Chapter 12

It is only possible for me to touch lightly on a few of the aspects of religious art from the anthropologist’s point of view.

As the gods were being evolved it was very important for men to retain the remembrance of those family ties between them and mankind which were in danger of being snapped through the length to which they were drawn and the degree of attenuation which consequently ensued.

The statements of tradition as to the descent of mortals from gods are re-enforced by the representations of artists of the unlettered races, just as they are enshrined in the written cosmogonies of more cultured folk; the main difference being that any one may understand the one if he knows the written characters, whereas the other is practically a pictograph, and requires the interpretation of the natives who have the traditional knowledge of the symbols.

We are probably justified in assuming that very early in time (and it is still widely spread among backward peoples) was the custom of carving or painting the pedigree of theman from the god—of the human from the divine. As the god is lost down the ages in the totem so too his eikon is merged into the resemblance of some animal-form. In the intermediary stage we have those monstrous forms which the enlightened pagans endeavoured to rationalise and even to spiritualise. “Yet half a beast is the great god Pan.”

The beautiful wood-carving formerly executed by the natives of the Hervey Group in the South Pacific affords an excellent example of the relation of religion to decorative art.

The Rev. Dr. W. Wyatt Gill states that a significance is “invariably attached to ancient Polynesian carving,” and he and a few other missionaries have given suggestive hints, but without reference to the actual designs.

Dr. H. Stolpe, of Stockholm, was the first ethnographer to study Polynesian art from a scientific point of view, and his paper[161]on Evolution in the Ornamental Art of Savages is a model of this particular kind of research. He asserts “That the carved ornament in Polynesiaalwayshad a meaning.... Polynesians cling tenaciously to ancient customs, though often they are no longer capable of accounting for their original meaning.... If one asks the reason of a device or a custom, one usually gets no satisfactory information.... Should any one, therefore, to-day, ask a native of these islands whether the ornamentation here delineated has any significance, and the reply should be ‘no,’ I could not recognise in it any decisive evidence. Our previous investigations suffice of themselves to prove that the forms of development of the old primitive images, highly conventionalised,musthave a symbolic significance. They symbolise, they stand in place of, the primitive image. They are to be considered as a sort of cryptograph. By means of perpetual reiteration of certain ornamental elements, they suggest the divinity to whose service the decorated implement was in some way dedicated.” A dozen years ago Dr. Stolpe stated that the linear ornaments on the carved Mangaian adzes were for the most part to be regarded as transformed figures of human beings, or especially as divine beings. (Fig.124.)

Fig. 124.—Stretching-cleat of a drum from Mangaia, in the Berlin Museum; from March, after Stolpe. Two-thirds natural size.

Fig. 125.—Rubbings from the handles of symbolic adzes from the Hervey Islands.A, Free Library Museum, Belfast;B,C, Belfast Nat. Hist. Mus. One-third natural size.

Mr. C. H. Read, of the British Museum, independently[162]arrived at a similar conclusion to Dr. Stolpe’s, and Dr. March[163]has carried the argument a step further. Dr. Stolpe proved that a design generally known as theKpattern, but which it is better to call thetiki-tikipattern, sometimes interrupted, but generally continuous, is in reality a string of human figures, the two horizontal zigzags being limbs, and the vertical bars that join them being the headless bodies. (Fig.125,A.)

These figures, whichalmost cover the handle of a Mangaian paddle or adze, are obviously related to the female forms that are carved on the terminal of its shaft (Figs.127,128), and are morphologically derived from them by a process of evolution.

Fig. 126.—Rubbing of part of the decoration of a Mangaian symbolic paddle, Norwich Museum. Natural size.

The headless figures are quite recognisable in Fig.125,A, but the fore-arms and shanks of each of them are absent, their places being taken by the upper arms and thighs of the contiguous figures. InBthe serial individuals are separated by narrow vertical clefts; the latter persist inC, but the two boundary lines between the rows of figures are fused into a single line.

In Fig.126we have a large area (the blade of a paddle) divided into a number of parallel lines between which are diamonds, which may or may not be connected by horizontal lines. A careful inspection will show that the vertical lines are continuous body-lines; the horizontal lines are the same as those in Fig.125,A, but the two lines are fused into one; the zigzags are clearly limbs. The absence of the horizontal lines simplifies the pattern, and so each diamond consists in its upper part of the leg, and in its lower part of the arms of human figures whose bodies are represented by the vertical lines.

The pattern in the lower half of Fig.127can be derivedfrom the last by the introduction of an intermediate series of vertical lines.

Curvilinear patterns, as in the lower part of Fig.128, are common on objects from these islands; they are evidently derived from the thighs of serial human forms, as in Fig.127, and PlateVI., Fig. 13.

Fig. 127.—Rubbing of part of the carving of the handle of a symbolic paddle from the Hervey Islands, in the Natural History Museum, Belfast. One-half natural size.Fig. 128.—Rubbing of “part of the terminal of a paddle-shaped implement in the Vienna Museum”; from March, after Stolpe. Two-thirds natural size.

Fig. 127.—Rubbing of part of the carving of the handle of a symbolic paddle from the Hervey Islands, in the Natural History Museum, Belfast. One-half natural size.

Fig. 128.—Rubbing of “part of the terminal of a paddle-shaped implement in the Vienna Museum”; from March, after Stolpe. Two-thirds natural size.

