In its religious traditions, India has affinities with the earliest known forms of sacred rites, concepts, and views. In Hindu religious mythology, the cosmic power of creation, of the generative capacity, is symbolized by the duality of the hermaphrodite, the male and female intertwined, sharing the properties of each other, representing the passive and active principles that pervade all Nature. * * * * * From the testimony furnished by bas-reliefs in caves such as the Ajanta caverns, by temple carvings, paintings, and sculptural adornments, the cult of the lingam, throughout India, appears to date back to a very remote and undetermined antiquity. Among certain sects, the supreme power is worshipped in the phallic form. In wayside lodges, on facades and shrines, the genital figure of masculine dominance is everywhere on view. In many instances this omnipresence and insistence of the symbolic phallus assume monstrously obscene forms and positions, writhing and contorted in erotic frenzy, or entwined in serpentine coils and performing abominations of the utmost lubricity in the name and under the aegis of the cosmic creative force. A remoter but still valid corollary is that the amatory urge derives from this universal generative process and strives to merge with it and hence seeks whatever erotic measures and manipulations may be favorable to such a consummation. * * * * * At Benares, Jagannath, and elsewhere in India, the deities of generation were held in great reverence, and were worshipped, notably by women, who symbolically, and more frequently actually, consorted with, for instance, Vishnu, at a nocturnal ceremony during the annual celebrations held in his honor. * * * * * The _Atharva Veda_, the Sanskrit magic text, contains an invocation whereby a woman appeals for a husband: I seek a husband. Sitting here, my hair flowing loose, I am like one positioned before a giant procession, searching for a husband for this woman without a spouse. O Aryaman! This woman cannot longer bear to attend the marriages of other women. Now, having performed this rite, other women will come to the wedding-feast of hers! The Creator holds up the Earth, the planets, the Heavens. O Creator, produce for me a suitor, a husband. * * * * * The _Atharva Veda_ also recommends a talisman made from sraktya wood, to be used in supplication to all the divinities of the Hindu pantheon, with these words: And this great and powerful talisman does strike to victory wherever it is used. It produces children, fecundity, security, fortunes! * * * * * Another Hindu invocation, in the text of the _Atharva Veda_, contains an amatory appeal for a wife: