A monogrammatic sign of four branches, of which the ends are curved at
right angles, the name signifying, literally, the sign of benediction
or good augury.
The foregoing explanations relate only to the present accepted name
"Swastika." The _sign_ Swastika must have existed long before the _name_
was given to it. It must have been in existence long before the Buddhist
religion or the Sanskrit language.
In Great Britain the common name given to the Swastika, from Anglo-Saxon
times by those who apparently had no knowledge whence it came, or that it
came from any other than their own country, was Fylfot, said to have been
derived from the Anglo-Saxon _fower fot_, meaning four-footed, or
many-footed.[4]
George Waring, in his work entitled "Ceramic Art in Remote Ages" (p. 10),
says:
The word [Fylfot] is Scandinavian and is compounded of Old Norse
_fiël_, equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon _fela_, German _viel_, many, and
_fotr_, foot, the many-footed figure. * * * It is desirable to have
some settled name by which to describe it; we will take the simplest
and most descriptive, the "Fylfot."
He thus transgresses one of the oldest and soundest rules of scientific
nomenclature, and ignores the fact that the name Swastika has been
employed for this sign in the Sanskrit language (the etymology of the word
naturally gave it the name Svastika, _sv_--good or well, _asti_--to be or
being, or it is) and that two thousand and more years of use in Asia and
Europe had sanctioned and sanctified that as its name. The use of Fylfot
is confined to comparatively few persons in Great Britain and, possibly,
Scandinavia. Outside of these countries it is scarcely known, used, or
understood.
The Swastika was occasionally called in the French language, in earlier
times, _Croix gammée_ or _Gammadion_, from its resemblance to a
combination of four of the Greek letters of that name, and it is so named
by Count Goblet d'Alviella in his late work, "La Migration des Symboles."
It was also called _Croix cramponnée_, _Croix pattée_, _Croix à crochet_.
But the consensus even of French etymologists favors the name Swastika.
Some foreign authors have called it Thor's hammer, or Thor's hammer-mark,
but the correctness of this has been disputed.[5] Waring, in his elaborate
work, "Ceramic Art in Remote Ages,"[6] says:
The [Z] used to be vulgarly called in Scandinavia the hammer of Thor,
and Thor's hammer-mark, or the hammer-mark, but this name properly
belongs to the mark [Y].
Ludwig Müller gives it as his opinion that the Swastika has no connection
with the Thor hammer. The best Scandinavian authors report the "Thor
hammer" to be the same as the Greek tau (fig. 5), the same form as the
Roman and English capital T. The Scandinavian name is Miölner or Mjolner,
the crusher or mallet.
The Greek, Latin, and Tau crosses are represented in Egyptian
hieroglyphics by a hammer or mallet, giving the idea of crushing,
pounding, or striking, and so an instrument of justice, an avenger of
wrong,[7] hence standing for Horus and other gods.[8] Similar symbolic
meanings have been given to these crosses in ancient classic countries of
the Orient.[9]