Both the Greek fret and the fylfot appear to have been unknown to the Semitic nations as an ornament or as a symbol.
In Egypt the fylfot does not occur. It is, I believe, generally admitted or supposed that the fylfot is of early Aryan origin. Eastward toward India, Tibet, and China it was adopted, in all probability, as a sacred symbol of Buddha; westward it may have spread in one form or another to Greece, Asia Minor, and even to North Germany.
Cartailhac says:[102]
Modern Christian archæologists have obstinately contended that the Swastika was composed of four gamma, and so have called it the Croix Gammée. But the Ramâyana placed it on the boat of the Rama long before they had any knowledge of Greek. It is found on a number of Buddhist edifices; the Sectarians of Vishnu placed it as a sign upon their foreheads. Burnouf says it is the Aryan sign par excellence. It was surely a religious emblem in use in India fifteen centuries before the Christian era, and thence it spread to every part. In Europe it appeared about the middle of the civilization of the bronze age, and we find it, pure or transformed into a cross, on a mass of objects in metal or pottery during the first age of iron. Sometimes its lines were rounded and given a graceful curve instead of straight and square at its ends and angles. [See letter by Gandhi, pp. [803], [805].]
M. Cartailhac notes[103] several facts concerning the associations of the Swastika found by him in Spain and Portugal and belonging to the first (prehistoric) age of iron: (1) The Swastika was associated with the silhouettes of the duck, or bird, similar to those in Greece, noted by Goodyear; (2) the association (in his fig. 41) on a slab from the lake dwellings, of the Maltese cross and reproduction of the triskelion; (3) a tetraskelion, which he calls a Swastika “flamboyant,” being the triskelion, but with four arms, the same shown on Lycian coins as being ancestors of the true triskelion (his fig. 412); (4) those objects were principally found in the ancient lake dwellings of Sambroso and Briteiros, supposedly dating from the eighth and ninth centuries B. C. With them were found many ornaments, borders representing cords, spirals, meanders, etc., which had the same appearance as those found by Schliemann at Mycenæ. Cartailhac says:[104]
Without doubt Asiatic influences are evident in both cases; first appearing in the Troad, then in Greece, they were spread through Iberia and, possibly, who can tell, finally planted in a far-away Occident.
A writer in the Edinburgh Review, in an extended discussion on “The pre-Christian cross,” treats of the Swastika under the local name of “Fylfot,” but in such an enigmatical and uncertain manner that it is difficult to distinguish it from other and commoner forms of the cross. Mr. Waring[105] criticises him somewhat severely for his errors:
He states that it is found * * * in the sculptured stones of Scotland (but after careful search we can find only one or two imperfect representations of it, putting aside the Newton stone inscription, where it is probably a letter or numeral only); that it is carved on the temples and other edifices of Mexico and Central America (where again we have sought for it in vain); that it is found on the cinerary urns of the terramare of Parma and Vicenza, the date of which has been assigned by Italian antiquaries to 1000 B. C. (but there again we have found only the plain cross, and not the fylfot), and, finally, he asserts that “it was the emblem of Libitina or Persephone, the awful Queen of the Shades, and is therefore commonly found on the dress of the tumulorum fossor in the Roman catacombs,” but we have only found one such example. “It is noteworthy, too,” he continues, “in reference to its extreme popularity, or the superstitious veneration in which it has been also universally held, that the cross pattée, or cruciform hammer (but we shall show these are different symbols), was among the very last of purely pagan symbols which was religiously preserved in Europe long after the establishment of Christianity (not in Europe, but in Scandinavia and wherever the Scandinavians had penetrated). * * * It may be seen upon the bells of many of our parish churches, as at Appleby, Mexborough, Haythersaye, Waddington, Bishop’s Norton, West Barkwith, and other places, where it was placed as a magical sign to subdue the vicious spirit of the tempest;” and he subsequently points out its constant use in relation to water or rain.
Mr. Waring continues:
The Rev. C. Boutell, in “Notes and Queries,” points out that it is to be found on many mediæval monuments and bells, and occurs—e. g., at Appleby in Lincolnshire (peopled by Northmen)—as an initial cross to the formula on the bell “Sta. Maria, o. p. n. and c.” In these cases it has clearly been adopted as a Christian symbol. In the same author’s “Heraldry,” he merely describes it as a mystic cross.