"With Hindus, in a word, it is the form of nature's matrix; with Plutonists, or Vulcanists, or Saiva, it is creation--it is heat--it is renovation--it is fire--it is regeneration--it is all in all. So it is with Neptunists, the Vaishnavas: then, of course, of aqueous, in lieu of igneous, reference. "What is the sea," they say, "but the hollow of the hand--the great _argha_--of nature--or matrice of production and reproduction?" "In the seemingly whimsical operation of the cleft tree, now more immediately under our notice, the all-pervading form and feeling may be recognised. A child issuing head first (by some practitioners feet first) through such cleft--or a man through a natural or artificial similar fissure or cleft in a rock, or through a like form of metal, down to the ridiculous cut cheese of Oxford--all seem to be indications of obstetricity, and would not fail of reminding a 'twice-born' Brahman of a 'second birth' or regeneration--of which mysterious matter his ceremonial and spiritual books abound. "The 'new birth' of Christians--let it not be deemed irreverent to mix such subjects--is expressly declared and universally understood to be of grace; spiritual, though it produce no visible fruits. Superstition, the offspring of ignorance and craft, may occasionally symbolize it into carnality. But such is the proneness of Brahmans to general sexualization that although their esoteric dogma of regeneration is said to be sufficiently guarded on that point, it has notwithstanding, from such proneness, been degraded into doctrines and ritual ceremonies that we may term mythological, or whimsical, or ridiculous, or worse. "The investiture of the 'twice-born'--a common periphrasis for a Brahman--of a mystical triple cord, or rather a thread diversely re-triplicated up to the number ninety-six, is understood to be a purifying rite. This thread has several names. That by which it is mostly called is _Zennaar_. By western writers it has been common to call it the 'sacerdotal thread,' or the 'Brahminical thread,' meaning thereby, probably, to confine it to priests. But it is not confined to priests nor to Brahmans. The two next classes wear it and are canonically and ceremonially entitled. If the reader supposes that Brahman and priest are synonymous he is in error. With Hindus all priests are Brahmans. Through this mystical _zennaar_, or _vinculum_, the sanctified person is passed with endless ceremonials. The figurative language common in eastern idioms of 'twice born,' being 'made whole' &c., is with us spirituality. But it is by others misunderstood, and hence those who are not 'broken-hearted,' not 'broken in spirit,' but broken in body, seek to be 'made whole' by a physical rite; and pass regeneratively through a _zennaar_, or a tree, or a stone, of a peculiar form or figure."[20]