The Moving and the Standing

Lesson 54 ended on a distinction: the Tamil poets bypassed the restrictions rather than repealing them, and nothing was repealed. The question that follows is whether any movement went at the institution directly — and one did.

Liṅga is glossed, in order: a mark, spot, sign, token, badge, emblem, characteristic; any assumed or false badge, a guise or disguise; a proof, evidence — the citation is to Kaṇāda, whose sūtras Lesson 46 opened; a sign of guilt, corpus delicti; the sign of sex, the organ of generation; the phallus, especially that of Śiva worshipped as a stone column set up in temples; gender in grammar; the image of a god; and, in logic, the invariable mark which proves the existence of anything in an object — as smoke is the liṅga of fire.