"LINGA" AS LORD SUPREME IN THE VACANA-S OF BASAVA

R. BLAKE MICHAEL

Among his earliest memories, dreams, and reflections, C. G. Jung relates a fascinating dream from his fourth year. Playing in a beautiful meadow, he discovered a dark, stone-lined hole and a set of stairs leading down into the earth. Descending the stairs and pushing aside a green brocade curtain, he peered curiously through an archway into a dimly lit vaulted chamber. On a raised platform in the center, stood a magnificent golden throne covered by red cushioning, surrounded by red carpeting, and supporting upright a massive column. Though the column resembled a tree trunk, it was composed of flesh and had as its capital a rounded head, faceless and hairless, marked only by a single unmoving eye which cast a bright aura upward. Terrified that the object might come down from its throne, and, wormlike, creep over to devour him, the young dreamer was not in the least comforted when he heard his mother's voice calling from outside the chamber, "Yes, just look at him. That is the man-eater!" Much later, reflecting on this haunting childhood dream, Jung recognized the hole as a symbol of the grave and death, the meadow and the green curtain as the verdant and fertile earth, the red carpeting and cushioning as blood, the crowning aura as the shining root of phallic imagery (Gk. jah6q: shining, bright), and the column as an anatomically correct and obviously erect male genital organ. For his own reflections upon matters psychological as well as matters theological, that dream phallus became and remained a symbol of the "God 'not to be named' " whose terrifying aspect at 1 least equalled his benign face.' Both the narrative structure and many of the symbols of Jung's s dream had found archetypical expression centuries earlier in the great fifteenth-century Virasaiva dialectical text, the Siinyasa7!l- padane. That text narrates the wanderings of the great saint , his own spiritual progress, and his encounters with other 203 spiritual seekers. In one such encounter, having met and instructed the farmer Goggayya, Allama continued wandering about in Gog- gayya's fields. There he came upon the entrance to a concealed chamber. Entering and looking about, Allama detected the glow of a single flame bathing the visage of an accomplished yogin, who sat meditating in the full-lotus position, unmoving and unblinking, Animisa. On Animisa's palm was a small stone symbol which he contemplated with perfect concentration and composure. Enrap- tured by the aspect of this perfected master and obsessed with the need for a similar accomplishment on his own part, Allama besought Animisa to instruct and initiate him. When the latter remained unresponsive, Allama recognized the spiritual identity of himself and his idol and promptly initiated himself by seizing the symbol from Animisa's palm. His joy at that somewhat irregular initiation was interrupted by the immediate demise of Animisa whose corporeal form disintegrated as he became merged with the formless void.? 2 Certain similarities between these two events cannot escape note. The wandering about in verdant fields, the descent into the caverns of the earth, the glow from the solitary lights, the encounters with the rigid and erect column and unmoving yogin, the threatened violence by the "man-eater" upon the boy, and the disintegrative impatience of the novice toward his new-found master-all these elements readily suggest psycho-sexual interpretations of fertility, the mother's womb, the blinding emission, the erect phallus, the castrating female, and the impatient young parricide. This impetus toward a psycho-sexual interpretation of these materials-especially of the Virasaiva tale-is at first strengthened by a rudimentary knowledge of Virasaiva belief and practice in which the object of contemplation held in the palm is a small stone called liiiga". In , the colloquial language of Virasaiva poetry, as in Sanskrit, the word ` `linga" often refers to the penis or, more specifically, to the phallus of Lord Siva. Western reactions to the phallic connotations of the term "linga" have been two-fold. The nineteenth-century Christian missionaries and European civil servants who served in were quick to ex- press their surprise, disgust, and horror at the liiga cult in general and at the Virasaiva-s' emphasis on the linga in particular. They