The Swastika
Definitions, Description & Origin
Burnouf (1) recounts the myth of Agni (from which comes, through the Latin ignis, the English word igneous), the god of Sacred Fire, as told in the Veda: (2)
The young queen, the mother of Fire, carried the royal infant mysteriously concealed in her bosom. She was a woman of the people, whose common name was "Arani" – that is, the instrument of wood (the Swastika) from which fire was made or brought by rubbing. * * * the origine of the sign [Swastika] is now easy to recognize. It represents the two pieces of wood which compose l'arani, of which the extremities were bent to be retained by the four nails. At the junction of the two pieces of wood was a fossette or cup-like hole, and there they placed a piece of wood upright, in form of a lance (the Pramantha), violent rotation of which, by whipping (after the fashion of top-whipping), produced fire, as did Prometheus, the porteur du feu, in Greece.
And this myth was made, as have been others, probably by the priests and poets of succeeding times, to do duty for different philosophies. The Swastika was made to represent Arani (the female principle); the Pramantha or upright fire stake representing Agni the fire god (the male); and so the myth served its part to account for the birth of fire. Burnouf hints that the myth grew out of the production of holy fire for the sacred altars by the use of the Pramantha and Swastika, after the manner of savages in all times. Zmigrodzki accepts this myth, and claims all specimens with dots or points -- supposed nail holes -- as Swastikas.
The Count Goblet d'Alviella (3) argues in opposition to the theory announced by Burnouf and by Zmigrodzki, that the Swastika or croix swasticale, when presenting dots or points, had relation to fire making. He denies that the points represent nails, or that nails where made or necessary either for the Swastika or the Arani , and concludes that there is no evidence to support the theory, and nothing to show the Swastika to have been used as a fire-making apparatus, whether with or without the dots or points.
Mr. Greg (4) opposes this entire theory, saying:
The difficulty about the Swastika and its supposed connection with fire appears to me to lie in not knowing precisely what the old fire drill and chark were like. * * * I much doubt whether the Swastika had originally any connection either with the fire-chark or with the sun. * * * The best authorities consider Burnouf is in error as for the earlier use of the two lower cross pieces of wood and the four nails said to have been used to fix or steady the framework.
He quotes from Tylor's description (5) of the old fire drill used in India for kindling the sacrificial fire by the process called "churning," as it resembles that in India by which butter is separated from milk.
It consists in drilling one piece of Arani wood by pulling a cord with one hand while the other is slackened, and so, alternately (the strap drill), till the wood takes fire. Mr Greg states that the Eskimos use similar means, and the ancient Greeks used the drill and cord, and he adds his conclusions: "There is nothing of the Swastika and four nails in connection with the fire-churn."
Burton (6) also criticizes Burnouf's theory:
If used on sacrificial altars to reproduce the holy fire, the practice is peculiar and not derived from everyday life; for as early as Pliny they knew that the savages used two and never three, fire sticks.
Burnouf continues his discussion of myths concerning the origine of fire:
According to Hymnes, the discoverer of fire was Atharan, whose name signifies fire, but Bhrigou it was who made the sacred fire, producing resplendent flames on the earthen altar. In theory of physics, Agni, who was the fire residing within the "onction," (!) came from the milk of the cow, which, in its turn, came from the plants that had nourished her; and these plants in their turn grew by receiving and appropriating the heat or fire of the sun. Therefore, the virtue of the "onction" came from the god.
One of the Vedas says of Agni, the god of fire: (7)
Agni, thou art a sage, a priest, a king,
Protector, father of the sacrifice;
Commissioned by our men thou dost ascend
A messenger, conveying to the sky
Our hymns and offerings, though thy origin
Be three feld, now from air and now from water,
Now from the mystic double Arani. (8)
Count Goblet d.Alviella combats the hypothesis of Burnouf that the Swastika when turned to right or left, passed, the one for the male and the other for the female principle, and declares, on the authority of Sir George Birdwood, that it is, in modern India, a popular custom to name objects which appear in couples as having different sexes, so that to say the pronouns "he" and "she," would be expressed in the same manner when speaking of the hammer and the anvil or of any other objects used in pairs. (9)
Ludwig Müller, in his elaborate treatise, gives it as his opinion that the Swastika had no connection with the Tau cross or with the Crux ansata, or with the fire wheel, or with arani, or agni, or with the mystic or alphabetic letters, nor with the so-called spokes of the solar wheel, nor the forked lightning, nor the hammer of Thor. He considers that the triskelion might throw light on its origine, as indicating perpetual whirling or circular movement, which, in certain parts of southern Asia as the emblem of Zeus, was assimilated to that of Baal, an inference which he draws from certain Asaiatic coins of 400 B.C.
ENDNOTES:
1. "Des Sciences et Religion," pp.252, 257. [Back]
2. Vol. XI. [Back]
3. "La Migration des symboles," pp. 61-63. [Back]
4. Archaeologia, xlviii, pt. 2, pp. 322, 323. [Back]
5. "Early History of Mankind," p. 257, note C. [Back]
6. "The Book of the Sword," p. 202, note2. [Back]
7. Burnouf, "Des Sciences et Religion," p.18. [Back]
8. The tow pieces of wood of fiens religiosa, used for kindling fire. [Back]
9. "La Migration des Symboles," p. 63. [Back]
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