Swastika origin theories

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The earliest archaeological evidence of a swastika-motif dates from the Upper Paleolithic period (ca. 10,000 BC). It appears on birds carved from mammoth tusk and the motif is etched at the spot where the bird's feet should be. This carving is depicted on page 117 of Joseph Campbell's, Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension (2002 ed). In the neolithic (5th millennium BC), variants of arrangements of fourfold rotation symmetry (besides other orders, especially threefold), of spirals occur, and in the Bronze Age notably of animal shapes, the so-called Tierwirbel.

The genesis of the swastika symbol is often treated in conjunction with cross symbols in general, such as the "sun wheel" of Bronze Age religion.

The ubiquity of the swastika symbol is easily explained by its being a very simple symbol that will arise independently in any basket-weaving society. The swastika is a repeating design, created by the edges of the reeds in a square basket-weave. Other theories attempt to establish a connection via cultural diffusion or an explanation along the lines of Carl Jung's collective unconscious.

The American presence of the swastika weakens the cultural diffusion theory. While some^{[citation needed]} have proposed that the swastika was transferred to North America by an early seafaring civilization on Eurasia, a separate but parallel development is considered the most likely explanation.

Another explanation is suggested by Carl Sagan in his book Comet, proposing that the symbol was inspired by a comet approaching Earth closely enough that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible. This explanation has found some adherents among catastrophists.

Ancient Sanskrit uses the Swastika symbol to represent 'Health and Well Being' and even now in Thailand the greeting 'Sawasdee' (Sawasdee-kup for male and Sawasdee-kaa for females) is used. The symbol appears throughout history in many forms (clockwise, counter-clockwise and 90 degree rotated) but there is no connection between the configuration and good or evil as some have imagined.

The Swastika is also supposedly derived from the Hindu symbol of Om. The Hindus believe in the Big Bang Theory, which states that the Universe was created after a Big Bang. A loud sound came out when the explosion took place and this low frequency sound sounded like the word Ommm... since the sound spread in all four directions, the word Om was placed in all 4 directions. That formed the basis of the Swastika symbol.

[edit] Tierwirbel

The Tierwirbel (the German for "animal whorl" or "whirl of animals"^[1]) is a characteristic motive in Bronze Age Central Asia, the Eurasian Steppe, and later also in Iron Age Scythian and European (Baltic^[2] and Germanic) culture, showing rotational symmetric arrangement of an animal motive, often four birds' heads. Even wider diffusion of this "Asiatic" theme has been proposed, to the Pacific and even North America (especially Moundville)^[3].

[edit] Comets

Sagan reproduces an ancient Chinese manuscript (the Book of Silk) that shows comet tail varieties: most are variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus with four bent arms extending from it, recalling a swastika. Sagan suggests that in antiquity a comet could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world.^[4]

This swastika like rendering is labeled 翟星 (翟 dí "long tailed pheasant" 星 xīng "star") and its caption is the lengthiest of all comets depicted, because only the swastika comet is said to have been seen in all four seasons: "Appearing in spring means good harvest, in summer means drought, in autumn means flood, in winter means small battles." [ Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, 1985]

[edit] Book of Silk

part of the Han Dynasty silk comet atlas

These drawings of comets date from before 168 BC from the Book of Silk. Unearthed from Han tomb number 3 at Mawangdui, Changsha, China, the drawings are part of a large number of documents, which includes the I Ching and two similar versions of the Tao Te Ching, found during the 1970s and often referred to as the Mawangdui Silk Texts. Each illustration has a caption describing what will happen if the comet as depicted appears, so the artifact is basically an atlas of comet forms seen in the past. It should not be assumed that each drawing represents a different comet, as any particular comet might appear quite differently to an observer on each trip it makes about the sun.

[edit] Comet-inspired motifs

Hypothetical depiction of a comet with gas jets seen down and along its axis of rotation.

In their 1982 book Cosmic Serpent (page 155) Victor Clube and Bill Napier reproduced a portion of this silk atlas and suggest that some of the comet drawings were probably related to the breakup of the progenitor of comet Encke and the Taurid meteoroid stream. This object could have produced several very bright comets in short period (~3.3 years) orbits that crossed Earth's path. Fred Whipple in his The Mystery of Comets (1985, page 163) pointed out that comet Encke's polar axis is only 5 degrees from its orbital plane. Such an orientation is ideal to have presented a pinwheel like aspect to our ancestors when comet Encke was more active. Carl Sagan in his book Comet (1985) pointed out that an outgassing comet that produced a pinwheel appearance to someone looking down the comet's axis of rotation would appear very different to an observer viewing the same comet along its equator.

[edit] Birds

[edit] The "Bird-comet"

Terracotta ball from Ilios

One of the balls appears to represent an owl and according to Schliemann has "hair" markings on the opposite side of the face. This might represent an early form of Athena

Bob Kobres in Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse (1992) contends that the swastika like comet on the Han Dynasty silk comet atlas was labeled a "long tailed pheasant star" (Di-Xing) because of its resemblance to a bird's foot. Kobres goes on to suggest an association of mythological birds and comets also outside China.

Two owl like vases from Ilios

There is a strong association in ancient artifacts between the swastika and the owl in particular. Owls have zygodactylous or semizygodactylous (outer toe reversible) feet that can leave swastika like foot-prints in loose dirt or sand. Chinese lore upholds such an interpretation as Ts'ang Chieh, the four eyed legendary inventor of writing, derived his inspiration to create written symbols from noticing the marks of birds' feet in the sand. His ancient style is known as niao chiwen--"bird foot-prints writing." [MacCulloch, C.J.A. 1928].

