 | Swastika: Encyclopedia II - Swastika - Religion and mythology
Swastika - Religion and mythology
Swastika - Hinduism
The swastika is found all over Hindu temples, signs, altars, pictures and iconography where it is sacred. It is used in all Hindu weddings, festivals, ceromonies, houses and doorways, clothing and jewelry, motor transport and even decorations on food items like cakes and pastries.
It is one of the 108 symbols of Vishnu and represents the sun's rays without which there would be no life.
The Aum symbol is also sacred in Hinduism. Whereas Aum is representative of a single primordial tone of creation, the swastika is a pure geometrical mark and has no syllabic tone associated with it.
In Hinduism, the two symbols represent the two forms of the creator god Brahma: facing right it represents the evolution of the universe (Pravritti), facing left it represents the involution of the universe (Nivritti). It is also seen as pointing in all four directions (North, East, South and West) and thus signifies stability and groundedness. Its use as a sun symbol can first be seen in its representation of Surya, the Hindu lord of the Sun. The swastika is considered extremely holy and auspicious by all Hindus, and is regularly used to decorate all sorts of items to do with Hindu culture. It is used in all Hindu yantras and religious designs. Throughout the subcontinent of India it can be seen on the sides of temples, written on religious scriptures, on gift items, and on letterhead. The Hindu God Ganesh is often shown as sitting on a lotus flower on a bed of swastikas.
Amongst the Hindus of Bengal, it is common to see the name "swastika" applied to a slightly different symbol, which has the same significance as the common swastika, and both symbols are used as auspicious signs. This symbol looks something like a stick figure of a human being.[14] "Swastika" is a common given name amongst Bengalis and a prominent literary magazine in Calcutta is called the Swastika. The stick figure, however, is not mainstream usage in India.
Swastika - Buddhism
Buddhism was founded by a Hindu Prince and has thus inherited the swastika. These two symbols are included, at least since the Liao Dynasty, as part of the Chinese language, the symbolic sign for the character 萬 (wàn) meaning "all", and "eternality" (lit. myriad) and as 卐 which is seldom used. A swastika marks the beginning of many Buddhist scriptures. The swastikas (in either orientation) appear on the chest of some statues of Gautama Buddha and is often incised on the soles of the feet of the Buddha in statuary. Because of the association with the right facing swastika with Nazism, Buddhist swastikas (outside India only) after the mid-20th century are almost universally left-facing: 卍. This form of the swastika is often found on Chinese food packaging to signify that the product is vegetarian and can be consumed by strict Buddhists. It is often sewn into the collars of Chinese children's clothing to protect them from evil spirits.
In 1922, the chinese syncretist movement Daoyuan founded the philanthropic association Red Swastika Society in imitation of the Red Cross. The association was very active in China the 1920's and the 1930's.
The swastika used in Buddhist art and scripture is known in Japanese as a manji, and represents Dharma, universal harmony, and the balance of opposites. When facing left, it is the omote (front) manji, representing love and mercy. Facing right, it represents strength and intelligence, and is called the ura (rear) manji. Balanced manji are often found at the beginning and end of Buddhist scriptures (outside India).
Swastika - Jainism
Jainism gives even more prominence to the swastika than Hinduism. It is a symbol of the seventh Jina (Saint), the Tirthankara Suparsva. It is considered to be one of the 24 auspicious marks and the emblem of the seventh arhat of the present age. All Jain temples and holy books must contain the swastika and ceremonies typically begin and end with creating a swastika mark several times with rice around the altar. Jains use rice to make a swastika (also known as "Sathiyo" in the state of Gujarat, India) in front of idols in temple. Jains then put an offering on top of this swastika - this offering is usually a fruit, a sweet (mithai), a dry-fruit or sometimes coin/currency note.
