THE ORIGIN OF THE SWASTIKA

THE Swastika is, we have seen, a very early device or symbol in use among ancient races in Europe, Asia and America. Though it has been found on an ingot of metal in Ashanti it was of late foreign introduction there, and is not known in Africa, nor in Polynesia and Australia, nor among the Eskimos. How did it as a mere matter of shape and pattern come into existence? One might suppose that such combinations of lines as the simple cross and this modified cross, with the arms bent each half-way along its length to form a right angle, would be very natural things for a primitive man—or a child—to make when trying to produce some ornamental effect by tracing simple rectilinear and symmetrical figures. No doubt such a "playing with lines" is a common phase or stage of the human search for decorative design. It leads by gradual steps to very complex line-decoration in early pottery and woven work, which is sometimes called "geometrical design."

It is, however, the fact, and a very interesting one, that the tendency to make geometrical design is not so pronounced in the very earliest examples of human drawing and ornament known to us, as is the tendency to copy natural objects. And this would appear to be especially the case where the drawing is to be a symbol or significant badge. In the earliest art-work known to us—that of the cave-men of the late Pleistocene period in Western Europe (see Chaps. I., II. and III.)—the artists were busy with attempts (often wonderfully successful ones) to present the outlines of familiar animals (and sometimes plants) by incised carving on bone or painting on the rock walls of caves—preceded, it is true, by a period in which "all-round" sculpture in bone or stone or modelling in clay was the method employed. The extensive use of lines—concentric or parallel, like those on the finger-tips—as decoration of stone work is not known until the later or Neolithic period. [7] On one at least of the incised bone drawings of the PalÆolithic cave-men two little diamond-shaped lozenges are engraved. They are seen in the cave-men's drawing of a stag figured on pp. 12, 13 of this book. These lozenges are supposed to be the "signature" of the artist, and, if so, are not only the first examples of a geometrical rectilinear figure as ornament, but the earliest examples known of the use of a badge or symbol as a means of identification.

When we compare the simpler decorative designs made use of by the less cultivated races of men, we find that there are certain distinct and opposed tendencies the predominance of which is of importance in helping us to explain the origin of the design. The tendency to make straight lines and rectilinear angles, which we may call the "rectilinear habit," is found in work executed on hard stone by a graving tool, and in work where square-cut stones are set together or flat pieces of wood or straw are interlaced, and in coarser kinds of weaving, bead-work, and basketwork. The opposite tendency is found in work executed with a brush and fluid paint on pottery or cloth, or even with a graver on soft clay or bone.

The contrast is well shown in the two renderings of one and the same "pattern," shown in A and B of Fig. 49. A is the rectilinear angular decorative design which is known as the "Greek key pattern," whilst the scroll below it is the "curvilinear" treatment of the same subject. The first takes its rectilinear character from a structure built up of hard blocklike pieces; the other is the flowing, easily moving line of a brush laying on paint, or of a style moving over clay or soft wax. The contrast is the same as that of the capital letters of the Roman alphabet, as used in print, with their equivalents in "copper-plate," cursive handwriting.

Another pair of tendencies opposed to each other which have much significance in the explanation of decorative design is the tendency to convert the simple lines of an original design into a drawing representing some animal or plant shape. At the end of the last chapter I distinguished this as the "naturalizing" tendency, contrasting it with the grammatizing or simplifying tendency. A good example of it is seen in Fig. 50. In A of that figure we see a circle divided into three cones by curved lines; this is a known design. It is called a "triskelion" (meaning a three-legged figure), or is more correctly termed "a three-branched scroll." The curves are converted into angles and straight lines in B, and then the stiff rectilinear "triskelion" is subsequently developed into three human legs, as shown in C, Fig. 50. It is naturalized. Were the change to proceed in the other way from the three human legs to the simple lines, we should have an example of the opposed tendency, namely, that of converting drawings of natural objects—by a degenerative or reducing process—to the simplest lines representative of them. This tendency, which we call "grammatizing" (from gramma, the Greek for a line), is far commoner in early art than the naturalizing tendency which sets in when the artist is exuberant, self-confident, and imaginative. We see a "naturalizing" tendency in the flamboyant and arabesque decorative work of the renascence, but it is also found among the happy Minoan, or ÆgÆan, island folk who decorated great pots and basins in Cyprus and Crete with forms suggested by birds, sea-creatures, and climbing plants, and worshipped the great mother Nature as Aphrodite, the sea-born goddess.

The triangular island of Sicily (called also Trinacria) had in ancient times (even as far back as 300 B.C.) the conjoined three legs (shown in Fig. 50, C) as its badge or armorial emblem. An ancient Greek vase found at Girgenti has this badge painted on it. Ancient Lycia had a triskelion formed by three conjoined cocks' heads stamped on its coins. Though it has no direct connection with the Swastika, the introduction of the "three legs" as the armorial emblem of the Isle of Man is worth relating, as it is not known to most of those who are familiar with the device, with its motto, "Quocunque jeceris stabit" on the copper pence minted for that island up to as late a date as 1864, and current in Great Britain. King Alexander III of Scotland expelled the Norse Vikings from the Isle of Man in A.D. 1266, and substituted for their armorial emblem in the island, which was a ship under full sail, the three legs of Sicily. Frederick II, King of Sicily, married Isabella, the daughter of Henry III of England. Alexander III of Scotland married Margaret, another daughter of Henry, and Henry's son, Edmund the Hunchback, became King of Sicily, in succession to his brother-in-law Frederick. Alexander of Scotland was thus brother-in-law both of Frederick II and of Edmund, successive kings of Sicily. It was in this way that he was led, when he added the Isle of Man to his kingdom, to replace the former Norse emblem of the island by the picturesque and striking device of that other island—Sicily—with which he had so close a family connection.

