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He has also called attention to the fact that in the long list of the recognised devices of the twenty-four Jaina Tirthankaras the sun is absent; but that while the eighth Tirthankara has the sign of the half-moon the seventh Tirthankara is marked with the Svastika, i.e., the sun.
The svastika, as it is called, the cross with lines at right angles to each limb, is found everywhere in India, Greece, Scotland, Peru as a natural bit of ornament.
It was probably as the "herald of the dawn" that this bird became a symbol of the Sun-God, and it would seem that we place its effigy aloft with the same idea in view. Another point to be noted is that in the Kunthistorisches Museum at Vienna is an ancient vase upon which is a representation of the Sun-God Apollo bearing upon his breast as his one ornament and symbol a Svastika cross.
It is noteworthy that in the neighbourhood of Troy, as in Cyprus and other places, a cross of four equal arms, like our sign of addition, in days of old shared with the Svastika crosses the veneration of the people and was evidently more or less akin to those crosses in signification. Dr. Elsewhere in the same work Dr.
For instance we are told by Sir G. Birdwood that the right handed Svastika signifies the Male Principle, the Sun on its daily journey from East to West, Light and Life; and that the left-handed Svastika signifies the Female Principle, the Sun in Hades or the Underworld on its journey from West to East, Darkness and Death.
Here then, I think, we have very clear indications that the Svastika, with the hands pointing in the right direction, was originally a symbol of the Sun, perhaps of the vernal sun as opposed to the autumnal sun, the Sauvastika, and therefore a natural symbol of light, life, health, and wealth. That in ancient mythology the sun was frequently represented as a wheel is well known.
Schliemann remarks that we find the Svastika or Sauvastika cross "In Ezekiel ix. 4, 6, where in the form of the old Hebrew letter Tau it is written as the sign of life on the forehead, like the corresponding Indian symbol.
Upon Plate CLV. we have in figure 9 a cut of an important Cyprian Graeco-Phoenician Amphora discovered in an ancient grave at Kition and now stored in the British Museum. The object represented upon it is a Sacred Tree marked at the bottom with a St. Andrew's cross and surrounded with Svastika crosses.
Nor, in the second place, is the gold coin originative of the svastika-ornament; for we do not perceive the coin in the svastika, as we do perceive the threads in the cloth. Nor, in the third place, is the effect originated by the gold in so far as being the substrate of the coin; for the gold in so far as forming the substrate of the coin is not perceived in the svastika.
In this chamber is a drum elevated upon a brazen stand, the hugest I ever saw, fully eighteen feet in circumference. Beside it hangs a big bell, covered with Buddhist texts. I am sorry to learn that it is prohibited to sound the great drum. There is nothing else to see except some dingy paper lanterns figured with the svastika the sacred Buddhist symbol called by the Japanese manji.
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