“It is abundantly certain,” adds Dr. March, “that the forms that crown the shaft are those of women, for they are invariably distinguished by pendant-pointed breasts. The solitary exception that Dr. Stolpe has been able to find is one in appearance only, for in his Fig. 23 the breasts are really fused into a single cone, exactly as are the legs in his Fig. 24” (p. 322).

Dr. March’s contribution is that these carved shafts of sacred paddles and adzes were pedigree-sticks. Descent is traced through the male line as a rule among thePolynesians, but it is certain that some tribes traced their descent through the female line. Dr. Gill states that this was in some places simply a matter of arrangement. Dr. Gill tells us that the designs on these shafts were called “tiki-tiki-tangata;”tangatameans a man, or in this combination connotes human, for in a Polynesian word compounded of two nouns, that which comes last has a secondary, explanatory, or adjectival force.Tikiwas the first man, and when he died, ruled the entrance of the under-world. The name signifies a “fetched” soul; the spirit of a dead man the frequentative or pluraltiki-tikimust mean spirits in succession, or “ancestors.” “The conclusion now drawn is thattiki-tiki-tangatawere the multitudinous human links between the divine ancestor and the chief of the living tribe. But to what ancestry did these pedigrees of female lineage assert a claim? From what goddess was it the pride of Mangaians to be descended, unless from the mother, the wife and the daughter-wife of Rongo—from Tu-metua, Taka, and Tavake.

“In Mangaia all the gods were called the children of Vatea, and of these Tane was one. His name indicates the generative principle in Nature. In Mangaia he was especially the drum-god and the axe[164]-god; he presided over the erotic dance as well as over the war-dances. Gill observes[165]that ‘Tane mata ariki,’ Tane with the royal face, was enshrined in a sacred triple axe,[164]which symbolised the three priestly families on the island of Mangaia. This axe was buried in a cave, and has disappeared. TheKpattern which covers the shafts of the sacred Mangaian axe,[164]is an assertion of a Tane pedigree, thetiki-tiki-tangataof the clan. ‘Awake Tane!’ was the invocation,[166]‘Awake unnumbered progeny of Tane!’” (March, p. 331).

The study of religious symbols[167]is not only a very extensive and extremely attractive undertaking, but it is one of peculiar difficulty, for with it is combined, not a danger, but a certainty of falling into errors. There is hardly a subject upon which such diverse views can be proposed and even maintained with a fair amount of presumptive evidence.

The danger of making mistakes is, however, considerably lessened if a scientific method of study is adopted, and if speculation is reduced to a minimum. No better example of the method of such a study is to be found than in Count Goblet d’Alviella’s book onThe Migration of Symbols.[168]It is upon this valuable book that I have largely drawn in compiling the following account.

The meaning of the term Symbol, like the objects we connote by it, has undergone a transformation from a concrete reality to an abstraction. Originally applied amongst the Greeks to the two halves of the tablet they divided between themselves as a pledge of hospitality, in the manner of our contract form, detached along a line of perforations from the counterfoil record, it was gradually extended to the engraved shells by which those initiated in the mysteries made themselves known to each other, and even to the more or less esoteric formulas and sacramental rites that may be said to have constituted the visible bond of their fellowship. Then the meaning became amplified, and “the term came to gradually mean everything that, whether by general agreement or by analogy, conventionally represented something or somebody.”[169]

I have previously (p.212) given Colonel Garrick Mallery’s definition of the word, which sufficiently indicates the meaning generally applied to it.

A pictorial symbol has the following life-history:—

First, it is simply a representation of an object or a phenomenon, that is, a pictograph. Thus the zigzag was the mark or sign of lightning.

Secondly, “the sign of the concrete grew to be the symbol of the abstract. The zigzag of lightning, for example, became the emblem of power, as in the thunderbolts grasped by Jupiter; or it stood alone for the supreme God; and thus the sign developed into the ideograph.”[170]

Thirdly, retrogression set in when new religions and new ideas had sapped the vitality of the old conceptions, and the ideograph came to have no more than a mystical meaning. A religious or sacred savour, so to speak, still clung about it, but it was not a living force within it; the difference is as great as between the dried petals of a rose and the blooming flower itself. “The zigzag, for instance, was no longer used as a symbol of the deity, but was applied auspiciously, or as we should say, for luck.”[170]

The last stage is reached when a sign ceases to have even a mystical or auspicious significance, and is applied to an object as a merely ornamental device.

“By symbolism,” writes Count Goblet d’Alviella, “the simplest, the commonest objects are transformed, idealised, and acquire a new and, so to say, an illimitable value. In the Eleusinian mysteries, the author ofPhilosophoumenarelates that, at the initiation to the higher degree, ‘there was exhibited as the great, the admirable, the most perfect object of mystic contemplation, an ear of corn that had been reaped in silence; and two crossed lines suffice to recall to millions of Christians the redemption of the world by the voluntary sacrifice of a god.’”

As that author points out, “We live in the midst of symbolic representations, from the ceremonies celebrating a birth to the funeral emblems adorning the tomb; from the shaking of hands all round of a morning to the applause withwhich we gratify the actor, or lecturer, of the evening. We write as we speak in symbols.

“It is sentiment, and above all, religious sentiment, that resorts largely to symbolism; and in order to place itself in more intimate communication with the being, or abstraction, it desires to approach. To that end men are everywhere seen either choosing natural or artificial objects to remind them of the Great Hidden One, or themselves imitating in a systematic manner the acts and deeds they attribute to Him—which is a way of participating in His life.” The symbols with which we will here occupy ourselves are not those of acts or rites, but those of objects or emblems.

