Manasara Series (I. A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture; II. Indian Architecture according to Manasara-Shilpashastra; III. Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture: Sanskrit Text; IV. Architecture of Manasara: Translation; V. Architecture of Manasara: Illustrations; VI. Hindu Architecture in India and Abroad; VII. An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture) v7.c47.7281

v7.c47.7281

‘Wherever the sign came from, it did not come from Germany. It is not a natural symbol of the Aryan race, which is not a race but a myth or scientific abstraction. It was not invented by European peoples. Fifteen centuries before India knew anything of Europe the sign was used by the people of the Indus valley, as is shewn by the great excavations on sites along that river, and those peoples were not Aryans or Europeans or Indo-Europeans, nor in any sense the direct anscestors of the Germans. Europe, it seems, knew nothing of the sign until a thousand years later than the date of the specimens found in large numbers in that part of India. When early Christians used it, as they often did, they were using something borrowed from older religions or civilizations. A good claim can be made out for Egypt as its inventor, where the symbol for created life was a cross with a circle on top or resting on the left arm, and that combined with the symbol for Divinity in the hieroglyphics (something like a small flag) might easily have developed into the svastika we know. From Egypt it could have spread over the Mediterranean world and the Near East, for there was much trade and travel in early days. SCHLIEMANN found both forms of it, the right and left handed, in the ruins of Troy, and it has been discovered also on Chaldaean bricks, in Egyptian temples, on vases of Cyprus, Hittite carvings, Etruscan pottery, in India’s cave temples, on Roman altars and British runic monuments, in Tibet, China, Korea, Mexico, Peru, and in the prehistoric burial ground of North America. Germany’s sole right to it is far from established.’