Swastika - The Abrahamic religions
The swastika was not widely utilized by followers of the Abrahamic religions. Where it does exist, it is not portrayed as an explicitly religious symbol and is often purely decorative or, at most, a symbol of good luck. Examples of scattered use includes the floor of the synagogue at Ein Gedi, built during the Roman occupation of Judea, was decorated with a swastika.[15]
Some Christian churches built in the Romanesque and Gothic eras are decorated with swastikas, carrying over earlier Roman designs. Swastikas are prominently displayed in a mosaic in the St. Sophia church of Kiev, Ukraine dating to the 12th century. They also appear as a repeating ornamental motif on a tomb in the Basilica of St. Ambrose in Milan. However, a proposed direct link between it and a swastika floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens, which was built on top of a pagan site at Amiens, France in the 1200s, is considered unlikely.
The Muslim "Friday" mosque of Isfahan, Iran and the Taynal Mosque in Tripoli, Lebanon both have swastika motifs.
Swastika - Other Asian traditions
Some sources indicate that the Chinese Empress Wu (684-704) of the Tang Dynasty decreed that the swastika would be used as an alternative symbol of the sun. The Chinese character 卐 has developed into the modern one 方, pronounced fāng in Standard Mandarin, and has the main meaning of "square". As part of the Chinese script, the swastika has Unicode encodings U+534D 卍 (pronunciation following the Chinese character "萬": Cantonese: "man"; Mandarin: wan); (left-facing) and U+5350 卐 (right-facing).[16]
The Mandarin "Wan" is a homophone for "10,000" and is commonly used to represent the whole of creation eg 'the myriad things' in the Dao De Jing.
In Japan, the swastika is called manji (卍). On Japanese maps, a swastika (left-facing and horizontal) is used to mark the location of a Buddhist temple. The right-facing manji is often referred as the gyaku manji (逆卍, lit. "reverse manji"), and can also be called kagi jūji, literally "hook cross."
The left-facing Buddhist swastika also appears on the emblem of Falun Gong. This has generated considerable controversy, particularly in Germany, where the police have reportedly confiscated several banners featuring the emblem. A court ruling subsequently allowed Falun Gong followers in Germany to continue the use of the emblem.
Swastika - Native American traditions
The swastika shape was used by some Native Americans. It has been found in excavations of Mississippian-era sites in the Ohio valley. It was widely used by many southwestern tribes, most notably the Navajo. Among different tribes the swastika carried various meanings. To the Hopi it represented the wandering Hopi clans; to the Navajo it was one symbol for a whirling log (tsil no'oli'), a sacred image representing a legend that was used in healing rituals.[17]
Swastika - Pre-Christian European traditions
The swastika (also called a fylfot, a term coined in the 19th century from a 1500 reference to a figure used to fill empty space at the foot of stained-glass windows in medieval churches) appears as an ornament on many pre-Christian artefacts, drawn both left-facing and right-facing. Similar motifs, within a circle or in a swirling form have also been interpreted as "swastikas".
The Greek goddess Athena was sometimes portrayed as wearing robes covered with swastikas.
An Ogham stone found in Anglish, Co Kerry (CIIC 141) was modified into an early Christian gravestone, and was decorated with a cross pattée and two swastikas at this time. The pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, England, contains gold cups and shields adorned with swastika-like shapes.
The pre-Christian Norse regularly used the so-called Sun cross or Sun wheel one form of which is often interpreted as a variant of the swastika, and it appears regularly in Scandinavian folk art.
In the neopagan religions Asatru and Heathenry these swastika-like shapes are often used as religious symbols. Adherents of these faiths argue that their use is not connected to the political implications that the symbol gained under Nazism, claiming pre-Christian Germanic origins of the symbol.
The swastika shape was also present in pre-Christian Slavic mythology. It was dedicated to the sun god named Svarog and called kolovrat, (pol. kolowrót). In the Polish first Republic the symbol of swastika was also popular with the nobility. According to chronicles, Varangians prince Oleg who in the 9th century with his Rus Vikings had captured Constantinople, had nailed his shield to the cities gates, which had a large red swastika painted on it. The several polish noble houses f.e. Boreyko, Borzym, Radziechowski from Ruthenia also had Swastikas as their coat of arms. The family had reached its greatness in the 14-15th centuries and their crest can be seen in many heraldry books produced at that time.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Religion and mythology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
