FOOTNOTE:
[6] See the chapter on "Sleep," in my "Science from an Easy Chair," Methuen, 1909.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SWASTIKA
Fig. 38.—The swastika in its simplest rectangular form. It may turn to the right, as here, or to the left, a less usual thing, but without significance.
A GOOD many people have never heard of the Swastika. It is an emblem or device such as is the Cross or the Crescent. Here it is (Fig. 38) in its most simple and most common form. In India it is in common use at the present day, and has been so for ages. It is the emblem of good luck. The name "Swastika," by which it is widely known, is a Sanskrit word meaning "good luck." The word is composed of Su, the equivalent of the Greek eu, signifying "well" or "good," and asti (like the Greek esto), signifying "being," whilst ka is a suffix completing the word as a substantive. The sign or emblem called Swastika must have existed and been largely used in decoration of temples, images, swords, banners, utensils, and personal trinkets of all sorts long before this name was given to it. It has a name in many widely separate languages. It is often referred to by English writers as the fylfot, the gammadion, and the "crux ansata," also as the "croix gammée." It is often found more roughly drawn (on pottery or cloth) as shown in Fig. 39. Often the arms of the cross are bent rigidly at right angles as in Fig. 38, but they are often only curved as seen in Fig. 39, C, or curled spirally as in B, when it is called an "ogee." The arms of the Swastika are sometimes bent to the right as in Fig. 38, and sometimes to the left as in Fig. 39. This difference does not appear to have any symbolic significance, but to depend on the fancy of the artist.
Fig. 39.—Three simple varieties of the swastika. A, the normal rectangular. B, the ogee variety (with spiral extremities). C, the curvilinear or "current" variety.
Fig. 40.—Footprint of the Buddha, from an ancient Indian carving, showing several swastikas. (Fergusson and Schliemann.)
In Figs. 40 to 45 a few examples are shown of the Swastika from various places and ages. It was in use in Japan in ancient times, and is still common there and in Korea. In China, where it is called "wan," it was at one time used, when enclosed in a circle, as a character or pictograph to signify the sun. It has been employed in China from time immemorial to mark sacred or specially honoured works of art, buildings, porcelain, pictures, robes, and is sometimes tattooed on the hands, arms, or breast. In India it is widely used in decoration by both Buddhists and Brahmins; children have it painted on their shaven heads, and it is introduced in various ceremonies. The gigantic carved footprints of Buddha from an Indian temple drawn in Fig. 40 show several Swastikas on the soles of the feet and on the toes. In the Near East and in Europe the Swastika is no longer in use: it is not, in fact, popularly known. But in ancient and very remote times it was in constant use in these regions, especially by the Mykenæan people and those who came under their influence, and also by the people of the Bronze Age—before the use of iron in Europe. Fig. 41 shows a vase of Mykenæan age (about 1200 years B.C.) from Cyprus ornamented with Swastikas. Hundreds of terra-cotta "spindle-whorls" like Fig. 42 were found by Schliemann in excavating Hissarlik and the site of ancient Troy, and some of them date from 3000 B.C. in layers of different ages. The vase on which is painted the ornament shown in Fig. 43 is from Bœotia, and belongs to the same early period—the "Mykenæan" or "Ægæan" before that of the Hellenes. It still survives in the pottery of the Dipylon period (circa 800 B.C.), as is seen in the fragment drawn in Fig. 6, Chapter I. The later Greeks of the great classical period (Hellenes) did not use the Swastika. Nor has it been found on the works of art of the ancient Egyptians, nor in the remains of Babylonia, Assyria or Persia. It, in fact, seems to have belonged especially to that ancient "Minoan" civilization, the remains of which are found in Crete and the other Greek islands. The same culture and the same race is revealed to us by the discoveries of Schliemann at Mykenæ and other spots in Greece, and at Hissarlik, the seat of ancient Troy. The Mykenæan art seems not to have been transmitted to the post-Homeric Greeks, nor to Egypt, nor to Babylonia and Assyria. The Swastika seems, like the "flying gallop" of Mykenæan art, to have travelled in very ancient times by a north-eastern route to the Far East. I have given some account of the latter, with illustrations, in "Science from an Easy Chair," Second series. Like the representation of the galloping horse, with both fore and hind legs stretched and the hoofs of the hind legs turned upwards, the Swastika is found in the remarkable metal work (Fig. 43 bis) discovered in the necropolis of Koban, in the Caucasus, dating from 500 B.C. The Swastika and the "flying gallop" probably travelled together across Asia to China and the Far East, and so eventually to India on the one hand and Japan on the other—the Swastika thus escaping altogether, as does the pose of the "flying gallop," the Near East and later Greece. This is a very remarkable and interesting association.
Fig. 41.—Vase from Cyprus (Mykenæan Age, circa 1200 B.C.); painted with lotus, bird and four swastikas (Metropolitan Museum, New York City).
Fig. 42.—Terra-cotta spindle-whorl marked with swastikas. Troy, 4th city (Schliemann).
The Mykenæans and their island relatives obtained the Swastika either from the ancient Bronze-age people of Europe or else gave it to them, since it is very nearly as common as a decoration or symbol on the bronze swords, spear-heads, shields, and other metal work of these prehistoric people of the middle and north of Europe (also occurring in the pottery of the Swiss Lake dwellings), as it is in the islands and adjacent lands of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Swastika is also found abundantly on the early work of the Etruscans, but disappeared from general use in Italy, as it did from the rest of Europe, before historic times, although occasionally used (as in the decoration of the walls of a house at Pompeii). All over Germany, Scandinavia, France, and Britain it is found (Fig. 44) on objects of the Bronze period—sometimes on stone as well as on bronze utensils, ornaments, and weapons. A few objects of Anglo-Saxon age are ornamented with it—especially remarkable is a piece of pottery of that age from Norfolk (Fig. 45).
Fig. 43.—Ornament from an archaic (pre-Hellenic) Bœotian vase, showing several swastikas, Greek crosses and two serpents (from Goodyear).
Fig. 43. (bis).—Swastika in bronze repoussé, from the necropolis of Koban, Caucasus (after Chantre "Le Caucase"), about 500 B.C.
Fig. 44.—Silver-plated bronze horse-gear from Scandinavia, showing two swastikas, and below a complex elaboration of a swastika. (Bronze Age, about 1500 B.C.)
Fig. 45.—Anglo-Saxon urn from Shropham, Norfolk, ornamented by twenty small hand-made swastikas stamped into the clay. (British Museum.)
The history of the "Swastika" would be remarkable enough if it ended here with the disappearance of its use in Europe in prehistoric times and its continued use in the Far East and India. But the most curious fact about it is that we find it as a very common and favourite decoration and device among the native tribes in North America and Mexico, and exceptionally in Brazil. It is found in use among the Indians of Kansas and other tribes—as a device in pottery, in bead-work (Fig. 46), patch-work, quill-embroidery, and other decorative fabrics. The Indians called Sacs, Kickapoos, and Pottawottamies, who worship the sun (which is associated with the Swastika in China), call it by a native name signifying "the luck." It is also found as a decorative design in the most ancient remains of man in America, dating (so far as can be guessed) from a thousand years or more before Columbus (Fig. 47).
Fig. 46.—Piece of a ceremonial bead-worked garter, showing star and two swastikas made by the Sac Indians, Cook County, Kansas. (Modern.)
It is generally held that the Swastika must have been introduced into America in prehistoric times by early redskin immigrants from Asia. The question has been raised as to whether this introduction was before or after the worship of Buddha in Asia. It is only amongst Buddhists that the Swastika has a religious or sacred character. Elsewhere it seems to have been a mark or sign carrying "good luck." A representation of a sitting human figure incised on shell has been found in a prehistoric burial-mound in Tennessee, which has remarkable resemblance to the Asiatic statues of the Buddha. Shell ornaments have also been found here decorated with sharply-cut Swastikas, and in a mound in Ohio thin plates of copper were found cut into simple Swastika shapes like that of Fig. 38, four inches across. Modern Mexican Indians make brooches of gold and turquoise in the form of the Swastika, and it is a favourite device among the Indians of neighbouring territory. Swastikas occur as decorations or lucky marks on the small terra-cotta "fig-leaf," which was worn by the women of some of the aboriginal tribes of Brazil, and have also been found on native pottery from the Paraguay River.
Some students of this subject have held the opinion that the "Swastika" has been invented independently at different times in different parts of the world. It is a fairly simple device, it is true; but the view which is accepted at present is that it has spread from one centre—probably European in the late Stone period—through the Mykenæans, across Asia, and so with early immigrants across the Pacific into the American continent.
Fig. 47.—A stone slab from the ancient city of Mayapan (Yucatan, Central America), on which (right side) a curvilinear swastika is carved. (From the American Antiquarian Society, 1881.)
Apart from this problem, there is an interesting question as to how the device probably took its origin. The "Swastika" is sometimes called the "gammadion," because it may be regarded as four individuals of the Greek letter gamma (which has this shape [Greek: G]) joined at right angles to one another. The old English name for it, dating from Anglo-Saxon times, was fylfot—an old Norse word of doubtful meaning, which has no currency at the present day.
A method of making the Swastika by piling up sand or grain on a flat surface, actually in use at the present time in India, is shown in Fig. 48. The artist makes first of all a circle with a cross drawn within it (A). Then the circle is rubbed out or cut away at four corresponding points where the arms of the cross touch the circle, and so we get B. Then by the straightening of the curved pieces we get the correct rectangular Swastika, C. It is not probable that this is the way in which the Swastika was originally devised, though it is not possible to arrive at any certainty on the subject.
In these matters concerning the origin of simple ornamental patterns, designs, and symbols, we always have to deal with certain natural opposing tendencies on the part of the artist-draughtsman or designer, one or other of which may be variously called into prominence by the softness or hardness or other quality of the material he has to use, or by the individual fancy for elaboration or for simplification which exists in him. I will call four of these tendencies which concern us in regard to the Swastika: 1, the rectilinear as opposed to 2, the curvilinear, and 3, the grammatizing as opposed to 4, the naturalizing tendency, and will show what bearing they may have on the origin of the device known as the Swastika.
Fig. 48.—Diagram to show the derivation of the swastika from a Greek cross enclosed by a circle. In India the swastika is actually modelled in this way—in native ceremonies with rice-grain spread on the ground. The successive figures drawn above are produced by moving the rice with the hand.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ORIGIN OF THE SWASTIKA
THE Swastika is, we have seen, a very early device or symbol in use among ancient races in Europe, Asia and America. Though it has been found on an ingot of metal in Ashanti it was of late foreign introduction there, and is not known in Africa, nor in Polynesia and Australia, nor among the Eskimos. How did it as a mere matter of shape and pattern come into existence? One might suppose that such combinations of lines as the simple cross and this modified cross, with the arms bent each half-way along its length to form a right angle, would be very natural things for a primitive man—or a child—to make when trying to produce some ornamental effect by tracing simple rectilinear and symmetrical figures. No doubt such a "playing with lines" is a common phase or stage of the human search for decorative design. It leads by gradual steps to very complex line-decoration in early pottery and woven work, which is sometimes called "geometrical design."
It is, however, the fact, and a very interesting one, that the tendency to make geometrical design is not so pronounced in the very earliest examples of human drawing and ornament known to us, as is the tendency to copy natural objects. And this would appear to be especially the case where the drawing is to be a symbol or significant badge. In the earliest art-work known to us—that of the cave-men of the late Pleistocene period in Western Europe (see Chaps. I., II. and III.)—the artists were busy with attempts (often wonderfully successful ones) to present the outlines of familiar animals (and sometimes plants) by incised carving on bone or painting on the rock walls of caves—preceded, it is true, by a period in which "all-round" sculpture in bone or stone or modelling in clay was the method employed. The extensive use of lines—concentric or parallel, like those on the finger-tips—as decoration of stone work is not known until the later or Neolithic period. [7] On one at least of the incised bone drawings of the Palæolithic cave-men two little diamond-shaped lozenges are engraved. They are seen in the cave-men's drawing of a stag figured on pp. 12, 13 of this book. These lozenges are supposed to be the "signature" of the artist, and, if so, are not only the first examples of a geometrical rectilinear figure as ornament, but the earliest examples known of the use of a badge or symbol as a means of identification.
When we compare the simpler decorative designs made use of by the less cultivated races of men, we find that there are certain distinct and opposed tendencies the predominance of which is of importance in helping us to explain the origin of the design. The tendency to make straight lines and rectilinear angles, which we may call the "rectilinear habit," is found in work executed on hard stone by a graving tool, and in work where square-cut stones are set together or flat pieces of wood or straw are interlaced, and in coarser kinds of weaving, bead-work, and basketwork. The opposite tendency is found in work executed with a brush and fluid paint on pottery or cloth, or even with a graver on soft clay or bone.
The contrast is well shown in the two renderings of one and the same "pattern," shown in A and B of Fig. 49. A is the rectilinear angular decorative design which is known as the "Greek key pattern," whilst the scroll below it is the "curvilinear" treatment of the same subject. The first takes its rectilinear character from a structure built up of hard blocklike pieces; the other is the flowing, easily moving line of a brush laying on paint, or of a style moving over clay or soft wax. The contrast is the same as that of the capital letters of the Roman alphabet, as used in print, with their equivalents in "copper-plate," cursive handwriting.
Fig. 49.—The Greek Key pattern in A rectangular, and B curvilinear or "current" form.
Another pair of tendencies opposed to each other which have much significance in the explanation of decorative design is the tendency to convert the simple lines of an original design into a drawing representing some animal or plant shape. At the end of the last chapter I distinguished this as the "naturalizing" tendency, contrasting it with the grammatizing or simplifying tendency. A good example of it is seen in Fig. 50. In A of that figure we see a circle divided into three cones by curved lines; this is a known design. It is called a "triskelion" (meaning a three-legged figure), or is more correctly termed "a three-branched scroll." The curves are converted into angles and straight lines in B, and then the stiff rectilinear "triskelion" is subsequently developed into three human legs, as shown in C, Fig. 50. It is naturalized. Were the change to proceed in the other way from the three human legs to the simple lines, we should have an example of the opposed tendency, namely, that of converting drawings of natural objects—by a degenerative or reducing process—to the simplest lines representative of them. This tendency, which we call "grammatizing" (from gramma, the Greek for a line), is far commoner in early art than the naturalizing tendency which sets in when the artist is exuberant, self-confident, and imaginative. We see a "naturalizing" tendency in the flamboyant and arabesque decorative work of the renascence, but it is also found among the happy Minoan, or Ægæan, island folk who decorated great pots and basins in Cyprus and Crete with forms suggested by birds, sea-creatures, and climbing plants, and worshipped the great mother Nature as Aphrodite, the sea-born goddess.
Fig. 50.—Diagrams of the "triskelion" or figure formed by the division of a circle into three equal bent cones as in A. B is the rectangular form derived from it. C is a "naturalized" form derived from it, namely, the three conjoined legs used as the badge of Sicily and of the Isle of Man.
The triangular island of Sicily (called also Trinacria) had in ancient times (even as far back as 300 B.C.) the conjoined three legs (shown in Fig. 50, C) as its badge or armorial emblem. An ancient Greek vase found at Girgenti has this badge painted on it. Ancient Lycia had a triskelion formed by three conjoined cocks' heads stamped on its coins. Though it has no direct connection with the Swastika, the introduction of the "three legs" as the armorial emblem of the Isle of Man is worth relating, as it is not known to most of those who are familiar with the device, with its motto, "Quocunque jeceris stabit" on the copper pence minted for that island up to as late a date as 1864, and current in Great Britain. King Alexander III of Scotland expelled the Norse Vikings from the Isle of Man in A.D. 1266, and substituted for their armorial emblem in the island, which was a ship under full sail, the three legs of Sicily. Frederick II, King of Sicily, married Isabella, the daughter of Henry III of England. Alexander III of Scotland married Margaret, another daughter of Henry, and Henry's son, Edmund the Hunchback, became King of Sicily, in succession to his brother-in-law Frederick. Alexander of Scotland was thus brother-in-law both of Frederick II and of Edmund, successive kings of Sicily. It was in this way that he was led, when he added the Isle of Man to his kingdom, to replace the former Norse emblem of the island by the picturesque and striking device of that other island—Sicily—with which he had so close a family connection.
The tendency for drawings of men and animals when used as decorative designs to degenerate, in the course of time and repetition, into more and more simple lines, to become more and more "grammatized" and simplified, till at last their origin is hardly recognizable, is both a very remarkable and a very usual thing. The process of degeneration, step by step, can often be traced, and curious remnants of important parts of the original drawing are found surviving in the final simplified design. The paddles and other carvings of some of the South Sea Islanders show very curious "degenerations" of this kind. A carved human head with open mouth becomes by repeated copying and simplification a mere crescent or hook, which is the vastly enlarged mouth of the original face. It alone survives, and is of enormous size, when all other features and detail have been abandoned. In some carvings of a face the tongue is shown projecting as an indication of defiance. In course of simplification in successive reproductions the face becomes a mere curved surface with a large pointed piece standing out from it; it is the tongue. That one significant thing—suggesting defiance—alone persists. The study of this process in human art covers a very wide field, including all races and all times. An excellent example is that given in Fig. 51. It shows the step by step "grammatizing" of a favourite decorative drawing—that of an alligator, as painted by the Chiriqui Indians of Panama on pottery. We start in Fig. 51, A, with an alligator, already considerably "schematized" or conventionalized. The Indians could do better than that, but it served for pottery decoration. The figures B, C, D show three stages of further "grammatizing" of the design (from different parts of the surface of a pot) till, in D, we get the alligator reduced to a yoke-like line and a dot!
Fig. 51.—Four stages in the simplification of a decorative design—the Alligator—as painted on pottery by the Chiriqui Indians. (Holmes.)
Familiar modern examples of this reduction of an animal figure to one or two lines, with mysterious-looking branches (representing limbs or horns), are seen in the scattered devices on the Turkey carpets so largely used at the present day. A comparison of various examples of such carpets of different age and locality reveals the true nature of these queer-looking patterns as representations of animals! Another familiar instance of the grammatizing of an animal form is that shown in Fig. 52, D, which is the common symbol in modern European art for a flying bird. Fig. 52 shows, however, some more important simplifications of animal form. The series marked E are a few examples from hundreds painted on the walls of caves in Cantabria (Spain) by prehistoric men. They start with a clearly recognizable figure of a man—many such, an inch or two high, occur on some parts of the cave-walls—and then we have all sorts of simplifications and deviations from the more naturalistic initial design, as shown by the rest of the series, ending in a T—a primitive symbol often arrived at by savage decorative artists in various parts of the world by reducing and grammatizing the human figure. The letters of many alphabets have been simplified in this way from original picture-like signs or pictographs.
Fig. 52.—Simplification (grammatizing) of decorative design. A, a stork walking. B, a stag. C, a stork with wings spread for flying—resulting when fully "grammatized" in a curvilinear swastika. A, B, and C, from spindle-whorls found at Hissarlik. D, conventional representation of three flying birds. E, grammatized human figure from the walls of caverns in Cantabria.
Fig. 53.—Spindle-whorl from Troy (fourth city), with three swastikas—two resembling "stylized" storks (see Fig. 52, C). (Schliemann.)
The drawings lettered A, B and C in Fig. 52 represent accurately figures scratched on the clay "spindle-whorls" (before baking), so abundant in the remains of the ancient cities on the hill of Hissarlik (Troy), found by Schliemann (see Figs. 42 and 53). These heavy, bun-like spindle-whorls have retained their use and shape since Neolithic times (they are found in the Swiss lake-dwellings) to the present day. Similar whorls were made of modern porcelain, variously decorated, in France in the last century and sold to the peasants for giving weight and rotatory stability to the spindle used in spinning, and are still used wherever the spindle survives, as among the Indians of Central America. A "grammatized" profile representation of a stork (Fig. 52, A) is one of the designs on these Hissarlik spindle-whorls, and so is the linear representation of a stag (Fig. 52, B). And now we come back to the Swastika. The four figures in a row, marked C in Fig. 52, are a few of the representations of "flying" storks on these same spindle-whorls; one so marked is drawn in Fig. 53. They are of various degrees of simplification, and the last but one on the right hand side is identical with a Swastika! It must be carefully remembered that these clay spindle-whorls from Hissarlik are very commonly inscribed with undoubted well-shaped Swastikas, as shown in Fig. 42. The Swastika is quite a common and usual decorative lucky badge in the household art of that locality and age. Hence it is not surprising that M. Solomon Reinach, of Paris, has suggested that the Swastika may have originated thus—by the "stylizing" or "grammatizing" of a favourite and sacred bird—the stork. Once thus suggested and drawn in the simple Swastika shape the emblem (it would be supposed) became fixed, and made as rectilinear and simple as possible. Thenceforward it was accepted as an emblem of good luck, which has been transmitted throughout the ancient world of Europe, Asia and America. This theory has a plausible aspect, but I understand from M. Reinach that he no longer attaches importance to it. I do not know what theory, if any, of the origin of the Swastika now commends itself to him, nor whether he thinks it has originated independently in several times and places, or holds that it has one common origin. I am inclined to favour the theory that the Swastika has been started by the copying of the form of a natural object on the part of a primitive race of men, and that this form has lent itself to the invention of other badges and symbols besides that known as the Swastika. I will explain this in the next chapter.