* தமிழர் மதம்
31
triple-eyed God, that is, the God that possesses the three lights as his three eyes; while the northern Tamils who loved the red light of the evening sun fixed upon the term ‘Siva' as being an appropriate one by which to call the Almighty God of the universe.
Now, with this mere intangible microcosmic image of God formed in their mind the Tamils were not satisfied, since it was not accessible to the worship they loved to pay externally also. Intense love towards an object expresses itself in the acts of the loving person and urges him on to offer to it, as a token of that love, what he most values of his earthly possessions. It is for the sake of satisfying this inner urge that persons of a strong religious turn of mind set up before them a stone image, made like the image of God formed in their imagination, and pay their adoration by offering to it flowers, fruits, grains etc., in all love and reverence.
The earliest stone symbol worshipped six or seven thousand years ago by the Tamils was a coneshaped piece infixed into a circular stone and called 'Sivalinga' in later times. This symbol represents the union of both the heat principles which, as is manifest in the burning flame, always assumes a cone-shape, and the cold principle which, as is seen in the circling motion of the deep running water, takes on a ring-shape almost. That the ancient Tamils used, than as now, such symbpl stones all over India and in foreign countries where they colonized for commercial purposes, is evidenced not only by the large number of these symbol stones recently dug out from the buried cities of Harappa and Mohenjadaro in the Punjab, but also by the multitudinous temple in which this symbol is set up and worshipped even unto this day in Southern India and western countries.
And of this very old lithic symbol the under part which is ciruclar in shape is a plain representation of the shape of the pit in which the fire was kindled, while the cone-shaped piece infixed into it stands for the form of the flame that blazes up from the pit. It was in this way that fire was kindled and directly worshipped as God by the ancinet Tamils in pre-historic times and long after; and
