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
If the Swastika was a symbol of a religion in India and migrated as such
in times of antiquity to America, it was necessarily by human aid. The
individuals who carried and taught it should have carried with it the
religious idea it represented. To do this required a certain use of
language, at least the name of the symbol. If the sign bore among the
aborigines in America the name it bore in India, Swastika, the evidence of
contact and communication would be greatly strengthened. If the religion
it represented in India should be found in America, the chain of evidence
might be considered complete. But in order to make it so it will be
necessary to show the existence of these names and this religion in the
same locality or among the same people or their descendants as is found
the sign. To find traces of the Buddhist religion associated with the sign
of the Swastika among the Eskimo in Alaska might be no evidence of its
prehistoric migration, for this might have occurred in modern times, as we
know has happened with the Russian religion and the Christian cross. While
to find the Buddhist religion and the Swastika symbol together in America,
at a locality beyond the possibility of modern European or Asiatic
contact, would be evidence of prehistoric migration yet it would seem to
fix it at a period when, and from a country where, the two had been used
together. If the Swastika and Buddhism migrated to America together it
must have been since the establishment of the Buddhist religion, which is
approximately fixed in the sixth century B. C. But there has not been as
yet in America, certainly not in the localities where the Swastika has
been found, any trace discovered of the Buddhist religion, nor of its
concomitants of language, art, or custom. Adopting the theory of migration
of the Swastika, we may therefore conclude that if the Swastika came from
India or Eastern Asia, it came earlier than the sixth century B. C.
If a given religion with a given symbol, both belonging to the Old World,
should both be found associated in the New World, it would be strong
evidence in favor of Old World migration--certainly of contact and
communication. Is it not equally strong evidence of contact to find the
same sign used in both countries as a charm, with the same significance in
both countries?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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