In all but the last stages of its career a symbol is a living sign, now this vitality is very real, and by virtue of it, strange modifications take place.

For example, when a nation that employed a particular symbol came into contact with another nation that had a somewhat similar symbol, the two symbols, if quite alike, were indistinguishable, and one passed for the other; but if there were slight differences between the symbols a process of amalgamation took place, and they approximated more and more towards one another. In either case the meanings of both would doubtless commingle, and a more energetic vitality would ensue from the cross-fertilisation.

St. Anthony’s cross,T(croix potencée, “gibbet-cross”), is found, with almost the same symbolic signification, in Palestine, in Gaul, and in ancient Germany, in the Christian Catacombs, and amongst the ancient inhabitants of Central America.

Among the Phœnicians and kindred peoples this cross was an alphabetical sign,tau, and it was also used separately as a symbol. From a passage in Ezekiel[171]we learn that it was accounted a sign of preservation, and was marked uponthe forehead, like its corresponding Indian symbol.[172]The symbolic signification of thetauis explained by its resemblance to the Key of Life, orcrux ansataof Egypt, so widely diffused throughout all Western Asia.

“Thistauwas unquestionably the emblem of life, and, therefore, of the greatest virtue. M. Letronne, in his researches on the Christian monuments of Egypt, has shown in the most conclusive manner that the first Christians of that country adopted this sign, possibly to establish that Christ was pre-eminently the source of life, or as a prophetic sign. All the gods of the ancient Egyptian mythology bore in their hand the sign of Christianity, the monogram of Christ; they were, according to the first Christians of Egypt, supposed to announce the coming of Jesus.”[173]

The Double Hammer of the Celtic Tarann and of the Teutonic and Scandinavian Thor is a symbol of the lightning. “Thor was the sun-god proper; god of the sun in its active aspect; the thunder-god likewise, and thus the wielder of the hammer or axe (named Mjolnir, ‘the crusher’) representative of the thunderbolt, rendered in the formT. Thor was also lord of the Under-World, and guardian against the monsters that infested its precincts; he was likewise a protector against sickness, and was much worshipped by the franklin and peasant classes.”[174]

“To this day a representation of the hammer of the God of Thunder may be found on the barns and stable-doors of some German villages. It is stated that in the northern, midland, and eastern counties of this country—wherever, in fact, the Teutonic element has made its strongest imprint—some old church bells still bear the same sign as a charm against the tempest.

“As applied to Thor, this tree-shaped cross symbolsustains his double quality as the fiery Cleaver of the Clouds, who even as such represents the principle of fertility and the Sanctifier of the fruitful union of hearts.”[175]

Karl Blind has also drawn attention to a mediæval German church legend which affords a good example of the persistence of pagan ideas and of the pagan-christian overlap. “Thus Trauenlob makes the Virgin Mary say of God the Father—‘The Smith from the Upper-Land (Heaven) threw his hammer into my lap (schôz).’”[176]

Amongst the early Christians it was a form sometimes given to the Cross of Christ, itself called the Tree of Life; but if they made of it a symbol of life, it was spiritual life that it typified to them; and if they sometimes gave it the form of thepatibulum(gallows), it was because such was the instrument employed among the Romans in the punishment by crucifixion.

In Central America, where, according to M. Albert Réville, the Cross was surnamed the Tree of Plenty, it assumed also the form of thetau. This pre-Columbian American Cross,T, was a symbol of fertility because it represented the rain-god; it is, in fact, an abbreviated rain-shower (as will be seen on reference to Figs.62-64). Similarly the four-rayed cross represented the four quarters whence comes the rain, or rather the four main winds which bring rain, and it thus became the symbol of the Tlaloc, god of rain and waters, fertiliser of earth and lord of paradise, and lastly, of the mythical personage known by the name of Quetzacoatl. From North to South America the Latin cross symbolises “the Father of the four winds” (Argentine Republic), “the old man in the sun who rules the winds” (Blackfeet Indians), or similar personages. But all crosses are not the four quarters of the wind, as will be seen on reference to Figs.100D,E,102A. For an accountof the American cross, Colonel Mallery should be consulted,Tenth Ann. Rep., p. 724.

Mr. Beal, in the same number of theIndian Antiquary, which contains Mr. Thomas’s remarks on the Svastika (March 1880), has shown that in ChineseChinese Symbolis the symbol for an enclosed space of earth, and that the simple cross+occurs as a sign for earth in certain ideographic groups.[177]

The four-rayed cross, separate or inscribed within a circle, is a very common symbol of the sun in prehistoric Europe.

As different waves of culture drifted across Europe, as new religions permeated the mass of the people, the stream-borne symbols found physical and spiritual analogues among the indigenous symbolism, and union naturally took place. In some cases, at all events, the cross fertilisation, as I have termed it, resulted in a higher or more spiritual meaning animating the old symbols; thus the symbol of the Avenger, the crushing Hammer of God, became that of the God Redeemer of the world.

When symbols become merely the dry-bones of defunct religions they may retain a certain magical quality, but then they pass out of religion and enter the domain of magic, where in fulness of time they may be born anew and start a fresh career as the symbols of modern science.

