The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration: With Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times — John Shaqi
The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration: With Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric TimesWilson, Thomas
Religion
The Swastika, the Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migration: With Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times
Wilson, Thomas
Industries, Primitive; Swastikas; Symbolism
The founder of this sect flourished about the year 604 to 523 B. C.,
and that the mystic cross is a symbol formed by the combination of the
two Sanskrit syllables _su_ and _ti-suti_.
Waring[29] proceeds to demolish these statements of a sect named Swastika
as pure inventions, and "consulting Professor Wilson's invaluable work on
the Hindoo religious sects in the 'Asiatic Researches,' we find no account
of any sect named Swastika."
Mr. V. R. Gandhi, a learned legal gentleman of Bombay, a representative of
the Jain sect of Buddhists to the World's Parliament of Religions at
Chicago, 1893, denies that there is in either India or Tibet a sect of
Buddhists named "Swastika." He suggests that these gentlemen probably mean
the sects of Jains (of which Mr. Gandhi is a member), because this sect
uses the Swastika as a sign of benediction and blessing. This will be
treated further on. (See p. 804.)
Zmigrodzki, commenting on the frequency of the Swastika on the objects
found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik, gives it as his opinion[30] that
these representations of the Swastika have relation to a human cult
indicating a supreme being filled with goodness toward man. The sun,
stars, etc., indicate him as a god of light. This, in connection with the
idol of Venus, with its triangular shield engraved with a Swastika (fig.
125), and the growing trees and palms, with their increasing and
multiplying branches and leaves, represent to him the idea of fecundity,
multiplication, increase, and hence the god of life as well as of light.
The Swastika sign on funeral vases indicates to him a belief in a divine
spirit in man which lives after death, and hence he concludes that the
people of Hissarlik, in the "Burnt City" (the third of Schliemann), adored
a supreme being, the god of light and of life, and believed in the
immortality of the soul.
R. P. Greg says:[31]
Originally it [the Swastika] would appear to have been an early Aryan
atmospheric device or symbol indicative of both rain and lightning,
phenomena appertaining to the god Indra, subsequently or collaterally
developing, possibly, into the Suastika, or sacred fire churn in
India, and at a still later period in Greece, adopted rather as a
solar symbol, or converted about B. C. 650 into the meander or key
pattern.
Waring, while he testifies to the extension of the Swastika both in time
and area, says:[32]
But neither in the hideous jumble of Pantheism--the wild speculative
thought, mystic fables, and perverted philosophy of life among the
Buddhists--nor in the equally wild and false theosophy of the
Brahmins, to whom this symbol, as distinctive of the Vishnavas,
sectarian devotees of Vishnu, is ascribed by Moor in his "Indian
Pantheon," nor yet in the tenets of the Jains,[33] do we find any
decisive explanation of the meaning attached to this symbol, although
its allegorical intention is indubitable.
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