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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(July, 1878.
But in the Atheneum of 12th January last' common origin of the early Greeks and Norge. Mr. Hodder Westropp altogether discredits the After the 6th century it disappears from Greek origin assigned to the symbol by M. Burnouf, earthenware, and is found on early Latin, and considers the Greek archaic cross, as he Etruscan, and Sicilian ornaments, coins, and terms it, to have been evidently derived from pottery, as well as in Asia Minor and North the punch marks on early Greek coins, which Africa, especially where there had been Phoenimarks were originally composed of four small cian colonies. It is remarkable that the symbol squares, the centre assuming the form of is not found on Egyptian, Babylonian, or Assya cross; but in the stamping of the coin the rian remains : crosses are frequent, but not the squares went a little on one side, and made the svastika ; neither does it occur on Mexican punch mark take the shape of the archaic monuments. crosst, so found on old Greek coins, and In the museums of Sweden and Denmark thence adopted as an ornamental device on there are several hundred gold bracteates, which early Greek pottery, as in Samos, Cyprus, appear to have been worn as amulets or medals, and Hissarlik. Mr. Westropp goes on to and, according to Professor Stephens of Copenremark that the Indian or Buddhist svastika is hagen, belong almost without exception to the almost invariably drawn , the reverse of the heathen period of Scandinavia, ranging from Greek archaic cross, and is a monogram or the 3rd or 4th to the 7th or 8th century of our character composed, as General Cunningham era. They are mostly after Byzantine models, has pointed out, of two Pâli characters, signify- and many of them have a marked Indian ing 'it is well. As a Buddhist emblem it character. They frequently bear the svastika, cannot be older than the 6th century B.C., drawn both ways, and Professor Stephens Buddha having died about 480 B.C., and the remarks that in the earliest runes the letter earliest Buddhist monuments are placed by Mr. G is drawn thus 45, and appears so on graveFergusson at about 250 B.C.
slabs in Denmark of the 8th or 9th century. There appears, however, reason to think He also calls attention to the resemblance bethat on the first appearance of the symbol in tween the runes and the Himyaritic alphabet, Europe it was used not merely as an ornament, used in Arabia during the first six centuries. but as an emblem peculiar to some deity, A character, 45, nearly resembling the runic G, generally connected with the air, or sometimes occurs in a Pali inscription, and reversed, , in water; Mr. Newton of the British Museum & rock-inscription at Salsette : see Jour. R. As. designated it the Meander, and considered it Soc. vol. XX. page 250, &c. emblematical of water. Its first appearance is 1 In the Roman Catacombs the svastika on the pottery of archaic Greece, as on that occurs not unfrequently, so placed as to have in the British Museum ascribed to between the been then evidently adopted as a Christian years 700 and 500 B.C., and now on that dis- symbol, and is seen in Roman mosaio work in interred by Dr. Schliemann on the site of Troy. England, France, Spain, and Algeria. It is On all this pottery and on its earliest examples abundant on pottery, ornaments, and weapons the sign occurs profusely, and is found drawn of Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon times, and both ways, occurring so on the same archaic of corresponding periods in Scotland, Germany, Greek urn in the British Museum; hence the Switzerland, and Denmark. A sepulchral urn distinction made by Mr. Westropp between found at Shropham, Norfolk, and another prethe Greek and Buddhist forms hardly seems served at Cambridge, bear the svastika in tenable, especially as it is found drawn both continuous lines; the latter urn is peculiarly in. ways in India, as well as all over Europe. As teresting as exhibiting the symbol surrounded an emblem it appears to have been associated by almost every other device of cross, circle, with the Sky-god Zeus, the chief deity of the and solar emblems, and occupying, as it were, archaic Greeks, and to have symbolized his the place of honour. As Christianity spread the thunderbolt, as subsequently in Scandinavia it svastika disappears, and when found again has was called the hammer of the Thunder-godbeen adopted as a Christian device. It is so used Thor,-nor is this the only indication of a l in heraldry, where it is termed the croix cram
* Reprinted ante, p. 119.-ED.