Besides this natural approximation of analogous symbols and symbolism, there is a more conscious and complex amalgamation, a heteromorphism. As Count Goblet d’Alviella says,[178]“At other times the symbolic syncretism is intentional and premeditated; whether it be in the desire to unite for the sake of greater efficacy, the attributes of several divinities in a single figure, as is shown in certain pantheistic figures of Gnostic origin; or a wish to state, by the fusion of symbols, the unity of the gods and the identity of creeds, as in the mystic monogram wherein theBrahmaists of contemporary India have testified to their religious eclecticism by interweaving theOmof the Hindus with the Trident, the Crescent, and the Cross.

“Sometimes, too, the sacerdotal interest must have tended towards accentuating the analogies rather than the dissimilarities of symbols, in order to assist the absorption or unification of the doctrines which they represented. Finally, we must take into consideration the popular tendency towards syncretism, which, when not held in check by a rigorous orthodoxy, acts upon symbols, as well as upon creeds, by introducing into the new form of worship the images consecrated by a long veneration. Or else it is the innovators themselves who take advantage of symbolism in order to disguise, through borrowing from antique forms, the newness of their doctrine and, if need be, to transform into allies the emblems or traditions which they are unable to boldly extirpate.

“Need I recall to mind Constantine choosing as a standard thatlabarumwhich might be claimed both by the religion of Christ and the worship of the sun? The Abbé Ansault has shown, firstly, that heathen nations used as religious emblems Greek, Latin, Maltese,pattées,gammées,potencées,ansées,trêflées, and other crosses; and, secondly, that the Christian Church has always accepted these different forms of the cross as the representation of its own symbol.

“Buddhism was even less scrupulous. In some of its sanctuaries it did not hesitate to preserve the images of the worship paid by the natives of India to the sun, to fire, or to serpents, whilst ascribing these rites to its own traditions. The Solar Wheel thus became easily the Wheel of the Law; the Cosmic Tree represented the Tree of Knowledge, under which Sakya Muni attained the perfect illumination; the seven-headed serpent Naga was transformed into the guardian of the impression left by the Feet of Vishnu, itself to be attributed henceforth to Buddha, and so on.”

The learned author from whom I have borrowed so much gives numerous examples of this process of the transference and amalgamation of symbols, and I must refer the reader for these details to the book itself.

The fylfot, or “fully- or many-footed” cross, is the Anglo-Saxon name for that form of cross whose extremities are bent back at right angles (Fig.130). It is otherwise known as the “gammadion,” “tetraskele,” “croix gammée,” “croix cramponnée,” not to mention various other names, and in India “svastika”; but when the feet are turned to the left it is called “sauvastika”; both these words have much the same meaning, and signify “it is well.” At the present day in Asia, this “mystical mark made on persons or things to denote good-luck” (as Monier Williams describes it in his Sanscrit dictionary) is clearly in the third stage of its life-history, and its meaning must have been introduced after its primary significance was lost.

At the risk of being somewhat tedious I will give a brief account of the distribution of this ancient symbol, than which there are very few others so widely distributed.

Dr. Schliemann found it represented exceeding numerously on objects (Fig.130,A,E) from the “second” or “burnt city” of the mound at Hissarlik.

In Greece, as in Cyprus and at Rhodes, it first appears on pottery with painted “geometrical” ornamentation (Fig.130,F), that is in the second period of Greek ceramics. Later it is found on the vases, with decorations taken from living objects (Fig.G) which appear to coincide with the development of Phœnician influences on the shores of Greece. Lastly, it became a favourite symbol on coins not only of Greece proper and the Archipelago, but also of Macedon, Thrace, Crete (Fig.130,M), Lycia (Fig.130,I), and Paphlagonia (Fig.130,H).

From Corinth, where it figures amongst the most ancient mint marks, it passed to Syracuse under Timoleon, to be afterwards spread abroad on the coins of Sicily and of Magna Græcia.

Fig. 129.—Hut-shaped ossuary; I. Taylor,Origin of the Aryans, p. 176.

In Northern Italy it was known even before the advent of the Etruscans, for it has been met with on pottery dating from the terramara civilisation. It appears also on the roof of some of those ossuaries in the form of a hut (Pl.I., Fig.C), which reproduce on a small scale the wicker huts of the people of that epoch. In the Villanova period it adorns vases with geometrical decoration found at Cære, Chiusi, Albano, and at Cumæ. Finally, it appears in Roman mosaics.

It is singular that at Rome itself it has not been met with, so Count Goblet d’Alviella informs us, on any monument prior to the third, or perhaps the fourth century of our era. About that period the Christians of the Catacombs had no hesitation in including it amongst their representations of the Cross of Christ, and they used it to ornament priestly garments. At Milan it forms a row of curved crosses round the pulpit of St. Ambrose.

It was widely distributed throughout the provinces of the Roman Empire (Fig.130,S,T), especially among the Celts, from the Danubian countries to the West of Ireland (Fig.130,K,U); but in many cases it is difficult to decide whether it is connected with imported civilisation or with indigenous tradition.

Fig. 130.—Various forms of the Fylfot or Svastika.A.Whorl from Hissarlik (1987), 7 m., third city, The Burnt City or Ilios;B.Do. (1861), 3½ m., fifth city;C.Do. (1990), 4 m., fifth city;D.Do. (1873);E.Detail from whorl (1993), 5 m., fourth city;F.Lotus derivative on a large amphora, with “geometric” decoration, Cyprus;G.Solar goose and lotus design on a Rhodian vase, from Salzmann,Nécropole de Camire;H.Coin from Selge, Pamphylia;I.Symbols on Lycian coins;K.Triskelion on a Celtiberian coin;L.On a silver bowl, Etruria; also on Chinese ware;M.Coin from Cnossus, Crete;N.Ancient Indian coin;O.On coin from Ujjan, Central India;P.Footprint of Buddha (so-called), Amarávati Tope, India;R.Thibetian symbol;S.Roman altar at High Rochester, dedicated to Minerva by Lucius Cæcilius Optatus;T.Roman altar at High Rochester, dedicated to the standards of the faithful of the Varduli by Titus Licinius Valerianus;U.Celto-Roman altar at Birdoswald, dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus (IOM), apparently by Dacians garrisoned in Ambloganna; the four-rayed wheels were solar symbols among the Gauls;W.Ogham stone, Aglish, County Kerry;X.Ancient Scandinavian symbols;Y.Legend on church bell, Hathersage, Derbyshire, 1617.A-E,P.H. Schliemann,Ilios;F, G.Goodyear,Grammar of the Lotus;H, L, O, X.R. P. Greg,Archæologia, xlviii., 1885;I, K, M, N, R.Count Goblet d’Alviella,The Migration of Symbols;S, T, U, W, Y.H. Colley March,Trans. Lanc. and Cheshire Ant. Soc., 1886. For further details the reader is referred to these authors.

In England it not unfrequently occurs on Roman votive altars. In Ireland, however, and in Scotland, the fylfot seems to have marked Christian sepulchres. For example, a fylfot occurs on either side of an arrow on an oghamstone (Fig.130,W) in an abandoned graveyard at Aglish, County Kerry, which is believed to belong to the sixth century.

In Pagan Scandinavia it occurs with other symbols (Fig.130,X), but it there ended by combining with, doubtless (as Count Goblet d’Alviella points out) under the influence of Christianity, the Latin Cross. It ornaments early Danish baptismal fonts, and according to Mr. J. A. Hjaltalin, it “was still used a few years since as a magic sign, but with an obscured or corrupted meaning,” in Iceland. It arrived in that island in the ninth century,A.D.[179]

“Amongst the Slavs and Fins it has not yet been found save in a sporadic state, and about the period of their conversion to Christianity only. We may remark, by the way, that it is very difficult to determine the age and nationality of the terra-cotta or bronze objects on which it has been observed in countries of mixed or superposed races, such as Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, and Bohemia.

“In the Caucasus, M. Chantre has met with it on ear-drops, ornamental plates, sword-hilts, and other objects found in burial-places dating back to the bronze period and the first iron age.

“Amongst the Persians its presence has been pointed out on some Arsacian and Sassanian coins only.

“The Phœnicians do not seem to have known, or, at least, to have used it, except on some of the coins which they struck in Sicily in imitation of Greek pieces.

“It is not met with either in Egypt, in Assyria, or in Chaldæa.”[180]

The svastika is of common occurrence in India, and is employed alike by Hindus and Buddhists. It was used for ear-marking cattle, appears on the oldest known Indian coin (Fig.130,N), on which are other interesting symbols, and occurs frequently at the beginning and the end of the most ancient Buddhist inscriptions; similarly it initials the legend SCA. MA. RIA. O.P.N. at Appleby, in Lincolnshire; and at Hathersage, Derbyshire, a fylfot occurs on a church bell in the initial G of the legend Gloria in Excelsis Deo, 1617. (Fig.130,Y.) The svastika represents, according to Buddhist tradition, the first of the sixty-five marks which distinguished the Master’s feet, and the sauvastika is the fourth and the third, a kind of labyrinth which is akin to the latter. It is inscribed thrice on each sole and on each digit of the famous sculptured footprints of Gautama at Amarávati. (Fig.130,P.)

“Even at the present day, according to Mr. Taylor, the Hindus, at the time of the new year, paint a svastika in red at the commencement of their account books, and in their weddings and other ceremonies they sketch it in flour on the floors of their houses. It also figures at the end of manuscripts of a recent period—at least under a form which, according to M. Kern, is a development of the tetraskele”[181](i.e., a variety with rounded angles).

The Buddhist women of Thibet ornament their skirts with it, and it is placed on the breast of the dead. A Thibetian form is seen in Fig.130,R.

The Buddhists introduced it into China (Fig.130,L) and Japan, where it adorns vases, caskets, and the representations of divinities; it is even figured upon the breasts of certain statues of Buddha. According to M. G. Dumoutier, it is nothing else than the ancient Chinese characterche, which implies the idea of perfection, of excellence, and would seem to signify the renewal and the endless duration of life. This suggests that the symbol was brought by the Chinese across Asia in their wandering from the West to their present home; but against this view must be put the fact of its absence in Chaldea and Assyria; and we know it has been introduced by the Buddhist missionaries. In Japan, according to M. de Milloué, it represents the number 10,000, which symbolises that which is infinite, perfect, excellent, and is employed as a sign of felicity.

Schliemann[182]also records the fylfot in Africa, on bronzes brought from Coomassie by the English Ashantee expedition in 1874. It is known from South America, on a calabash from the Lenguas tribe; in North America, on pottery from the mounds; and from Yucatan, on Zuñi pottery, as also on the rattles made from a gourd which the Pueblos Indians use in their religious dances. I have heard that bronze representations of the fylfot have been obtained from excavations in Ohio, the details of which will shortly be published.

