"The Bael Tree," says Forlong, "as a representative of the triad and monad, is always offered at Lingam worship, after washing the Lingam with water and anointing it with sandal wood. The god is supposed to specially like all white flowers and cooling embrocations, which last sandal wood is held to be; and he is very commonly to be found under an umbrageous Bael, more especially if there be no fine Ficus near; failing both, the poor god is often reduced to the stump of a tree; and if that is also scarce, his votaries raise to him a karn or cairn of stones, with the prominent one in the centre, and plant a pomegranate, bits of tolsi, &c., near; and if water is available, a little garden of flowers, of which the marigolds are a favourite. My readers must not fancy that this worship is indecent, or even productive of licentiousness. It is conducted by men, women and children of modest mien, and pure and spotless lives, though at certain seasons, as in all faiths and lands, the passions are roused and the people proceed to excesses, yet Sivaism is peculiarly free from this with reference to others, not excluding Eastern Christianity. Vishnooism, which we may call the worship of _The Left Hand_, or female energies, is perhaps the greatest sinner in this respect. Sivaism is for the most part _harshly ascetic_, as regards its office-bearers and orthodox followers; yet all faiths give way at certain solar periods, and all Hindoo sects are as bad as Romans at the spring 'hilaria or carnival,' the more so if Ceres or Kybele is propitious, and more apparently so in countries where writings have not yet supplanted pictures. Amongst all the rudest tribes of India, and even throughout Rajpootana, and with the strict Jain sects who abhor Lingam worship, these still shew their parent root by devoting some fifteen days annually, after the harvests are gathered in, to the most gross form of Lingam worship, in which a complete naked image of a man, called 'Elajee,' is built of clay and decorated with wreaths of flowers, &c., and placed in prominent situations. In most parts of Rajpootana, this male image exists at every city and village gate, but it is not rendered conspicuously indecent until the hooly or harvest enjoyments; and low and degrading as these are, reminding us of our purely animal frame, yet no Hindoo practices of harvest times are so gross as I have seen practised at the harvest homes or midnight revelries of our own country."