Loving Ganesha: Chapter 7 (Section 1) - Symbol of Auspiciousness -- Swastikam

[Guest guest]

Namaste all,

 

An interesting chapter on the Swastika from the book Loving Ganesha, online at

http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/lg/lg_ch-07.html

 

Om Shanti,

 

Neil

 

 

 

Swastikam

Symbol ofAuspiciousness

O BACK FIVE THOUSAND YEARS IN HISTORY. ATthe port of Lothal on India's northern

coast of the Arabian Sea, tons of cargo lines the wharves. A trader, inspecting

his goods before voyaging to the Sumerian cities on the Tigris River, turns an

imprinting seal over in his hands, feeling its upraised image of a cross with

arms sweeping ninety degrees leftward from each endpoint of the cross. Swiftly

he presses the seal into a soft clay tag anchored to a bundle of cotton. The

impression is a mirror image of the seal, a right-hand facing swastika. The

symbol, so evocative of unending auspiciousness, is sewn into his sails, as the

swastika would later also adorn the sails of a ship described in the Ramayana.

The trader is from Hinduism's most ancient known civilization: the Indus Valley

in northwest India. The seal rests today in a museum and is the oldest surviving

representation of the swastika, a Sanskrit word meaning "good being, fortune or

augury," literally "conducive to well-being," derived from su, "well" and astu,

"may it be," or "be it so."

For Hindus the swastika is a lucky cross associated with the good fortunes given

by Lord Ganesha. It also represents the sun and the cycle of life. This ancient

benign symbol is used today by housewives to guard thresholds and doors, by

priests to sanctify ceremonies and offerings and by businessmen to bless the

opening pages of account books each New Year's day. No ceremony or sacrifice is

considered complete without it, for it is believed to have the power to ward off

misfortune and negative forces. A series of small swastikas is a favorite border

pattern for textiles. In Maharashtra the rainy season is especially devoted to

its honor, when it is drawn on the floor in elaborate patterns using colorful

powders and flower petals.

It is said that the swastika's right-angled arms reflect the fact that the path

toward our objectives is often not straight, but takes unexpected turns. They

denote also the indirect way in which Divinity is reached -- through intuition

and not by intellect. Symbolically, the swastika's cross is said to represent

God and creation. The four bent arms stand for the four human aims, called

purushartha: righteousness, dharma; wealth, artha; love, kama; and liberation,

moksha. Thus it is a potent emblem of Sanatana Dharma, the eternal truth. It

also represents the world wheel, eternally turning around a fixed center, God.

The swastika is associated with the muladhara chakra, the center of

consciousness at the base of the spine, and in some yoga schools with the

manipura chakra at the navel, the center of the microcosmic sun (surya).

The swastika is a sacred sign of prosperity and auspiciousness, perhaps the

single most common emblem in earth cultures. As the Encyclopaedia Britannica

explains, "It was a favorite symbol on ancient Mesopotamian coinage; it

appeared in early Christian and Byzantine art (where it became known as the

gammadion cross because its arms resemble the Greek letter gamma); and it

occurred in South and Central America (among the Mayans) and in North America

(principally among the Navajos). In India it continues to be the most widely

used auspicious symbol of Hindus, Jainas and Buddhists."

When Buddhism emerged from India's spiritual wellspring, it inherited the

right-angled emblem. Carried by monks, the good-luck design journeyed north

over the Himalayas into China, often carved in statues into Buddha's feet and

splayed into a spectrum of decorative meandering or interconnecting swastikas.

On the other side of the planet, American Indians inscribed the spoked sign of

good luck into salmon-colored seashells, healing sticks, pottery, woven

garments and blankets. Two thousand miles south, the Mayans of the Yucatan

chiseled it into temple diagrams. Once moored to the ancient highland cultures

of Asia Minor, the emblem later voyaged around the Mediterranean, through Egypt

and Greece, northward into Saxon lands and Scandinavia and west to Scotland and

Ireland.

Nineteenth-century Americans picked up the symbol from the American Indians. Boy

Scouts wore brassy swastika belt buckles, and a US World's Fair early this

century minted flashy swastika commemorative coins. It was displayed in jewelry

and inscribed on souvenirs, light fixtures, post cards and playing cards. In the

1920s and early 30s the swastika was the emblem of the United States' 45th

Infantry Division, proudly worn by soldiers on their left shoulder as an

ancient good-luck symbol, in yellow on a square red background. The emblem was

changed to an Indian thunderbird during the 1930s. Canada has a town called

Swastika, 360 miles north of Toronto, named in 1911 after a rich gold mine.

When WWII broke out, the townsfolk withstood pressures from the federal

government to change the name to Winston.

In the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler's Nazi Third Reich rose to power in Germany and

engulfed the planet in World War II, the fortunes of the swastika declined.

>From September 1935 to the fall of the Nazis in 1945 it was displayed on the

Reich's official flag, a black swastika in a white circle against a red field.

German soldiers also wore the hackenkrenz ("hooked cross") on their uniforms,

in a circle beneath an eagle, and displayed it on their armory. In the West it

became an infamous, hated symbol of fascism and anti-Semitism and was banned by

the Allied Command at the war's end, though the swastika's history is as

extensive in the West as in Asia.

The swastika has throughout history mutated into a wide diversity of forms and

meanings, but in its Hindu usage the right-hand swastika is far more prevalent

and ancient than its left-hand counterpart.

 

 

 

Loving Ganesha by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

 

Web sites: http://www.hindu.org/ & http://www.himalayanacademy.com/

email: contact (AT) hindu (DOT) org

Himalayan Academy Kauai's Hindu Monastery107 Kaholalele RoadKapaa, HI 96746-9304

 

 

 

 

 

 

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