At present in India the most widely recognized visible aid in worship is the representation of the _linga_ and the _yoni_ combined. This symbol nominally stands for Siva; but that seems to be only because Saivism predominates in modern Hindooism. The idea of this symbolic combination long antedates this prominence of Siva worship.[529] A form of Booddhist prayer in Tibet, said to be repeated more frequently than any other known among men, is “the six-syllabled sentence, ‘_Om mani padme Hūm_,’–‘Om! the Jewel in the Lotus! Hum!’” This prayer is simply a euphemism for the primitive Threshold Covenant, as here explained, with an ejaculatory invocation and ascription before and after it.[530] It seems to be a survival of the thought that here was the beginning of religious rites, and that all covenant worship must continue in its spirit and power. Every repetition of that prayer, by speech or by mechanism, is supposed to affect the progress of a soul in its crossing the threshold of one of the stages of being in the universe. It is a help to a new birth for some soul somewhere. There would thus appear to be no room for doubt in this matter in the language and customs of the primitive Aryan peoples, and there are also confirmations of the idea among the Semites. A legend that has a place among the Jews and the Muhammadans, tells of a visit of Abraham to the home of Hagar and Ishmael in Arabia.[531] An Amalekite wife of Ishmael refused hospitality to Abraham, and in consequence Abraham left a message to Ishmael to “change his threshold.” This message Ishmael understood to mean the putting away of his wife and the taking of another, and he acted accordingly. In the Arabic “a wife” is one of the meanings of the term “threshold.”[532] And the term “gate,” or “door,” had among the rabbis a specific application to the altar of family covenanting. Thus Buxtorf, in his definings of “_janua_” and “_ostium_,” says plainly: “_Apud rabbinos etiam est ‘ostium ventris muliebris.’_” And he quotes the saying of a disappointed bridegroom : “_Ostium apertum inveni._”[533] Among the early Babylonians and Egyptians, as among other primitive peoples, the twofold symbols of sex are counted the sacred emblem of life, and as such are borne by the gods of life, and by those who have the power of life and death from those gods. The circle and rod, or ring and bolt, conjoined, are in the right hand of the Babylonian sun-god Shamash;[534] as, in the _ankh_, or _crux ansata_, they are in the right hand of every principal deity of ancient Egypt.[535] It is much the same with the Phœnicians and others.[536] In the innermost shrine of the most sacred Shinto temples of Japan, the circular mirror, and the straight dagger, with the same meaning as the circle and rod in Babylonia and Egypt and Phœnicia, are the only indications of the presence of deity; and the worshipers in those temples can come no farther than the threshold of the shrine containing these emblems.[537]