The tendency for drawings of men and animals when used as decorative designs to degenerate, in the course of time and repetition, into more and more simple lines, to become more and more "grammatized" and simplified, till at last their origin is hardly recognizable, is both a very remarkable and a very usual thing. The process of degeneration, step by step, can often be traced, and curious remnants of important parts of the original drawing are found surviving in the final simplified design. The paddles and other carvings of some of the South Sea Islanders show very curious "degenerations" of this kind. A carved human head with open mouth becomes by repeated copying and simplification a mere crescent or hook, which is the vastly enlarged mouth of the original face. It alone survives, and is of enormous size, when all other features and detail have been abandoned. In some carvings of a face the tongue is shown projecting as an indication of defiance. In course of simplification in successive reproductions the face becomes a mere curved surface with a large pointed piece standing out from it; it is the tongue. That one significant thing—suggesting defiance—alone persists. The study of this process in human art covers a very wide field, including all races and all times. An excellent example is that given in Fig. 51. It shows the step by step "grammatizing" of a favourite decorative drawing—that of an alligator, as painted by the Chiriqui Indians of Panama on pottery. We start in Fig. 51, A, with an alligator, already considerably "schematized" or conventionalized. The Indians could do better than that, but it served for pottery decoration. The figures B, C, D show three stages of further "grammatizing" of the design (from different parts of the surface of a pot) till, in D, we get the alligator reduced to a yoke-like line and a dot!

Familiar modern examples of this reduction of an animal figure to one or two lines, with mysterious-looking branches (representing limbs or horns), are seen in the scattered devices on the Turkey carpets so largely used at the present day. A comparison of various examples of such carpets of different age and locality reveals the true nature of these queer-looking patterns as representations of animals! Another familiar instance of the grammatizing of an animal form is that shown in Fig. 52, D, which is the common symbol in modern European art for a flying bird. Fig. 52 shows, however, some more important simplifications of animal form. The series marked E are a few examples from hundreds painted on the walls of caves in Cantabria (Spain) by prehistoric men. They start with a clearly recognizable figure of a man—many such, an inch or two high, occur on some parts of the cave-walls—and then we have all sorts of simplifications and deviations from the more naturalistic initial design, as shown by the rest of the series, ending in a T—a primitive symbol often arrived at by savage decorative artists in various parts of the world by reducing and grammatizing the human figure. The letters of many alphabets have been simplified in this way from original picture-like signs or pictographs.

The drawings lettered A, B and C in Fig. 52 represent accurately figures scratched on the clay "spindle-whorls" (before baking), so abundant in the remains of the ancient cities on the hill of Hissarlik (Troy), found by Schliemann (see Figs. 42 and 53). These heavy, bun-like spindle-whorls have retained their use and shape since Neolithic times (they are found in the Swiss lake-dwellings) to the present day. Similar whorls were made of modern porcelain, variously decorated, in France in the last century and sold to the peasants for giving weight and rotatory stability to the spindle used in spinning, and are still used wherever the spindle survives, as among the Indians of Central America. A "grammatized" profile representation of a stork (Fig. 52, A) is one of the designs on these Hissarlik spindle-whorls, and so is the linear representation of a stag (Fig. 52, B). And now we come back to the Swastika. The four figures in a row, marked C in Fig. 52, are a few of the representations of "flying" storks on these same spindle-whorls; one so marked is drawn in Fig. 53. They are of various degrees of simplification, and the last but one on the right hand side is identical with a Swastika! It must be carefully remembered that these clay spindle-whorls from Hissarlik are very commonly inscribed with undoubted well-shaped Swastikas, as shown in Fig. 42. The Swastika is quite a common and usual decorative lucky badge in the household art of that locality and age. Hence it is not surprising that M. Solomon Reinach, of Paris, has suggested that the Swastika may have originated thus—by the "stylizing" or "grammatizing" of a favourite and sacred bird—the stork. Once thus suggested and drawn in the simple Swastika shape the emblem (it would be supposed) became fixed, and made as rectilinear and simple as possible. Thenceforward it was accepted as an emblem of good luck, which has been transmitted throughout the ancient world of Europe, Asia and America. This theory has a plausible aspect, but I understand from M. Reinach that he no longer attaches importance to it. I do not know what theory, if any, of the origin of the Swastika now commends itself to him, nor whether he thinks it has originated independently in several times and places, or holds that it has one common origin. I am inclined to favour the theory that the Swastika has been started by the copying of the form of a natural object on the part of a primitive race of men, and that this form has lent itself to the invention of other badges and symbols besides that known as the Swastika. I will explain this in the next chapter.