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form]] For the town in Ontario, see Swastika, Ontario . The swastika (from Sanskrit स्वस्तिक '''') is an Equilateral Cross with its arms bent at Right Angles in either left-facing () or right-facing () direction. The swastika is a holy symbol in Hinduism , Jainism and Buddhism . In the West , it is most widely known and used as a symbol of Nazism . It is traditionally oriented so that a main line is horizontal, though it is occasionally rotated at forty-five degrees. The Hindu version is often decorated with a dot in each Quadrant . OVERVIEW The motif seems to have first been used in Neolithic Eurasia . It was also adopted in Native American cultures, seemingly independently. The swastika is used universally in religious and civil ceremonies in India. Most Indian temples, weddings, festivals and celebrations are decorated with swastikas. The symbol was introduced to Southeast Asia by Hindu kings and remains an integral part of Balinese Hinduism to this day, and it is a common sight in Indonesia. The symbol has an ancient history in Europe, appearing on artifacts from pre-Christian European cultures. By the early 20th century it was widely used worldwide and was regarded as a symbol of good luck and auspiciousness. Since its adoption by the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler the swastika has been associated with Fascism , Racism ( White Supremacy ), World War II , and The Holocaust in much of the Western World . Before this it had seen a resurgence in recognition from the archaeological work of Heinrich Schliemann , who discovered the symbol in the site of ancient Troy and associated it with the ancient migrations of Proto-Indo-Europeans (" Aryan " peoples). He connected it with similar shapes found on ancient pots in Germany, and theorised that the swastika was a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors", linking ancient German, Greek and Vedic culture. Nazi use arose from this idea, developing from earlier '' Völkisch '' movements, for which the swastika was a symbol of "Aryan" identity, a concept that came to be equated by theorists like Alfred Rosenberg with a Nordic Master Race originating in northern Europe. The swastika remains a core symbol of Neo-Nazi groups, and is also regularly used by Activist groups to signify the supposed Nazi-like behaviour of organizations and individuals they oppose. ETYMOLOGY AND ALTERNATIVE NAMES The word ''swastika'' is derived from the Sanskrit '''' (in Devanagari , ), meaning any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote good luck. It is composed of ''su-'' (cognate with Greek ''ευ-''), meaning "good, well" and ''asti'' a verbal abstract to the root ''as'' "to be"; ''svasti'' thus means "well-being". The suffix ''-ka'' forms a diminutive, and ''svastika'' might thus be translated literally as "little thing associated with well-being", corresponding roughly to "lucky charm", or "thing that is auspicious". The suffix ''-tika'' also literally means ''mark''; therefore a sometimes alternate name for swastika in India is ''shubhtika'' (literally ''good mark''). The word first appears in the Classical Sanskrit (in the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics). Alternative historical English spellings of the Sanskrit word include ''suastika'' and ''svastica''. Alternative names for the shape are:
HISTORY The earliest swastika-like symbols preserved appear on pottery dated from around 4000 BC, as part of the ", the swastika symbol does not appear to occupy any marked position or significance, but appears as just one form of a series of similar symbols of varying complexity. In antiquity, the swastika was used extensively by the Indo-Aryans , Hittites , Celt s and Greeks , among others. In particular, the swastika is a sacred symbol in Hinduism , Buddhism and Jainism . It occurs in other Asia n, Europe an, Africa n and Native American cultures – sometimes as a geometrical motif, sometimes as a religious symbol. Barbara G. Walker, author of ''The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects'', claims that the crux dissimulata, an early swastika, represented the four winds. Concerning the short-armed version of this symbol, known as the gammadion because it is made up of four Greek gammas, Walker says this symbol was an emblem of the ancient goddess and probably represented "the solstices and equinoxes, or the four directions, four elements, and four divine guardians of the world." The ubiquity of the swastika symbol is easily explained by it being a very simple symbol that will arise independently in any basketweaving society. The swastika is a repeating design, created by the edges of the reeds in a square basket-weave. Other theories attempt to establish a connection via Cultural Diffusion or an explanation along the lines of Carl Jung 's Collective Unconscious . While the existence of the swastika symbol in the Americas may be explained by the basket-weave theory, its American presence weakens the cultural diffusion theory. While some have proposed that the swastika was secretly transferred to North America by an early seafaring civilization on Eurasia, a separate but parallel development is considered the most likely explanation. Comet/bird hypothesis See Also: Han Dynasty silk comet atlas ]] Yet another explanation is suggested by could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world. Bob Kobres in ''Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse'' (1992) contends that the swastika-like comet on the Han Dynasty silk comet atlas was labeled a "long tailed pheasant star" due to its resemblance to a bird's foot. , and further suggests that many swastika and swastika-like motifs may have been representations of bird tracks, including many of those found by Schliemann. Early Hinduism ]] The swastika symbol is sacred in Hinduism (dated from around the , the Sun , Brahma , or the concept of Samsara . Buddhism in particular enjoyed great success, spreading eastward and taking hold in Southeast Asia , China , Korea , Japan , Tibet and Mongolia by the end of the First Millennium . The use of the swastika by the indigenous Bön faith of Tibet , as well as Syncretic religions, such as Cao Dai of Vietnam and Falun Gong of China, is thought to be borrowed from Buddhism as well. Similarly, the existence of the swastika as a solar symbol among the Akan civilization of southwest Africa may have been the result of cultural transfer along the African Slave Route s around AD 1500 . Adoption of the swastika in the West , first millennium BC, National Museum Of Iran .]] The discovery of the Indo-European Language group in the 1790s led to a great effort by archaeologists to link the pre-history of European peoples to the ancient Aryan s ( Indo-Iranians ). Following his discovery of objects bearing the swastika in the ruins of Troy , Heinrich Schliemann consulted two leading Sanskrit scholars of the day, Emile Burnouf and Max Müller . Schliemann concluded that the Swastika was a specifically Indo-European symbol. Later discoveries of the motif among the remains of the Hittites and of ancient Iran seemed to confirm this theory. This idea was taken up by many other writers, and the swastika quickly became popular in the West , appearing in many designs from the 1880s to the 1920s. These discoveries, and the new popularity of the swastika symbol, led to a widespread desire to ascribe symbolic significance to every example of the motif. In Scandinavia n and Germanic countries examples of similar shapes in ancient European artifacts and in folk art were interpreted as emblems of good-luck linked to the Indo-Iranian meaning. Western use of the motif, along with the religious and cultural meanings attached to it, was subverted in the early Twentieth Century after it was adopted as the emblem of the Nazi Party. This association occurred because Nazism stated that the historical Aryans were the forefathers of modern Germans and then proposed that, because of this, the subjugation of the world by Germany was desirable, and even predestined. The swastika was used as a conveniently geometrical and eye-catching symbol to emphasize this mythical Aryan-German correspondence and instil racial pride. Since World War II , most Westerners know the swastika as solely a Nazi symbol, leading to incorrect assumptions about its pre-Nazi use in the West and confusion about its sacred religious and historical status in other cultures. GEOMETRY AND SYMBOLISM
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