South Asia
Jainism
In Jainism, it is a symbol of the seventh tīrthaṅkara,
Suparśvanātha. In the Śvētāmbara
tradition, it is also one of the aṣṭamaṅgala or eight auspicious symbols. All
Jain temples and holy books must contain the swastika and ceremonies typically
begin and end with creating a swastika mark several times with rice around the
altar. Jains use rice to make a swastika in front of statues and then put an
offering on it, usually a ripe or dried fruit, a sweet (Hindi: मिठाई miṭhāī), or a coin
or currency note. The four arms of the swastika symbolize the four places where
a soul could be reborn in the cycle of birth and death – svarga
"heaven", naraka "hell", manushya "humanity" or
tiryancha "as flora or fauna" – before the soul attains moksha
"salvation" as a siddha, having ended the cycle of birth and death and
become omniscient.
Hinduism
Hindu Swastikas
The swastika is an important Hindu symbol. The swastika symbol is commonly used before
entrances or on doorways of homes or temples, to mark the starting page of
financial statements, and mandalas constructed for rituals such as weddings or
welcoming a newborn.
The swastika has a particular association with Diwali, being
drawn in rangoli (colored sand) or formed with deepak lights on the floor
outside Hindu houses and on wall hangings and other decorations.
In the diverse traditions within Hinduism, both the
clockwise and counterclockwise swastika are found, with different meanings. The
clockwise or right hand icon is called swastika, while the counterclockwise or
left hand icon is called sauvastika. The
clockwise swastika is a solar symbol (Surya), suggesting the motion of the sun
in India (the northern hemisphere), where it appears to enter from the east,
then ascend to the south at midday, exiting to the west. The counterclockwise sauvastika is less used;
it connotes the night, and in tantric traditions it is an icon for the goddess
Kali, the terrifying form of Devi Durga. The symbol also represents activity, karma,
motion, wheel, and in some contexts the lotus. Its symbolism for motion and Sun may be from
shared prehistoric cultural roots, according to Norman McClelland. The Arya Samaj is of the opinion that swastik
is 'OM' written in the ancient Brahmi script.
Swastika shaped temple
tank
A swastika shaped temple tank built in 800 CE by Kamban
Araiyan during the reign of Dantivarman is outside the temple complex of
Pundarikakshan Perumal Temple (Vishnu temple) in Thiruvallarai,
Tiruchirappalli, India. It's one of the important monuments of Pallava dynasty.
Buddhism
In Buddhism, the swastika is considered to symbolize the
auspicious footprints of the Buddha. It
is an aniconic symbol for the Buddha in many parts of Asia and homologous with
the dharma wheel. The shape symbolizes
eternal cycling, a theme found in samsara doctrine of Buddhism.
The swastika symbol is common in esoteric tantric traditions
of Buddhism, along with Hinduism, where it is found with Chakra theories and
other meditative aids. The clockwise
symbol is more common, and contrasts with the counter clockwise version common
in the Tibetan Bon tradition and locally called yungdrung.
East Asia
Swastika-like symbols were in use in China already in Neolithic
scripts. The paired swastika symbols
(leftwise and rightwise) are included, at least since the Liao Dynasty (CE
907–1125), as part of the Chinese writing system (卍 and 卐) and are
variant characters for 萬 or 万 (wàn in Mandarin, man in Korean, Cantonese, and Japanese,
vạn in Vietnamese) meaning "myriad", "all", or
"eternity". The swastika marks
the beginning of many Buddhist scriptures. In East Asian countries, the
left-facing character is often used as symbol for Buddhism and marks the site
of a Buddhist temple on maps.
Mongolian shamanism
"Khas" symbol
In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean the swastika is also a
homonym of the number 10,000, and is commonly used to represent the whole of
creation, e.g. "the myriad things" in the Tao Te Ching. During the Tang dynasty, Empress Wu Zetian
(684–704) decreed that the swastika would also be used as an alternative symbol
of the Sun.
When the Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan in
the 8th century, the swastika was adopted into the Japanese language and
culture. It is commonly referred as the manji (lit.
"10,000-character"). Since the Middle Ages, it has been used as a mon
by various Japanese families such as Tsugaru clan, Hachisuka clan or around 60
clans that belong to Tokugawa clan. On
Japanese maps, a swastika (left-facing and horizontal) is used to mark the
location of a Buddhist temple. The right-facing swastika is often referred to
as the gyaku manji (逆卍, lit. "reverse swastika") or migi manji (右卍,
lit. "right swastika"), and can also be called kagi jūji (鉤十字,
literally "hook cross").