In a less artificial environ animal tracks speak strongly to people and convey much about the creature which left them. Thus a bear, bird or any animal which made impressions on the ground could be symbolically represented in total by drawing these marks. [Morphy, H. 1989] This suggests that the jetting comet, to some cultures, looked like a bird's foot in the sky and, as a motif, represented a divine fowl. [Forlong, J.G.R. 1906] [Kobres, B. 1992]

petroglyphs found in the south-western United States

Symbolic bird tracks, unrecognized as such, appear on objects unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann from Hissarlik in Asia Minor. [Kobres, B. 1992] Artifactual support for this contention comes from petroglyphs found in the south-western United States which Pueblo people identify as roadrunner (a type of cuckoo) tracks and identical renderings found by Schliemann. [Morphy, H. 1989] The close association of these two distinctive crosses on artifacts from Schliemann's Troy could be considered coincidental and not necessarily avian-inspired were they found out of context, however, in Schliemann's words:

Terracotta ball from Ilios

An interesting aspect of the rolling cross motif and its link to birds is the ancient mythical image of a one-legged fowl. This is also a characteristic of the Chinese divine pheasant which was closely associated with the fabulous, lame, raven-beak-nosed emperor, Yu, who could transform himself into this pheasant or a bear. One of Yu's enemies, the Owl, who invented thunder and lightning was also one-footed. [Lonsdale, S. 1982, Barnard, N. 1972, 1973]. Yu's shape-shifting ability can be understood as related to the view a comet associated with him presented to our ancestors.[Kobres, B. 1992]

Kobres further relates Sanskrit term svastika or su-astika to the Astika Parva in the Mahabharata which relates the birth of a cosmic bird par excellence--Garuda, interpreting Garuda as an earth-approaching comet. [Kobres, B. 1992, Hewitt, J.F.K. 1907] This fabulous winged deity had a radiance like the Sun, could change shapes at will, and destroyed other gods and kings by casting down fire and stirring up storms of reddish dust which darkened the Sun, Moon and stars.

The bird-comet connection is even more obvious in the Jamva-khanda Nirmana Parva of the Mahabharata which describes a fierce fowl with but one wing, one eye, and one leg, hovering in the night sky. [Roy, P.C. 1973] As this bird "screams" and "vomits blood":

The mention of Rahu, the demon of eclipse, which originally had four arms and a tail that was severed by Vishnu to become Ketu (comet) is interesting in that the demon is here darkening Kirttika (the Pleiades) in the month of Karttika (latter half of October, through mid November), for the tale goes on to relate that:

This is, almost certainly, a mythological record of an intense meteor storm from the still active Taurid stream which presently peaks around the first of November and appears to radiate from near the Pleiades star cluster.[Clube, V., Napier, B 1982] The un-airworthy bird associated with this meteor bombardment could have been comet Encke which until recently was thought to be the sole source for the Taurid meteors. [Kobres, B. 1992] [Whipple, F.L. 1985] However, the discovery of other large contributors which are now dark but were once active comets rules out a positive identification.

According to Alfred Hillebrandt in his Vedic Mythology (1981 English edition, vol 2 pp 259-60) there is evidence of the notion of a celestial bird foot-print in early Indian literature. Thus the likelihood of the motif that actually looks like a bird's foot-print, often appears in a cosmic context, and eventually became associated with the term svastika being related to that celestial bird is high. [Kobres, B. 1992, Hewitt, J.F.K. 1907 ] Hillebrandt relates that it was the seven Rsis who settled down (in the heavens) to practice tapas and with the five Adhvaryus they guard "the hidden foot print of the bird." He goes on to state:

[edit] References

• A. W. Buckland, Four, as a Sacred Number, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1896).
• Clube, V. and Napier, B. The Cosmic Serpent. Universe Books, 1982
• Forlong, James George Roche, Faiths of Man: A Cyclopædia of Religions, B. Quaritch, 1906
• Hewitt, James Francis Katherinus, Primitive Traditional History: The Primitive History and Chronology of India, J. Parker and co, 1907
• Kobres, Bob Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse, Society for Interdisciplinary Studies, Chronology and Catastrophism Workshop (ISSN 0951-5984), nr. 1 (1992), 6-10.
• Lonsdale, Steven. Animals and the Origin of Dance, Thames and Hudson Inc., NY, 1982 (pp. 169-181).
• MacCulloch, C.J.A. Canon, John A. (Ed.) Mythology of all Races. vol. 8 ("Chinese Mythology" Ferguson, John C.) Marshall Jones Co. Boston, MA 1928 (p. 31).
• Morphy, Howard (Ed.). Animals into Art (ONE WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY; vol. 7) Unwin Gyman Ltd., London, 1989 (chapt. 11 Schaafsma, Polly).
• Roy, Pratap Chandra. The Mahabharata, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1973 (vol. 1 section 13-58, vol. 5 section 2-3)
• Sagan, Carl, and Ann Druyan (1985). Comet. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-54908-2. London: Joseph. ISBN 0-7181-2631-9.
• Schliemann, Henry. Ilios Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, NY, 1881 (pp. 334-353).
• Whipple, Fred L. The Mystery of Comets Smithsonian Inst. Press, Washington, DC 1985, (pp. 163-167).
• Wilson, Thomas (Curator, Department of Prehistoric Anthropology, U.S. National Museum) (1896). The Swastika: The Earliest Known Symbol, and Its Migrations; with Observations on the Migration of Certain Industries in Prehistoric Times. In Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution