Being one of the ancient centres of civilization from which the Chinese are said to have derived theirs, India, the country where the swastika abounds, first arrests our attention. In support of the assertion I have already advanced, that the primitive symbol is always found accompanied by a set of ideas almost as ancient as itself, I have pleasure in transcribing the following detached but instructive and suggestive extracts from my note-book.
The fair Arya or Aryans, after about 2,000 B.C., penetrated India from the northwest. Arya means “those who command” or “the venerable.” The name Hindu or Sindu was given to the Indian Aryans. Our knowledge of Hindu art begins in the third century B.C. and none of the present popular forms of Hindu religion are presumed to be earlier than the ninth century A.D. “It is well known that the Brahman system and faith were not developed by the Hindus till they had conquered the Ganges, Western and Southern India and there is no trace of this tradition or even of Brahma as a deity in the Vedas.”...
“The supreme god of antiquity was Indra ... next to and above whom was the mysterious god Varuna, the creator, who gave eternal laws which god and men were obliged to follow. He showed the stars their paths and gave each creature his qualities.... He is the sun by day and the stars at night”.... From these statements the duality of the creator and his power over both light and darkness alike, stand out clearly.
Another form of the supreme being was the sun god Surya, who [pg 313] was also named Savitri, the generator, Pushan=the feeder and Mithra=the light-god, who is called the watcher and ruler of the world and was associated with the wheel, which is termed “the most ancient symbol of divine power and dominion.”[89]
“In India the wheel was, moreover, connected with the title of a chakrayartin (from chakra=a wheel), the title meaning a supreme ruler or universal monarch, who ruled the four quarters of the world and on his coronation he had to drive his chariot or wheel to the four cardinal points to signify his conquest of them” (Wm. Simpson, Quarterly statement of Palestine Expl. Fund, 1895, p. 84). It is significant that “Mithra,” the god of the wheel, who was, as I shall show later on, likewise associated with the serpent, is represented with a chariot pulled by seven horses and thus to find the idea of centrifugal power, combined with the numeral seven and the conception of central rulership extending to the four quarters.
While the above passages afford an interesting insight into the ancient significance and symbolism of the chariot, the use of which, with that of the throne was, originally, exclusively confined to the central supreme ruler, they also furnish a curious parallelism to the Chinese tours of inspection performed, by the emperor, to the four provinces in rotation.
The general application of the quadruplicate system is moreover shown by the fact that, from time immemorial, the population of India has been divided into four great castes, and these are associated with distinctive colors, the Sanscrit word for color, varna, signifying also caste. According to the native myth, Brahma created the Brahmin or ruling caste from his mouth, the warrior caste from his arms and hands, the merchant and agricultural caste from his hips and the artisan or lowest caste from the [pg 314] soles of his feet. The warrior caste was named Kschatria; the people the yellow, or Vaicya; the original, conquered inhabitants of India were named the black, or Sudra. The Brahman caste was above all these.
Concerning the origin of the Brahmans, it is related that “Manu was created ... he, in turn created ten great sages, the ancestors of the Brahmans. These created seven other Manus or spiritual princes, the preservers of moral orders in the world” (Goodyear). Pointing out that the seven Manus evidently constituted a septarchy, let us now study the Brahmanistic conception of a supreme divinity. From various authorities we learn that, in later times “the Brahmans invented a new god, the impersonal Brahma, who only appears in the youngest portion of the Vedas.” He is described as “the supreme One who alone exists really and absolutely,” and is represented with four heads and four arms, the idea of four-fold power and rule being thus expressed. The proof that, at the same time, the idea of duality existed, is furnished by the invention of a female counterpart of Brahma, namely, his consort Sarawati and the later development of the rival religions which now exist side by side and divide the population of India into halves. The cult of Vishnu, associated with the male principle, though curiously blended with the principle of preservation, is obviously a parallel form of the American and Chinese cult of the Above or Heaven; while that of Siva, or the female principle, strongly mingled with the idea of destruction, forms a parallel to the cult of the Earth-mother and of darkness and the nocturnal heaven. Brahma was born of an egg and is also figured as springing from a lotus which, in turn rises from the navel of Vishnu or Narayana, “the Spirit moving on the waters.”...[90]
In modern Buddhism the identical fundamental ideas continue to exist in a slightly different form; the six directions in space are known and elaborately worshipped. The embodiment of central power is Buddha, seated cross-legged on a lotus flower. According to Birdwood, cited by Mr. Goodyear, “In the Hindu cosmogony [pg 315] the world is likened to a lotus flower, floating in the centre of a shallow circular vessel, which has for its stalk an elephant and for its pedestal a tortoise. The seven petals of the lotus flower represent the seven divisions of the world as known to the ancient Hindus and the tabular torus (Nelumbium speciosum) which rises from their centre represents Mount Meru, the Hindu Olympus.”
In the statues of Buddha, thus associated with the centre of the world, we have what may be termed the highest development of the idea of stability, quietude and absolute repose which impressed itself upon the human mind by the observation of Polaris. The abstract conception of Nirvana, “the state in which all individuality and consciousness are lost, and life and death, good and evil, and every other possible antithesis disappear in absolute unity,” appears to me to be the natural ultimate outgrowth of the primitive appreciation of stability and repose as the most desirable of conditions.