In Chinese and Japanese art, the swastika is often found as
part of a repeating pattern. One common pattern, called sayagata in Japanese,
comprises left- and right-facing swastikas joined by lines. As the negative space between the lines has a
distinctive shape, the sayagata pattern is sometimes called the key fret motif
in English.
Northern Europe
Sami
An object very much like a hammer or a double axe is
depicted among the magical symbols on the drums of Sami shamans, used in their
religious ceremonies before Christianity was established. The name of the Sami
thunder god was Horagalles, thought to derive from "Old Man Thor"
(Þórr karl). Sometimes on the drums, a male figure with a hammer-like object in
either hand is shown, and sometimes it is more like a cross with crooked ends,
or a swastika.
Germanic Iron Age
The swastika shape (also called a fylfot) appears on various
Germanic Migration Period and Viking Age artifacts, such as the 3rd-century
Værløse Fibula from Zealand, Denmark, the Gothic spearhead from Brest-Litovsk,
today in Belarus, the 9th-century Snoldelev Stone from Ramsø, Denmark, and
numerous Migration Period bracteates drawn left-facing or right-facing.
The pagan Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, England,
contained numerous items bearing the swastika, now housed in the collection of
the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The swastika is clearly
marked on a hilt and sword belt found at Bifrons in Kent, in a grave of about
the 6th century.
Hilda Ellis Davidson theorized that the swastika symbol was
associated with Thor, possibly representing his Mjolnir – symbolic of thunder –
and possibly being connected to the Bronze Age sun cross. Davidson cites "many examples" of
the swastika symbol from Anglo-Saxon graves of the pagan period, with
particular prominence on cremation urns from the cemeteries of East Anglia. Some of the swastikas on the items, on
display at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, are depicted
with such care and art that, according to Davidson, it must have possessed
special significance as a funerary symbol. The runic inscription on the 8th-century Sæbø
sword has been taken as evidence of the swastika as a symbol of Thor in Norse
paganism.
Slavic
According to painter Stanisław Jakubowski the "little
sun" (pol. słoneczko) is an Early Slavic pagan symbol of the Sun; he claimed
it was engraved on wooden monuments built near the final resting places of
fallen Slavs to represent eternal life. The symbol was first seen in his
collection of Early Slavic symbols and architectural features, which he named
Prasłowiańskie motywy architektoniczne (Polish: Early Slavic Architectural
Motifs). His work was published in 1923, by a publishing house that was then
based in the Dębniki district of Kraków.
In Russia before World War I the swastika was a favorite
sign of the last Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. She placed it where she
could for happiness, including drawing it in pencil on the walls and windows in
the Ipatiev House – where the royal family was executed. There, she also drew a
swastika on the wallpaper above the bed where the heir apparently slept. It was printed on some banknotes of the
Russian Provisional Government (1917) and some sovznaks (1918–1922). In 1919 it was approved as insignia for the
Kalmyk formations, and for a short period had a certain popularity amongst some
artists, politics and army groups. Also
it was present on icons, vestments and clerical clothing but in World War II it
was removed, having become by association a symbol of the German occupation.
In modern Russia, some neo-Nazis and also Rodnovers argue
that the Russian name of the swastika is kolovrat (Russian: коловрат, literally
"spinning wheel"), but there are no ethnographic sources confirming
this. In vernacular speech the swastika
was called differently; for example, "breeze" – as in Christianity,
the swastika represents spiritual movement, descent of the Holy Spirit, and
therefore the "wind" and "spirit", or ognevtsi
("little flames"), "geese", "hares" (a towel with
a swastika was called as towel with "hares"), "little
horses".
The neo-Nazi Russian National Unity group's branch in
Estonia is officially registered under the name "Kolovrat" and
published an extremist newspaper in 2001 under the same name. A criminal investigation found the paper
included an array of racial epithets. One Narva resident was sentenced to 1
year in jail for distribution of Kolovrat. The Kolovrat has since been used by the Rusich
Battalion, a Russian militant group known for its operation during the War in
Donbass.
The alleged perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings
in Christchurch, New Zealand used the Kolovrat swastika on one of his dog tags
alongside the Celtic Cross.
Celts
The bronze frontispiece of a ritual pre-Christian (c. 350–50
BCE) shield found in the River Thames near Battersea Bridge (hence
"Battersea Shield") is embossed with 27 swastikas in bronze and red
enamel. An Ogham stone found in Anglish,
Co Kerry, Ireland (CIIC 141) was modified into an early Christian gravestone,
and was decorated with a cross pattée and two swastikas. The Book of Kells (c. 800 CE) contains
swastika-shaped ornamentation. At the Northern edge of Ilkley Moor in West
Yorkshire, there is a swastika-shaped pattern engraved in a stone known as the
Swastika Stone. A number of swastikas
have been found embossed in Galician metal pieces and carved in stones, mostly
from the Castro Culture period, although there also are contemporary examples
(imitating old patterns for decorative purposes).
