The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its...

Agni, thou art a sage, a priest, a king, Protector, father of the sacrifice; Commissioned by our men thou dost ascend A messenger, conveying to the sky Our hymns and offerings, though thy origin Be three fold, now from air and now from water, Now from the mystic double Arani.[44]

Count Goblet d’Alviella combats the hypothesis of Burnouf that the Swastika when turned to right or left, passed, the one for the male and the other for the female principle, and declares, on the authority of Sir George Birdwood, that it is, in modern India, a popular custom to name objects which appear in couples as having different sexes, so that to say “the male Swastika” and the “female Swastika,” indicating them by the pronouns “he” or “she,” would be expressed in the same manner when speaking of the hammer and the anvil or of any other objects used in pairs.[45]

Ludwig Müller, in his elaborate treatise, gives it as his opinion that the Swastika had no connection with the Tau cross or with the Crux ansata, or with the fire wheel, or with arani, or agni, or with the mystic or alphabetic letters, nor with the so-called spokes of the solar wheel, nor the forked lightning, nor the hammer of Thor. He considers that the triskelion might throw light on its origin, as indicating perpetual whirling or circular movement, which, in certain parts of southern Asia as the emblem of Zeus, was assimilated to that of Baal, an inference which he draws from certain Asiatic coins of 400 B. C.

Mr. R. P. Greg[46] opposes this theory and expresses the opinion that the Swastika is far older and wider spread as a symbol than the triskelion, as well as being a more purely Aryan symbol. Greg says that Ludwig Müller attaches quite too much importance to the sun in connection with the early Aryans, and lays too great stress upon the supposed relation of the Swastika as a solar symbol. The Aryans, he says, were a race not given to sun worship; and, while he may agree with Müller that the Swastika is an emblem of Zeus and Jupiter merely as the Supreme God, yet he believes that the origin of the Swastika had no reference to a movement of the sun through the heavens; and he prefers his own theory that it was a device suggested by the forked lightning as the chief weapon of the air god.

Mr. Greg’s paper is of great elaboration, and highly complicated. He devotes an entire page or plate (21) to a chart showing the older Aryan fire, water, and sun gods, according to the Brahmin or Buddhist system. The earliest was Dyaus, the bright sky or the air god; Adyti, the infinite expanse, mother of bright gods; Varuna, the covering of the shining firmament. Out of this trinity came another, Zeus, being the descendant of Dyaus, the sky god; Agni, the fire; Sulya, the sun, and Indra, the rain god. These in their turn formed the great Hindu trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva—creator, preserver, and destroyer; and, in his opinion, the Swastika was the symbol or ordinary device of Indra as well as of Zeus. He continues his table of descent from these gods, with their accompanying devices, to the sun, lightning, fire, and water, and makes almost a complete scheme of the mythology of that period, into which it is not possible to follow him. However, he declines to accept the theory of Max Müller of any difference of form or meaning between the Suavastika and the Swastika because the ends or arms turned to the right or to the left, and he thinks the two symbols to be substantially the same. He considers it to have been, in the first instance, exclusively of early Aryan origin and use, and that down to about 600 B. C. it was the emblem or symbol of the supreme Aryan god; that it so continued down through the various steps of descent (according to the chart mentioned) until it became the device and symbol of Brahma, and finally of Buddha.

D’Alviella[47] expresses his doubts concerning the theory advanced by Greg[48] to the effect that the Swastika is to be interpreted as a symbol of the air or of the god who dwells in the air, operating sometimes to produce light, other times rain, then water, and so on, as is represented by the god Indra among the Hindus, Thor among the Germans and Scandinavians, Perkun among the Slavs, Zeus among the Pelasgi and Greeks, Jupiter Tonans, and Pluvius among the Latins. He disputes the theory that the association of the Swastika sign with various others on the same object proves its relationship with that object or sign. That it appears on vases or similar objects associated with what is evidently a solar disk is no evidence to him that the Swastika belongs to the sun, or when associated with the zigzags of lightning that it represents the god of lightning, nor the same with the god of heaven. The fact of its appearing either above or below any one of these is, in his opinion, of no importance and has no signification, either general or special.

