The Lingam Enigma

Some of the most unusual and most mythologized singing bowls are these featuring a raised bottom. They are commonly referred to as lingam bowls.

A lingam is an abstract representation of the Hindu deity Shiva, usually taking the form of an oblong stone. Any "male" shape can be referred to as a Shiva linga. Were these bowls related to Hindu worship or perhaps a symbol borrowed by Buddhists? The real history is unknown and there are multiple possibilities.

One possibility is that the term was used only recently, invented by one of the early singing bowl sellers. Many mystical stories were dreamed up by sales people in the 1990's and the story of the lingam could have been made up in those years. The fact is many types of bowls have a raised bottom and they are not referred to as lingams. Were these different? Perhaps they had a special ritual function.

Over the years I collected very few lingam bowls. The reason is that most did not meet my standards for the sound quality and playability. The bowls in this collection are the best I ever found and some of the best singing bowls ever made. They are generally extremely thick which gives them very high tones compared to thinner bowls of the same size.

The lingam bowls were made in a wide range of shapes and sizes over the ages. They seem to have been made by several makers over several centuries. They were also made in very small quantity.

These two points, their long distribution and small numbers, support a communal ritual function rather than individual use. This means they were possibly used as Hindu shrine objects. I have found lingam bowls with red coated on the inside, something I have not seen on any other type of singing bowl. This also supports the Hindu origin.

Another type of bowl, commonly sold as a singing bowl, is a "pedestal bowl," which is an old singing bowl affixed to a new base. These are known to be used on Hindu shrines in recent years. So there is some contemporary evidence to the Hindu use of certain types of singing bowls. Such may have been the case for the lingam and mani bowls. 

As with the other bowls, the history of human use is mostly unknown and we may never know where they came from or whether they were used differently from the other bowls. The fact that lingam bowls are usually much thicker than other singing bowls sets them apart from the other types. They are too heavy to have been used as monks offering bowls.

They also do not usually sound as good as other types of singing bowls, which is why there are so few in my collection. I rejected many lingam bowls over the years because the sound was not very good. This also supports a shrine function rather than use for sound.

There is a possibility that the raised bottom is not a lingam at all, as I wrote in The Singing Bowl Book. For many years, I maintained that the lingam was a device for manufacturing, that the protrusion would help keep the bowl in place during hammering. I am less inclined to believe that today. I think the lingam was added as a decorative element, perhaps with symbolic spiritual meaning.