Greco-Roman antiquity
Ancient Greek architectural, clothing and coin designs are
replete with single or interlinking swastika motifs. There are also gold plate
fibulae from the 8th century BCE decorated with an engraved swastika. Related symbols in classical Western
architecture include the cross, the three-legged triskele or triskelion and the
rounded lauburu. The swastika symbol is also known in these contexts by a number
of names, especially gammadion, or rather the tetra-gammadion. The name
gammadion comes from its being seen as being made up of four Greek gamma (Γ)
letters. Ancient Greek architectural designs are replete with the interlinking
symbol.
In Greco-Roman art and architecture, and in Romanesque and
Gothic art in the West, isolated swastikas are relatively rare, and the
swastika is more commonly found as a repeated element in a border or
tessellation. The swastika often represented perpetual motion, reflecting the
design of a rotating windmill or watermill. A meander of connected swastikas
makes up the large band that surrounds the Augustan Ara Pacis.
A design of interlocking swastikas is one of several
tessellations on the floor of the cathedral of Amiens, France. A border of linked swastikas was a common
Roman architectural motif, and can be seen in more recent buildings as a
neoclassical element. A swastika border is one form of meander, and the
individual swastikas in such a border are sometimes called Greek keys. There
have also been swastikas found on the floors of Pompeii.
Illyrians
The swastika was widespread among the Illyrians, symbolizing
the Sun. The Sun cult was the main Illyrian cult; the Sun was represented by a
swastika in clockwise motion, and it stood for the movement of the Sun.
Armenia
In Armenia the swastika is called the "arevakhach"
and "kerkhach" (Armenian: կեռխաչ) and is the ancient symbol of
eternity and eternal light (i.e. God). Swastikas in Armenia were founded on
petroglyphs from the copper age, predating the Bronze Age. During the Bronze
Age it was depicted on cauldrons, belts, medallions and other items. Among the oldest petroglyphs is the seventh
letter of the Armenian alphabet – "E" (which means "is" or
"to be") – depicted as a half-swastika.
Swastikas can also be seen on early Medieval churches and fortresses,
including the principal tower in Armenia's historical capital city of Ani. The same symbol can be found on Armenian
carpets, cross-stones (khachkar) and in medieval manuscripts, as well as on
modern monuments as a symbol of eternity.
Medieval and early
modern Europe
In Christianity, the swastika is used as a hooked version of
the Christian Cross, the symbol of Christ's victory over death. Some Christian
churches built in the Romanesque and Gothic eras are decorated with swastikas,
carrying over earlier Roman designs. Swastikas are prominently displayed in a
mosaic in the St. Sophia church of Kiev, Ukraine dating from the 12th century.
They also appear as a repeating ornamental motif on a tomb in the Basilica of
St. Ambrose in Milan.
A ceiling painted in 1910 in the church of St Laurent in
Grenoble has many swastikas. It can be visited today because the church became
the archaeological museum of the city. A proposed direct link between it and a
swastika floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens, which was built
on top of a pagan site at Amiens, France in the 13th century, is considered
unlikely. The stole worn by a priest in the 1445 painting of the Seven
Sacraments by Rogier van der Weyden presents the swastika form simply as one
way of depicting the cross.
Swastikas also appear in art and architecture during the
Renaissance and Baroque era. The fresco The School of Athens shows an ornament
made out of swastikas, and the symbol can also be found on the facade of the
Santa Maria della Salute, a Roman Catholic Church and minor basilica located at
Punta della Dogana in the Dorsoduro sestiere of the city of Venice.
In the Polish First Republic the symbol of the swastika was
also popular with the nobility. According to chronicles, the Rus' prince Oleg,
who in the 9th century attacked Constantinople, nailed his shield (which had a
large red swastika painted on it) to the city's gates. Several noble houses, e.g. Boreyko, Borzym,
and Radziechowski from Ruthenia, also had swastikas as their coat of arms. The
family reached its greatness in the 14th and 15th centuries and its crest can
be seen in many heraldry books produced at that time. The swastika was also a
heraldic symbol, for example on the Boreyko coat of arms, used by noblemen in
Poland and Ukraine. In the 19th century the swastika was one of the Russian
empire's symbols; it was even placed in coins as a background to the Russian
eagle.
Africa
The swastika can be found on Ashanti gold weights and among
adinkra symbols in West Africa.
Americas
The swastika is a Navajo symbol for good luck, also
translated to "whirling log." The symbol was used on state road signs
in Arizona.
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