D’Alviella says[49] that the only example known to him of a Swastika upon a monument consecrated to Zeus or Jupiter is on a Celto-Roman altar, erected, according to all appearances, by the Daci during the time they were garrisoned at Ambloganna, in Britain. The altar bears the letters I. O. M., which have been thought to stand for Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The Swastika thereon is flanked by two disks or rouelles, with four rays, a sign which M. Gaidoz believes to have been a representative of the sun among the Gaulois.[50]

Dr. Brinton[51] considers the Swastika as being related to the cross and not to the circle, and asserts that the Ta Ki or Triskeles, the Swastika and the Cross, were originally of the same signification, or at least closely allied in meaning.

We have given remarks of the various writers on this symbol, and it will be seen that, though they are more or less vague, uncertain, and confused in their description of it, still, with one exception, they all agree that it is a mystic symbol, peculiar to some deity or other, bearing a special signification, and generally believed to have some connection with one of the elements—water.

The Svastika is apparently the simplest form of the Guilloche [scroll pattern or spiral]. According to Wilkinson (11, Chap. IX), the most complicated form of the Guilloche covered an Egyptian ceiling upward of a thousand years older than the objects found at Nineveh. The Svastika spread far and wide, everywhere assuming some fresh mythological and mysterious significance. In the north of Europe it became the Fylfot or Crutched cross.

Count Goblet d’Alviella is of the opinion (p. 57) that the Swastika was “above all an amulet, talisman, or phylactere,” while (p. 56) “it is incontestable that a great number of the Swastikas were simply motifs of ornamentation, of coin marks, and marks of fabrics,” but he agrees (p. 57) that there is no symbol that has given rise to so many interpretations, not even the tricula of the Buddhists, and “this is a great deal to say.” Ludwig Müller believes the Swastika to have been used as an ornament and as a charm and amulet, as well as a sacred symbol.

Dr. H. Colley March, in his learned paper on the “Fylfot and the Futhore Tir,”[54] thinks the Swastika had no relation to fire or fire making or the fire god. His theory is that it symbolized axial motion and not merely gyration; that it represented the celestial pole, the axis of the heavens around which revolve the stars of the firmament. This appearance of rotation is most impressive in the constellation of the Great Bear. About four thousand years ago the apparent pivot of rotation was at α Draconis, much nearer the Great Bear than now, and at that time the rapid circular sweep must have been far more striking than at present. In addition to the name Ursa Major the Latins called this constellation Septentriones, “the seven plowing oxen,” that dragged the stars around the pole, and the Greeks called it έλικη, from its vast spiral movement.[55] In the opinion of Dr. March all these are represented or symbolized by the Swastika.

Prof. W. H. Goodyear, of New York, has lately (1891) published an elaborate quarto work entitled “The Grammar of the Lotus: A New History of Classic Ornament as a Development of Sun Worship.”[56] It comprises 408 pages, with 76 plates, and nearly a thousand figures. His theory develops the sun symbol from the lotus by a series of ingenious and complicated evolutions passing through the Ionic style of architecture, the volutes and spirals forming meanders or Greek frets, and from this to the Swastika. The result is attained by the following line of argument and illustrations:

The lotus was a “fetish of immemorial antiquity and has been worshiped in many countries from Japan to the Straits of Gibraltar;” it was a symbol of “fecundity,” “life,” “immortality,” and of “resurrection,” and has a mortuary significance and use. But its elementary and most important signification was as a solar symbol.[57]

