Swastika: Encyclopedia II - Swastika - History

Swastika - History

The earliest swastika-like symbols preserved appear on pottery dated from around 4000 BC, as part of the "Vinca script". The Swastika symbol was also used as part of the Indus script from around 3000 BC, from which the later Hindu/Jain/Buddhist use of the symbol probably evolved. Pottery dating to ca. 2000 BC found at Sintashta is also decorated with the swastika symbol [4]. Swastika-like symbols also appear in Bronze and Iron Age designs of the northern Caucasus (Koban culture), and Azerbayjan, as well as of Scythians and Sarmatians [5]. In all these cultures, with the exception of South Asia, the swastika symbol does not appear to occupy any marked position or significance, but appears as just one form of a series of similar symbols of varying complexity.

In antiquity, the swastika was used extensively by Hittites^[6], Celts and Greeks, among others. It occurs in other Asian, European, African and Native American cultures – sometimes as a geometrical motif, sometimes as a religious symbol. The swastika is the sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

The ubiquity of the swastika symbol is easily explained by it being a very simple symbol that will arise independently when people incise patterns on pottery or stone. Other theories attempt to establish a connection via cultural diffusion or an explanation along the lines of Carl Jung's collective unconscious.

A compelling explanation for the ubiquity of the swastika motif is provided by an artifact, dated to 168 BC, unearthed from Han tomb number 3 at Mawangutui, Changsha. In their Cosmic Serpent (1982) (page 155) Victor Clube and Bill Napier reproduced a portion of this silk atlas and suggest that some of the comet drawings were probably related to the breakup of the progenitor of comet Encke and the Taurid meteoroid stream. This object could have produced several very bright comets in short period (~3.3 years) orbits that crossed Earth's path. Fred Whipple in his The Mystery of Comets (1985) (page 163) points out that comet Encke's polar axis is only 5 degrees from its orbital plane. Such an orientation is ideal to have presented a pinwheel like aspect to our ancestors when comet Encke was more active. Carl Sagan in his book Comet (1985) points out that an outgassing comet that could produce a pinwheel appearance to someone looking down the comet's axis of rotation would look very different to an observer viewing the same comet along its equator.

Bob Kobres in Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse (1992) contends that the swastika like comet on the Han Dynasty silk comet atlas was labeled a "long tailed pheasant star" because its resemblance to a bird's foot. There is a strong association in ancient artifacts between the swastika and the owl in particular. Owls have zygodactylous or semizygodactylous (outer toe reversible) feet that can leave swastika like foot-prints in loose dirt or sand. Chinese lore upholds such an interpretation as Ts'ang Chieh, the four eyed legendary inventor of writing, derived his inspiration to create written symbols from noticing the marks of birds' feet in the sand. His ancient style is known as niao chiwen--"bird foot-prints writing." [MacCulloch, C.J.A. 1928].

In a less artificial environ animal tracks speak strongly to people and convey much about the creature which left them. Thus a bear, bird or any animal which made impressions on the ground could be symbolically represented in total by drawing these marks. This suggests that the jetting comet, to some cultures, looked like a bird's foot in the sky and, as a motif, represented a divine fowl.

Symbolic bird tracks, unrecognized as such, appear on objects unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann from Hissarlik in Asia Minor. Artifactual support for this contention comes from petroglyphs found in the south-western United States which Pueblo people identify as roadrunner (a type of cuckoo) tracks and identical renderings found by Schliemann. [Morphy, H. 1989] The close association of these two distinctive crosses on artifacts from Schliemann's Troy could be considered coincidental and not necessarily avion-inspired were they found out of context, however, in Schliemann's words:

In treating now of the various kinds of pottery of this third city, I begin with the owl-faced idols and vases, and I would repeatedly call very particular attention to the fact, that the idols, of which I collected about 700, are all of the same shape; that they represent in the rudest possible outlines a female form; and that, therefore, they cannot but be copies of the ancient Palladium, which was fabled to have fallen from heaven with joined feet.

An interesting aspect of the rolling cross motif and its link to birds is the ancient mythical image of a one-legged fowl. This is also a characteristic of the Chinese divine pheasant which was closely associated with the fabulous, lame, raven-beak-nosed emperor, Yu, who could transform himself into this pheasant or a bear. One of Yu's enemies, the Owl, who invented thunder and lightening was also one-footed. [Lonsdale, S. 1982, Barnard, N. 1972, 1973]. Yu's shape-shifting ability can be understood as related to the view a comet associated with him presented to our ancestors.

Perhaps the association of the Sanskrit term svastika with this symbol can be linked to the Astika Parva in the Mahabharata which relates the birth of a cosmic bird par excellence--Garuda. This fabulous winged deity had a radiance like the Sun, could change shapes at will, and destroyed other gods and kings by casting down fire and stirring up storms of reddish dust which darkened the Sun, Moon and stars. Clearly Garuda was symbolic of an Earth approaching comet.