There can be no doubt that the fylfot throughout Eur-Asia had a symbolic significance, which in many places it still retains. Its longevity is due to this cause alone; occasionally, when it was copied by peoples who did not understand or appreciate its symbolism, it degenerated into a mere ornamental device.

Although all phases of symbolic meaning are interesting,I must restrict myself to origins and to a few of the later developments of this particular symbol.

The interpretations of the fylfot have been particularly varied, and these have been further complicated by this sign having been confounded with thecrux ansataof the Egyptians, thetauof the Phœnicians, thevajraof India, the Hammer of Thor, or the Arrow of Perkun. All these have a clearly defined form and meaning, and even if the fylfot “ever replaced one of them—as in the catacombs it sometimes takes the place of the Cross of Christ—it only did so as a substitute, as the symbol of a symbol.”[183]

Some archæologists have ascribed a phallic import to the fylfot, others recognise in it the symbol of the female sex; “but it may very well have furnished a symbol of fecundity, as elsewhere a common symbol of prosperity and of salvation, without therefore being necessarily a phallic sign.”[184]These are probably secondary meanings superadded to a primitive and less abstract conception.

It has been held to indicate water, storm, lightning, fire, or even the Indian fire-drill, the “mystic double arani,” mentioned in one of the Vedic hymns to Agni, the fire-god. These views have been combated by Greg,[185]Colley March,[186]and Goblet d’Alviella.[187]Mr. Greg contends that the fylfot is a symbol of the air or sky, or rather of the god who rules the phenomena of the atmosphere, by whatever name men may call him. Dr. March’s theory is that it symbolises axial rotation, and not merely gyratory motion; in fact, the axis of the heavens, the celestial pole, round which revolve all the stars of the firmament once in twenty-four hours. This appearance of rotation is especially impressive in the Great Bear, the largest and brightest of the Northernconstellations.... About four thousand years ago, the apparent pivot of rotation was not where it is now, but occupied a point at aDraconismuch nearer to the Great Bear, whose rapid circular sweep must then have been far more striking than it is at present. In addition to the name Ursa Major, the Latins called this constellation Septentriones, ‘the seven ploughing oxen’ that dragged the stars round the pole, and the Greeks called itἕλικη, from its vast spiral movement.”[188]

There is no need to follow Dr. March in his explanation, and we must now turn to the view which has been supported by the greatest number of investigators, who “have succeeded, by their studies of Hindu, Greek, Celtic, and ancient German monuments, in establishing the fact that the gammadion has been, among all these nations, a symbolic representation of the sun or of a solar god.” Count Goblet d’Alviella reinforces this theory by the followingconsiderations:—

1.The form of the fylfot.—To be convinced thatthe branches of the fylfot are rays in motionit is only necessary to cast one’s eyes on the manner in which, at all times, the idea of solar movement has been graphically expressed. Thus on a whorl from Troy, crooked rays, turned towards the right, alternate with straight and undulating rays, all of which proceed from the same disc (Fig.130,E).

2.The triskele, formed by the same process as the tetraskele, was an undeniable representation of the solar movement.—On coins from Asia Minor the triskele is frequently represented as three legs, and on Celtiberian coins (Fig.130,K) the face of the sun appears between the legs. On the coins ofAspendus in Pamphylia the three legs are combined with animal representations of the sun, the eagle, the wild boar, and the lion; and on certain coins of Syracuse the triskele permutes with the solar disc above the quadriga and the winged horse. In various places transition occur between the tetraskele and triskele (Fig.130,I). I have already (p.213) referred to the ultimate fate of the triskele.

3.The images oftenest associated with the fylfot are representations of the sun and the solar divinities.—The fylfot and the solar disc are, in a way, counterparts, not only amongst the Greeks, the Romans, and the Celts, but also with the Hindus, the Chinese, and the Japanese. The two are often combined into one figure, and the rays have been converted into horses’ heads, as on Gallo-Belgic coins, or into cocks’ heads and lions’ busts which take the place of the rays of the triskele on Lycian coins. Professor Goodyear points out that the fylfot is associated on Cyprian and Rhodian pottery with the goose (Fig.130,G), deer, antelope, ibex, ram, horse, lion, etc. All of these are solar animals. It is associated with the lotus (Fig.130,F), which is also a solar symbol.

4.In certain symbolic combinations the fylfot alternates with the representation of the sun.—Among the Jains of modern India, a considerable Hindoo sect, the sun appears to be represented by the svastika, and this symbol and the solar disc constantly replace each other on the ancient coins of Ujjain in Central India (Fig.130,O), and Andhra in the Deccan. Another proof of the equivalence between the fylfot and the sun, or, at least, the light of the sun, is found amongst the coins of the ancient city of Mesembria in Thrace. Professor Percy Gardner states, “Mesembria, as it stands, is simply the Greek word for “noon” or mid-day (μεσημβρία); and there can be no doubt that the Greek inhabitants would suppose their city to be the place of noon; and among the coins of Mesembria occursΜΕΣfylfot.” Five-rayed and three-rayed (triskele) sun symbols wereassociated with Apollo on coins of Megara, now Mesembria was founded by a colony of Megarians.

