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
gives the Swastika among others; but it is classed among "oblique designs"
and no mention is made of it as a Swastika or of any character
corresponding to it. Its lines are always at angles of 45 degrees, and are
continually referred to as "oblique designs."
The Swastika ornaments Danish baptismal fonts, and according to Mr. J.
A. Hjaltalin it "was used [in Iceland] a few years since as a magic
sign, but with an obscured or corrupted meaning." It arrived in that
island in the ninth century A. D.[310]
[Illustration: Fig. 344. MODERN CHURN LID WITH DESIGN RESEMBLING SWASTIKA.
Lapland. U. S. National Museum.]
The Swastika mark appears both in its normal and ogee form in the Persian
carpets and rugs.[311] While writing this memoir, I have found in the
Persian rug in my own bedchamber sixteen figures of the Swastika. In the
large rug in the chief clerk's office of the National Museum there are no
less than twenty-seven figures of the Swastika. On a piece of imitation
Persian carpet, with a heavy pile, made probably in London, I found also
figures of the Swastika. All the foregoing figures have been of the normal
Swastika, the arms crossing each other and the ends turning at right
angles, the lines being of equal thickness throughout. Some of them were
bent to the right and some to the left. At the entrance of the Grand Opera
House in Washington I saw a large India rug containing a number of ogee
Swastikas; while the arms crossed each other at right angles, they curved,
some to the right and some to the left, but all the lines increased in
size, swelling in the middle of the curve, but finishing in a point. The
modern Japanese wisteria workbaskets for ladies have one or more Swastikas
woven in their sides or covers.
Thus, it appears that the use of the Swastika in modern times is confined
principally to Oriental and Scandinavian countries, countries which hold
close relations to antiquity; that, in western Europe, where in ancient
times the Swastika was most frequent, it has, during the last one or two
thousand years, become extinct. And this in the countries which have led
the world in culture.
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