He describes the Egyptian lotus and traces it through an innumerable number of specimens and with great variety of form. He mentions many of the sacred animals of Egypt and seeks to maintain their relationship by or through the lotus, not only with each other but with solar circles and the sun worship.[58] Direct association of the solar disk and lotus are, according to him, common on the monuments and on Phenician and Assyrian seals; while the lotus and the sacred animals, as in cases cited of the goose representing Seb (solar god, and father of Osiris), also Osiris himself and Horus, the hawk and lotus, bull and lotus, the asp and lotus, the lion and lotus, the sphinx and lotus, the gryphon and lotus, the serpent and lotus, the ram and lotus—all of which animals, and with them the lotus, have, in his opinion, some related signification to the sun or some of his deities.[59] He is of the opinion that the lotus motif was the foundation of the Egyptian style of architecture, and that it appeared at an early date, say, the fourteenth century B. C. By intercommunication with the Greeks it formed the foundation of the Greek Ionic capital, which, he says,[60] “offers no dated example of the earlier time than the sixth century B. C.” He supports this contention by authority, argument, and illustration.

Chantre[62] notes the presence of spirals similar to those of fig. 17, in the terramares of northern Italy and up and down the Danube, and his fig. 186 (fig. 17) he says represents the decorating motif, the most frequent in all that part of prehistoric Europe. He cites “Notes sur les torques ou ornaments spirals.”[63]

That the lotus had a foundation deep and wide in Egyptian mythology is not to be denied; that it was allied to and associated on the monuments and other objects with many sacred and mythologic characters in Egypt and afterwards in Greece is accepted. How far it extends in the direction contended for by Professor Goodyear, is no part of this investigation. It appears well established that in both countries it became highly conventionalized, and it is quite sufficient for the purpose of this argument that it became thus associated with the Swastika. Figs. 18 and 19 represent details of Cyprian vases and amphora belonging to the Cesnola collection in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, showing the lotus with curling sepals among which are interspersed Swastikas of different forms.

According to Professor Goodyear,[64] these bent sepals of the lotus were exaggerated and finally became spirals,[65] which, being projected at a tangent, made volutes, and, continuing one after the other, as shown in fig. 20, formed bands of ornament; or,[66] being connected to right and left, spread the ornament over an extended surface as in fig. 21. One of his paths of evolution closed these volutes and dropped the connecting tangent, when they formed the concentric rings of which we see so much. Several forms of Egyptian scarabæi, showing the evolution of concentric rings, are shown in figs. 22, 23, and 24.

By another path of the evolution of his theory, one has only to square the spiral volutes, and the result is the Greek fret shown in fig. 25.[67] The Greek fret has only to be doubled, when it produces the Swastika shown in fig. 26.[68] Thus we have, according to him, the origin of the Swastika, as shown in figs. 27 and 28.[69]

Professor Goodyear is authority for the statement that the earliest dated instances of the isolated scroll is in the fifth dynasty of Egypt, and of the lotus and spiral is in the eleventh dynasty. The spiral of fig. 19 (above) belongs to the twelfth dynasty.[70]

There is no proposition in archæology which can be so easily demonstrated as the assertion that the Swastika was originally a fragment of the Egyptian meander, provided Greek geometric vases are called in evidence. The connection between the meander and the Swastika has been long since suggested by Prof. A. S. Murray.[71] Hindu specialists have suggested that the Swastika produced the meander. Birdwood[72] says: “I believe the Swastika to be the origin of the key pattern ornament of Greek and Chinese decorative art.” Zmigrodzki, in a recent publication,[73] has not only reproposed this derivation of the meander, but has even connected the Mycenæ spirals with this supposed development, and has proposed to change the name of the spiral ornament accordingly. * * * The equivalence of the Swastika with the meander pattern is suggested, in the first instance, by its appearance in the shape of the meander on the Rhodian (pl. 28, fig. 7), Melian (pl. 60, fig. 8), archæic Greek (pl. 60, fig. 9, and pl. 61, fig. 12), and Greek geometric vases (pl. 56). The appearance, in shape of the meander may be verified in the British Museum on one geometric vase of the oldest type, and it also occurs in the Louvre.