Sometimes three solar discs or three fylfots, or combinations of both, occur (Figs.130,B,C), and in these Count Goblet d’Alviella sees a symbolic representation of the three diurnal positions of the sun, and suggests that when four symbols occur crosswise, as frequently happens (Fig.130,D), they “relate to four different positions of the luminary, which would, perhaps, suggest no longer its daily course, but its annual revolution marked by the solstices and equinoxes.”[189]

The fylfot would seem to occasionally replace the moon. On coins of Cnossus, in Crete (Fig.130,M), the Lunar Crescent takes the place of the solar disc in the centre of the fylfot; in such instances it may have been applied to the revolutions or even the phases of the moon.

Various suggestions have been made with regard to the reversed fylfot or sauvastika, but it is still uncertain whether this is of primary (Max Müller, Birdwood, Colley March) or secondary importance (Greg, d’Alviella).[190]

The last theory of the origin of the fylfot that I need mention is that propounded by Professor Goodyear[191]in the following words:—“There is no proposition in archæology which can be so easily demonstrated as the assertion that the swastika is originally a fragment of the Egyptian meander, provided Greek geometric vases are called in evidence.” Professor A.S. Murray long since suggested that the “crosses which Dr. Schliemann callssvastikas, but which, in fact, appear to be only the simplest form or element of the meander pattern.”[192]Sir G. Birdwood says:“I believe the Buddhist swastika to be the origin of the key-pattern ornament of Chinese decorative art.”[193]Professor Goodyear makes him say that of Greek decorative art as well.

It is a pity that Mr. Goodyear has pledged himself so fully as in the statement just quoted, as it is apt to make critics more captious as to his main thesis. If the fylfot is a detached intersection of the meander pattern, why did not the Egyptians hit on it? Granting that the meander may have had an indirect origin from a natural object in the Mediterranean countries, there is no proof that any religious or magical meaning was attached to it. The manner in which the fylfot was employed proves that it certainly had a symbolic signification. The strongest argument adduced by Professor Goodyear is in the case of some “geometrically” decorated Greek vases, in which between solar geese and other symbols occurs a small panel, which is variously decorated with a fylfot, or an element or varietal detail of the meander pattern.[194]But this, after all, may prove to be nothing more than that the Greeks noticed that the fylfot occurred in certain varieties of the meander pattern which had been arrived at from quite a different source. This occurrence of the fylfot in these patterns was quite accidental; it would be better to say that a fylfot design could be picked out from these patterns rather than to suggest that it was inherent in them. Granting the sacred associations of the fylfot, the fact that it could be separated from a pattern which itself may have had a recognised association with the symbolic lotus would probably appeal to a symbol-loving people. If they recognised that the fylfot on the one hand, and the lotus on the other, were sun-symbols, the isolation of the associate of a sun-symbol into another sun-symbol would be a pleasing exercise of ingenuity. I do not pretend to say that this has occurred,but it is to me quite a possible alternative. The sequence which Professor Goodyear seeks to establish appears to me to be nothing more than the birth of an analogy.

Before a judgment upon the Chinese meander pattern can be pronounced it would be necessary to make a detailed study of that pattern on objects from that part of the world, and I have not access to the requisite data.

We now come to the interesting question of the birthplace of this important symbol.

It was long ago remarked that the fylfot is almost exclusively an Aryan symbol. It is completely absent among the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, and even the Phœnicians, although these middle-men traded useful objects and sacred symbols indiscriminately. The Semites did not employ it.

Although widely spread and venerated among the Tibetians (Fig.130,R), the Chinese (Fig.130,L), and the Japanese, it can be proved that these Mongolian peoples have adopted it along with Buddhism from India.

As a recognised religious symbol it is unknown among all the other peoples of the globe.

The conclusion is evident that the fylfot was a symbol before the swarming-off of the Aryan hordes. There seems little doubt that it was originally an emblem of the sun. It may, in certain combinations, have come to symbolise the apparent daily movement of the sun, and perhaps also the annual change of seasons. Some see in it the symbol of a sun-god, others believe it to be the god of the sky, or air, who in the course of time was variously known as Indra, Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, etc. Lastly, it has been promoted to signify “the emblem of the divinity who comprehended all the gods, or, again, of the omnipotent God of the universe.” This latter is certainly not a primitive conception, and we have no evidence that this meaning was ever read into the symbol.

Count Goblet d’Alviella points out that in Europe thegeometric style of ornamentation embraces two periods, that of painted and that of incised decoration. “Now in this latter period, which is everywhere the most ancient, the gammadion is only found on the whorls of Hissarlik and the pottery of the Terramares. We have, therefore, two early homes of our symbol, one on the shores of the Hellespont, the other in the north of Italy.

“Was it propagated from one country to another by the usual medium of commerce? It must be admitted that at this period the relations between the Troad and the basin of the Po were very doubtful. Etruria certainly underwent Asiatic influences; but whether the legendary migration of Tyrrhenius and of his Lydians be admitted or not, this influence was only felt at a period subsequent to the ‘palafittes’ [pile dwellings] of Emilia, if not to the Necropolis of Villanova.

“There remains, therefore, the supposition that the gammadion might have been introduced into the two countries by the same nation.

