.

The Disc is shown with three ridges, encarved at its periphery. At the same time, he also mentions Lord Shiva is greater than anything greatest. He is the cause of vitality in all living things. Everything, whether living or non-living, originates from Shiva.

He has engulfed the whole world. He is Timeless. He has no birth, no death. He is invisible, unmanifest. He is the Soul of the Soul. He has no emotion, sentiment or passion at all. The contents of sage Vyasa is corroborated with the instance of that Arjuna fashioned a Lingam out of clay when worshipping Lord Shiva.

Similarly, in Ramayana that before crossing to Sri Lanka, Rama, Lakshmana and Sita fashioned a Shiva Lingam at Rameswaram for worshipping Lord Shiva and also that Ravana could not lift the Lingam after it was placed on the ground by the small boy. These instances show that God may be conceptualized and worshipped in any convenient form. It is the divine power that it represents, is all that matters and here we see that both Arjuna in Maha Bharatha and Rama and Sita worshipping Lord Shiva as Nirguna Brahman or the formless Supreme Being.

The outcome of the scientific research is that the world came into existence with the formation of Molecules. According to Science, two atoms make one Molecule. The valency of molecules indicates the combination of the atoms. It is essential to have a clear idea of the structure of an atom according to the findings of the Danish scientist, Neils Bohr.

The nucleus of an atom is composed of positively charged Protons and neutrally charged Neutrons. Almost all the mass of an atom is in its nucleus. The nucleus is the very dense region consisting of Protons and Neutrons at the centre of an atom. In its earlier form, it was known as the Vedic religion, a religion of a pastoral people, commonly identified as the Aryans. Their primary religious activity involved invoking a primal abstract force known as Brahman through a ritual known as yagna to satisfy various material aspirations.

Hymns were chanted and offerings made into a fire altar in the quest for fertility and power. That the ritual involved no permanent shrine suggests its followers were a nomadic people.

Hinduism today is very rooted to the land. It revolves around a shrine, often a vast temple complex. This shift is ascribed to the mingling of the Aryans, over 4, years ago, with agriculturists, city dwellers and forest tribes, a process which continued over a thousand years. Tantalising glimpses of the assimilation process emerge from chronicles and epics written only in the last millennium. The most spectacular shift in the nature of Hinduism has been the move from almost agnostic ritualism to unabashed theism: from belief in a host of gods and spirits to belief in an all-powerful god.

But like all things Indian, this belief was not so simple. Hindus visualised the all-powerful god in various ways. For some, god was the world-affirming Vishnu. For others, god was the world-rejecting Shiva. And then there were those for whom god was feminine, the goddess. God coexisted with goddess and the gods and the spirits. Nothing was rejected. This was the Hindu way. The Indian way. Since the script has not been deciphered one can only speculate what this image represents.

But most scholars believe it is an early form of Shiva because it captures at least three attributes of Shiva: Shiva as Pashupati, lord of animals; as Yogeshwara, lord of yoga; and as Lingeshwara, lord of the phallus.

He is a god who is feared. He howls and shoots arrows that spread disease. He is appeased and requested to stay away.

In the Shatarudriya hymn of the Yajur Veda there is a sense that he is considered highly potent and highly dangerous. He remains an outsider god — a god to whom the leftovers of the yagna have to be offered. This and the existence of pre-Vedic representations of Shiva have led to speculation that Shiva is perhaps not a Vedic god. Perhaps he was a tribal god or perhaps a god of settled agricultural communities, the Dravidians, who were overrun by Aryans.

It represents the uneasy relationship between exoteric Vedic rituals on one hand and esoteric Dravidian practices such as yoga, asceticism and alchemy on the other.

One day, he was invited to a gathering of gods. As Daksha entered, proud and noble, all the gods rose. They joined their hands to salute this supreme patron of the yagna. Daksha was pleased. He swept a glance around the assembly, accepting the salutations of the gods. Then his glance fell upon a solitary, seated figure and his expression darkened.