SWASTIKA ( Skt., weal-making). A fylfot or 'four-foot' cross, a monogrammatic sign having four branches, of which the ends are bent, gen erally at right angles, thus J I or T. It is a I sign of benediction or of good luck, and in one form or another has been used as a symbol of welfare from a very early time. The sign ap pears in a variety of modifications, often con nected in is continuous scroll, of which there are two well-defined types, forming, on the mie hand the European and Asiatic series, and on the other hand the American series, as illustrated by the following diagrams; Though the swastika has been found in Europe, Asia. and America, yet it is unknown to many races. There is, for example. no evidence to show that it was current as a native symbol in Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Phcenicia, or (till a late period) in Persia. It was particularly adopted by Buddhism and its presence in China, Japan, and Tibet can easily he as due to that religion. The swastika is unknown in early In dia (all evidence to the contrary rests on false assumptions) and when (c.300 n.e.) it first ap pears. it is as a simple cross, as in crossed arms.
Many of the swastikas found at IlissarIik (Troy) are now acknowledged to be no true swastikas. They are not found before the third city. Its original place and significance are alike unknown, hut it has been the object of endless speculation. Some scholars see in the swastika a solar symbol, which represents, in its so-called female and male forms LE and respectively, the annual cir cuits of the sun to north and south. It has been derived from the triskalion or `three-leg' symbol but this sign is of later origin. The swas tika has also been interpreted in other ways, as a wind-symbol, an earth-symbol, an emblem of productivity, a phallic emblem. etc. Temple re gards it as in origin merely decorative, and sug gests that the running design may have been taken from a coil of string. In the opinion of d'AlvielIa, who calls it, from its shape, gam madion, the swastika was chiefly talismanic. The
swastika has been derived by some from the cross: by others, from the circle; it has been re garded as an evolution from the lotus-petal in architecture: and as a mystic design it has been associated with fire and with water. The sun and fecundity are its most probable sources, if it had any meaning beyond that of an ornament becoming a mystic sign. The swastika appeared first in the Bronze Age, and occurs in the Swiss lake-dwellings. In the historic period it is found in Japan, Korea, China. Tibet. Armenia. Asia Minor, Greece and its islands (especially Cyprus and Rhodes), Italy, France. Germany. Scandi navia, Great Britain (perhaps only under Scan dinavian influence), North America (e.g. olio. Tennessee, Mississippi. Alaska), Mexico. and South America (e.g. Brazil). In assigning its original home. it must he rememhered that no ease of Oriental swastikas precedes the period of Greek influence in India. It seems probable that d'Alviella may be right in ascribing an eastern emigration from a western centre. if not from Troy itself. It is said that there is in Tibet a sect of rationalists called Swastikas. but this is prob ably au error, and the sect meant is that of the Ja ins.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. The literature directly or inBibliography. The literature directly or in- directly relating to the swastika is very large (more than 100 works are mentioned by Wilson), but most of it is useless; being composed by theorists rather than by careful scholars. Be sides the article by R. C. Temple (referred to above), which appeared in the first number of the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bom bay, and d'A]viella's great work, La migration des symboles (Paris. 1891), there is an exhaus tive treatise in the Report of the United States National Museum (Washington, 1894), by Thomas Wilson, The Swastika, the Earliest Known •qpinbol, and Its Migrations, which, be sides giving on account of the various theories of the symbol, has a complete bibliography of the subject.