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The Swastika

Dispersion of the Swastika

Page 52

the minds of their respective artists. [2] Single specimens are no evidence of custom. This is a principle of the common law which has still a good foundation, fig. 151

and was as applicable in those days as it is now. The transition form the spiral of the Greek fret and from the Greek fret to the Swastika can be shown only by the existence of the custom or habit of the artist to make them both in the same or adjoining epochs of time, and this is not proved by showing a single specimen. [3] If a greater number of fig. 152

specimens were produced, the chain of evidence would still be incomplete, for the meander of the Greek fret will, as has just been said, be found impossible of transition into the meander Swastika. It (the Swastika) does not extend itself into a band, but if spread at all, it spreads in each of the four directions (figs. 21 and 25). the transition will be found much easier from the fig. 153

Greek meander fret to the normal Swastika and from that to the meander Swastika than to proceed in the opposite direction. Anyone who doubts this has but to try to make the Swastika in a continuos or extended band or line (fig. 26), similar to the Greek fret.
fig. 154

Figs. 133 and 134, from Naukratis, afford palpable evidence of the different origin of the Swastika and the Greek fret. Evidently Grecian vases, though found in Egypt, these specimens bear side by side examples of the fret and the Swastika used contemporaneously, and both of them complete and perfect. If one had been parent of the other, they would have belonged to different generations and would not have appeared simultaneous use is in fig. 194, which represents an Etruscan vase (1) ornamented with bronze nail heads in the form of

Figs 155, 156 and 157

ENDNOTES:

1. Matérianx pour l'Histoire Primitive et Naturelle de l'Homme, XVIII, p. 14. [Back]

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