Originally it [the Swastika] would appear to have been an early Aryan
atmospheric device or symbol indicative of both rain and lightning,
phenomena appertaining to the god Indra, subsequently or collaterally
developing, possibly, into the Suastika, or sacred fire churn in
India, and at a still later period in Greece, adopted rather as a
solar symbol, or converted about B. C. 650 into the meander or key
pattern.
Waring, while he testifies to the extension of the Swastika both in time
and area, says:[32]
But neither in the hideous jumble of Pantheism--the wild speculative
thought, mystic fables, and perverted philosophy of life among the
Buddhists--nor in the equally wild and false theosophy of the
Brahmins, to whom this symbol, as distinctive of the Vishnavas,
sectarian devotees of Vishnu, is ascribed by Moor in his "Indian
Pantheon," nor yet in the tenets of the Jains,[33] do we find any
decisive explanation of the meaning attached to this symbol, although
its allegorical intention is indubitable.
He mentions the Swastika of the Buddhists, the cross, the circle, their
combination, the three-foot [Y] and adds: "They exhibit forms of those
olden and widely spread pagan symbols of Deity and sanctity, eternal life
and blessing."