Didron (c) thus remarks upon the emblems in the Roman catacombs:
The large fish marks the fisher who catches it or the manufacturer who extracts the oil from it. The trident indicates the sailor, as the pick the digger. The trade of digger in the catacombs was quite elevated; the primitive monuments thus represent these men who are of the lower class among us, and who in the beginning of the Christian era, when they dug the graves of saints and martyrs, were interred side by side with the rich and even beside saints, and were represented holding a pickaxe in one hand and a lamp in the other; the lamp lighted them in their subterranean labors. The hatchet indicates a carpenter, and the capital a sculptor or an architect. As to the dove, it probably designates the duties of the mother of a family who nourishes the domestic birdlings as would appear to be indicated by a mortuary design in Bosis. It is possible, moreover, that it originated from a symbolic idea, but this idea would be borrowed from profane rather than religious sentiments, and I would more willingly see in it the memorial of the good qualities of the dead, man or woman, the fidelity of the wife, or of the dove, which returning to the ark after the deluge announced that the waters had retired and the land had again appeared; from this we can not conclude that the fish filled a rôle analogous to it, nor above all that it is the symbol of Christ; the dove is in the Old Testament, the fish neither in the old nor in the new.
Edkins (b) says respecting the Chinese:
It is easy to trace the process of symbol-making in the words used for the crenelated top of city walls, which are ya and c’hi, both meaning “teeth” and both being pictures of the object, and further, when the former is found also to be used for “tree buds” and “to bud.” Such instances of word creation show how considerable has been the prevalence of analogy and the association of ideas. The picture writing of the Chinese is to a large extent a continuation of the process of forming analogies to which the human mind had already become accustomed in the earlier stages of the history of language.
D’Alviella (b) furnishes this poetical and truthful suggestion:
It is not surprising that the Hindoos and Egyptians should both have adopted as the symbol of the sun the lotus flower, which opens its petals to the dawn and infolds them on the approach of night, and which seems to be born of itself on the surface of the still waters.
SECTION 3.
SIGNIFICANCE OF COLORS.
The use of color to be considered in studies of pictography is probably to be traced to the practice of painting on the surface of the human body. This use is very ancient. The Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes applied vermillion and white plaster to their skins, and the German tribes when first known in history inscribed their breasts with the figures of divers animals. The North British clans were so much addicted to paint (or perhaps tattoo) that the epithet Picti was applied to them by the Romans. In this respect comparisons may be made with the Wichita, who were called by the French Pawnees Piqués, commonly rendered in English Pawnee Picts, and Marco de Niça, in Hakluyt, (e) says that Indians in the region of Arizona and New Mexico were called Pintados “because they painted their faces, breasts, and arms.” The general belief with regard to the employment of paint in the above and similar cases is that the colors had a tribal significance by which men became their own flags; the present form of flag not having great antiquity, as Clovis was the first among western monarchs to adopt it. Then the theory became current that colored devices, such as appeared on ensigns and on clothing, e. g., tartans, were imitated from the painted marks on the skin of the tribesmen. In this connection remarks made supra about tattoo designs are applicable. There is but little evidence in favor of the theory, save that fashions in colored decorations probably in time became tribal practices and so might have been evolved into emblems. But it is proper to regard such colorations as primarily ornamental, and to remember that even in England as late as the eighth century some bands of men were so proud of their decorated bodies that they refused to conceal them by clothes.
This topic may be divided into: 1. Decorative use of color. 2. Idiocrasy of colors. 3. Color in ceremonies. 4. Color relative to death and mourning. 5. Colors for war and peace. 6. Colors designating social status.