Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, January 1921 · page 21 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #16 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This appears to be a travel narrative rather than a cartoon page. The text is a first-person account—likely by the magazine's editor or a contributor—describing visits to Hindu and Buddhist temples in India (Benares, Elephanta caves near Bombay). The piece expresses Western Victorian moral outrage at explicit religious sculptures and "lingam" (phallic) symbolism in temples. The narrator claims shock at sexual imagery in Buddhist and Hindu worship, contrasting "beastly" Buddhism unfavorably with Hinduism, while simultaneously admitting to photographing the carvings secretly. The satire appears self-directed: the narrator's prudish embarrassment and hypocrisy—condemning practices while documenting them—is the likely joke. The passage mocks genteel Victorian attitudes toward non-Western religions and sexuality, a recurring theme in *Whiz Bang*, which specialized in irreverent commentary on social pretension. No specific political figures or cartoons are visible on this page.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang 19 Benares is called the “Holy City” on the principle, I suppose, that “in religion, what damned error, but some sober brow will bless it and approve it with a text.” As well call ice hot, vinegar sweet, vice virtue or hell heaven. One morning we pious pilgrims left the ladies, who were not permitted to accompany us, and climbed to the secluded spot where stands the Ne-palese temple ornamented with gymnastic and obscene carvings that would make the red pictures of Pompeii blush with shame. These filthy figures of men and women, carved to please and pacify the gods, are not mentioned in the guide-books or referred to above a whisper in polite society. If this sex perversion marks the high tidy of Buddhist faith, I am ashamed, though I have photos of the carvings which I keep in my strong-box packed in chloride of lime. Kali Hinduism may be bloody, but Buddhism here is beastly. Almost as bad are the stone images and inscriptions in the caves of Elephanta out from Bombay. The tem-ple columns, aisles and figures are hewn from the living rock. I looked at the three-faced Siva, and noticed the stylish headdress; saw another figure with cap orna-ment of human skulls; Virag, half-male and female, and the Siva shrine with the “lingam” altar before which millions of barren wives and hopeless girls had pros-trated and prostituted themselves in Sivaite festivals. The temple keeper beckoned me to one side and gave me a private lecture on these “lingam,” phallus or Priapus symbols of sex organ worship which I had found in other lands. While he proceeded, my blush illuminated the dark cave, and as I left the “altar” a