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at the end of the service the burnt up ashes was taken out of the pit as the sacred remnant of the fire and smeared all over thier body and forehead. But as time went on, their love for whoshipping God in still more tangible forms grew up impelling them to substitute for the pit a ring stone and for the blazing fire a piece of stone shaped like it conically; after joining the two together they anointed it with oil, they put leaves and flowers on it, they offered to it what they usually drank and ate, they sang and danced before it, they embraced it and in this wise they satisfied their passion for a tangible worship. It must be noticed too that this form of worship still continues to be paid in all the Siva and Vishnu temples all over India from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas.
Notwithstanding this plain and indisputable origin of Sivalinga or the symbol of Lord Siva, most of the European travellers and scholars and many a learned Indian too have mistaken this sacred symbol of God for a phallic emblem. No greater error can be committed than this misapprehension of the saving significance which the sacred symbol of Siva implies. The smearing of the sacred ashes is so closely associated with the worship of Siva in the form of fire that you cannot explain the association if you take the Sivalinga merely as the symbol of the phallus or the generative organ. But when you relate the use of the sacred ashes to fire- worship, it finds itself fully and readily explained, since ashes is the only pure and sacred remnant left by fire at the end of its worship. Fire purifies everything with which it comes in contact and the pure white ashes must be considered therefore as the emblem of purity itself. That is why the very pious Saint Francis of Assisi too always carried the ashes in his hands and declared "Brother ash is very pure. "5 And for more extended treatment of the significance of Sivalinga the reader is referred to the Tamil text.
Besides this stone symbol of fire, the Tamils also worshipped the Heavenly Parents as represented in stone in the human male form of Siva and the female form of Uma. Images of this twofold character have been unearthed from the ruins of Harappa and Mohenjadaro and Dr.E. Mackay correctly identifies them with Siva