The bird-comet connection is even more obvious in the Jamva-khanda Nirmana Parva of the Mahabharata which describes a fierce fowl with but one wing, one eye, and one leg, hovering in the night sky. As this bird "screams" and "vomits blood":

All the quarters of the earth, being overwhelmed by showers of dust, look inauspicious. Fierce clouds, portentous of danger, drop bloody showers during the night. Rahu of fierce deeds is also, O monarch, afflicting the constellation Kirtika. Rough winds, portending fierce danger, are constantly blowing.

The mention of Rahu, the demon of eclipse, which originally had four arms and a tail that was severed by Vishnu to become Ketu (comet) is interesting in that the demon is here darkening Kirttika (the Pleiades) in the month of Karttika (latter half of October, through mid November), for the tale goes on to relate that:

. . . in course of the same month both the Moon and the Sun have undergone eclipses on the thirteenth days from the day of the first lunation. The Sun and the Moon therefore, by undergoing eclipses on unusual days, will cause a great slaughter of the creatures of the earth. Meteors, effulgent like Indra's thunder-bolt, fall with loud hisses . . . People, for meeting together, coming out of their houses with lighted brands, have still to encounter a thick gloom all round . . . From the mountains of Kailasa and Mandara and Himavat thousands of explosions are heard and thousands of summits are tumbling down . . . Fierce winds charged with pointed pebbles are blowing, crushing mighty trees. In villages and towns trees, ordinary and sacred, are falling down, crushed by mighty winds and struck by lightning.

This is, without doubt, a mythological record of an intense meteor storm from the still active Taurid stream which presently peaks around the first of November and appears to radiate from near the Pleiades star cluster. The un-airworthy bird associated with this meteor bombardment could have been comet Encke which until recently was thought to be the sole source for the Taurid meteors. However, the discovery of other large contributors which are now dark but were once active comets rules out a positive identification.

According to Alfred Hillebrandt in his Vedic Mythology (1981 English edition, vol 2 pp 259-60) there is evidence of the notion of a celestial bird foot-print in early Indian literature. Thus the likelihood of the motif that actually looks like a bird's foot-print, often appears in a cosmic context, and eventually became associated with the term svastika being related to that celestial bird is high. Hillebrandt relates that it was the seven Rsis who settled down (in the heavens) to practice tapas and with the five Adhvaryus they guard "the hidden foot print of the bird." He goes on to state:

In this context another point may be mentioned. In verse III.7 7 cited above "the five Adhvaryus" are mentioned along with the seven Rsis; from this juxtaposition it would seem that this designation too does not refer to the professional priests of the sacrificial place but to certain models in the sky who move to and fro as the Adhvaryus do. It seems to me that here we have an allusion to the five planets. Otherwise we seek in vain for a mention of the planets in the hymns of the RV.

The swastika symbol is sacred in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, both dating from about the sixth century BC. In Hinduism, the swastika symbolizes, in various contexts: luck, the sun, Brahma, or the concept of samsara. Buddhism in particular enjoyed great success, spreading eastward and taking hold in southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan by the end of the first millennium. The use of the swastika by the indigenous Bön faith of Tibet, as well as syncretic religions, such as Cao Dai of Vietnam and Falun Gong of China, is thought to be borrowed from Buddhism as well. Similarly, the existence of the swastika as a solar symbol among the Akan civilization of southwest Africa may have been the result of cultural transfer along the African slave routes around AD 1500.

The existence of the swastika symbol in the Americas is a clear challenge to the diffusion theory. While some have proposed that the swastika was secretly transferred to North America by an early seafaring civilization on Eurasia, a separate but parallel development of religious symbolism is considered the most likely explanation.

Swastika - Adoption of the swastika in the West

The discovery of the Indo-European language group in the 1790s led to a great effort by archaeologists to link the pre-history of European peoples to the ancient Aryans (Indo-Iranians). Following his discovery of objects bearing the swastika in the ruins of Troy, Heinrich Schliemann consulted two leading Sanskrit scholars of the day, Emile Burnouf and Max Müller. Schliemann concluded that the Swastika was a specifically Indo-European symbol. Later discoveries of the motif among the remains of the Hittites and of ancient Iran seemed to confirm this theory. This idea was taken up by many other writers, and the swastika quickly became popular in the West, appearing in many designs from the 1880s to the 1920s.

These discoveries, and the new popularity of the swastika symbol, led to a widespread desire to ascribe symbolic significance to every example of the motif. In Scandinavian and Germanic countries examples of similar shapes in ancient European artefacts and in folk art were interpreted as emblems of good-luck linked to the Indo-Iranian meaning.

Western use of the motif, along with the religious and cultural meanings attached to it, was subverted in the early twentieth century after it was adopted as the emblem of the National Socialist German Workers Party. This association occurred because Nazism stated that the historical Aryans were the forefathers of modern Germans and then proposed that, because of this, the subjugation of the world by Germany was desirable, and even predestined. The swastika was used as a conveniently geometrical and eye-catching symbol to emphasize this mythical Aryan-German correspondence and instil racial pride. Since World War II, most Westerners know the swastika as solely a Nazi symbol, leading to incorrect assumptions about its pre-Nazi use in the West and confusion about its sacred religious and historical status in other cultures.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki