Fig. 4.
Fig. 5.
It is possible that these symbols are of late origin, devised to express the ideas above named. One Chinese scholar (Mr. S. Culin) tells me that it is doubtful if they occur earlier than the twelfth century, A. D., and that they were probably introduced for purposes of divination. In this case, I believe that they were introduced from the South, and that they originally had another and concrete significance, as I shall explain later.
Others consider these symbols as essentially Mongolian. The Ta Ki or Triskeles is to them the Mongolian, while the Svastika is the ethnic Aryan symbol. Such writers suspect Indo-European immigration where they discover the latter, Chinese immigration were they find the former emblem.
The Svastika, I need hardly say, is the hooked cross or gammated cross, usually represented as follows:
Fig. 6.
the four arms of equal length, the hook usually pointing from left to right. In this form it occurs in India and on very early (neolithic) Greco-Italic and Iberian remains. So much has been written upon the Svastika, however, that I need not enter upon its archæological distribution.