“We know the Trojans came originally from Thrace. There is, again, a very plausible tradition to the effect that the ancestors, or predecessors, of the Etruscans, and, in general, the earliest known inhabitants of northern Italy, entered the peninsula from the north or north-east, after leaving the valley of the Danube. It is, therefore, in this latter region that we must look for the first home of the gammadion. It must be remarked that when, later on, the coinage reproduces the types and symbols of the local religions, the countries nearest the Danube, such as Macedon and Thrace, are amongst those whose coins frequently exhibit the gammadion, the traskele, and the triskele. Besides, it is especially at Athens that it is found on the pottery of Greece proper, and we know that Attica is supposed to have been primitively colonised by the Thracians. ‘The nations who had invaded the Balkan peninsula and colonised Thrace,’ writes M. Maspero,‘crossed, at a very early period, the two arms of the sea which separated them from Asia, and transported there most of the names which they had already introduced into their European home. There were Dardanians in Macedon, on the borders of the Axios, as in the Troad, on the borders of the Ida, Kebrenes at the foot of the Balkans, and a town, Kebrene, near Ilium.’[195]Who will be astonished that these emigrants had taken with them, to the opposite shore of the Hellespont, the symbols as well as the rites and traditions which formed the basis of their creed in the basin of the Danube?

“Even when it occurs in the north and west of Europe, with objects of the bronze period, it is generally on pottery recalling the vases with geometric decorations of Greece and Etruria, and later, on coins reproducing, more or less roughly, the monetary types of Greece. It seems to have been introduced into Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, in the same manner as that in which the runic writing was brought from the Danube valley to the shores of the Baltic and the ocean. It may have penetrated into Gaul, and from there into England and Ireland, either through Savoy, from the time of the ‘palafittes,’ or with the pottery and jewelry imported by sea and by land from the East, or, lastly, with the Macedonian coins which represent the origin of Gallic coinage.

“We have already seen how it was brought among the islands of the Mediterranean, and into Greece proper, then from Greece to Sicily and even Southern Italy. It must be observed that even at Rome it seems to have always been connected with the traditions of the East. We must not forget that the Christianity of the Catacombs was likewise a religion of Oriental origin.”

So much for the western fylfot. The oriental form even in the extreme east of Asia can be traced without difficultyto the svastika of India. There can be no doubt that the fylfot and the svastika are genetically allied, but it is not at present very easy to demonstrate all the links of the chain. Here again I quote from Count Goblet d’Alviella.

“The svastika does not appear on the coins struck in Bactriana, or in India, by Alexander and his Indo-Greek successors. Even amongst the Indo-Scythians, whose coinage copies the Greek types, it is only visible on barbarous imitations of the coins of Basu Deva. On the other hand, as we have shown, it adorns the coins of Krananda and the most ancient monetary ingots of India. Moreover, Panina, who already makes mention of the svastika, is sometimes considered to have lived in the middle of the fourth centuryB.C.It might therefore be possible that the Hindus had known the svastika before feeling in their arts, and even in their symbolism, the influence of the Greek invasion.

“Yet, for the best of reasons, it is neither the Chaldæans, the Assyrians, the Phœnicians, nor even the Egyptians, who can have imported the gammadion to Hindustan.

“There only remain, then, the Persians, whose influence on the nascent arts of India was certainly felt before Alexander. But in Persia itself the gammadion only appears as an exception on a few rare coins approaching our era.

“Perhaps we would do well to look towards the Caucasus, where the antique ornaments with gammadions, collected by M. Chantre, lead us back to a civilisation closely enough allied, by its industrial and decorative types, to that of Mycenæ.

“Until new discoveries permit us to decide the question, this gap in the genealogy of the svastika will be equally embarrassing for those who would like to make the gammadion the common property of the Aryan race, for it remains to be explained why it is wanting amongst the ancient Persians. It is right, too, to call attention to its absenceon the most ancient pottery of Greece and the Archipelago, where it only appears with geometric decoration.

“If the gammadion is found amongst none of the nations composing the Egypto-Semetic group; if, amongst the Aryans of Persia, it never played but a secondary and obliterated part, might it not be because the art and symbolism of these different nations possess other figures which discharge a similar function, whether as a phylactery, or else as an astronomical, or a divine symbol? The real talismanic cross of the countries stretching from Persia to Lybia is thecrux ansata, the key of life of the Egyptian monuments. As for their principal symbol of the sun in motion, is it not the Winged Globe? There would seem to be between these figures and the gammadion, I will not say a natural antipathy, but a repetition of the same idea. Where the gammadion predominates—that is to say, in the whole Aryan world, except Persia—the Winged Globe and thecrux ansatahave never succeeded in establishing themselves in good earnest. Even in India, granting that these two last figures really crossed the Indus with the Greek, or the Iranian symbolism, they are only met within an altered form, or with a new meaning.

“In brief, the ancient world might be divided into two zones, characterised, one by the presence of the gammadion, the other by that of the Winged Globe as well as of thecrux ansata; and these two provinces barely penetrate one another at a few points of their frontier, in Cyprus, at Rhodes, in Asia Minor, and in Lybia. The former belongs to Greek civilisation, the latter to Egypto-Babylonian culture.

“As for India, everything, so far, tends to show that the svastika was introduced into that country from Greece, the Caucasus, or Asia Minor, by ways which we do not yet know. However that may be, it is owing to its adoption by the Buddhists of India that the gammadion still prevails amongst a great part of the Mongolian races, whilst, with the exception of a few isolated and insignificant cases whichstill survive amongst the actual populations of Hindustan, and, perhaps, of Iceland, it has completely disappeared from Aryan symbolism and even folk-lore.”

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