name of the Parthian kings whose family name was Arseus. The Arsacidean kings of Armenia, according to Moses of Chorene, began to reign B.C. 130, and ruled until A.D. 45, when the Armenian kingdom was extinguished. The Sassanian kings of Persia ruled from A.D. 226 to 641, when the last monarch, Yez-de-jird the Third, was overthrown by the Mahomedans. This monarchy took its origin when Artaxerxes (the Greek and Roman way of pronouncing Ardeshir) overthrew the Parthian dynasty. This prince, Ardeshir Babekan, son of Sassan, was an officer of King Arsaces Artabanus the Fifth, whom he murdered, assuming the Persian throne as the first of the Sassanian dynasty. Ohnefalsch Richter holds the view that although no trace of Svastika had been found in Phoenicia, yet that travellers to that country had brought it from the Far East, and had introduced it into Cyprus, and into Carthage and the north of Africa generally. As

Х

Egyptian Intrusive Seals.

X S

Ogee Svastika.

against the denial of it in Assyria, however, is Wilson's assertion that the three-rayed design is found on Assyrian coins, as also as a countermark on those of Alexander, B.C. 333 to 323. Professor Sayce, on the other hand, is of opinion that Svastika was a Hittite symbol which passed by communication to the Aryans, or to some of their important branches before their final dispersion took place. The Professor regards it as being fairly established that the symbol was in more or less common use among the peoples of the bronze age anterior to either the Chaldeans, Hittites, or Aryans. As against all these theories, Major-General Gordon, writing to Dr. Schliemann in 1896 from the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, of which he was then

With circle.

Plain.

Controller, points out that the Svastika is On Oriental obviously Chinese, and that on the breech Carpets of a large gun captured in the Taku Fort in '61, and at the time of writing lying outside his office at Woolwich, the same symbol is displayed. Dr. Lockyer, who was for many years a medical missionary in China, also says that the sign is thoroughly Chinese. Colonel Sykes, another authority on matters Chinese, concludes that according to the Chinese authorities, Fa-hiau, Soung-Young, and Hiuantusang, the 'doctors of reason,' Taosee or followers of the mystic cross were diffused in China and· India before the advent of Sakya in the sixth century B.C. (according to other authorities in the eleventh century B.C.), continuing to Fa-hiau's time, and that they were professors of qualified Buddhism, which it is stated was the universal religion of Thibet before Sakya's advent, and continued until orthodox Buddhism was introduced in the ninth century A.D. As to this Colonel Tod holds the opinion that the first Buddha of the four flourished circa B.C. 2250. This was Budh the parent of the lunar race. The Greeks undoubtedly connected the symbol with the cult of Apollo, but it seems probable that the sign came to them from Egypt, where the Tau which was a cross was anciently a symbol of the generative power, and

T

afterwards was introduced into the Bacchic mysteries. Such a cross has been found at Pompeii in a house, in juxtaposition with the Phallus and with other symbols embodying the same idea. This mystic Tau, or Standard of the Cross as it has been called, formed just half of the Labarum,' or idolatrous war standard of the Pagans. The Labarum bore at once the crescent and the cross, the crescent as the emblem of Astarte the Queen of Heaven, and the cross as

''Labarum' was the name given before the time of Constantine, and apparently as far back as that of Hadrian, in the Roman army to the standard of the cavalry. Gradually this became the standard of the whole army, and in its later developments the banner became surmounted by the Eagle of Victory, but always with the cross beneath. Constantine replaced the eagle by the sacred monogram (the Greek letter P traversed by X); he further embroidered the Christian emblems on the purple of the banner in gold and jewels, and beneath these he placed medallions representing in portraiture himself and his children.

The that of Bacchus. The controversy, if so Burlington it can be called, will doubtless rage for all Magazine, time, but the one essential point remains Number salient namely, that the symbol is admitIV

tedly universal, and equally admittedly it is the basis and the mainstay in one form or another of all conventional decorative design. It is to be found everywhere in our modern life. In our household appointments, in our mural decorations, in the shapes and adornment of articles of our furniture. Even does it come down to us in the shape of those old irons on houses with which we are all familiar, and which, though a few persons fondly believe them to be so placed for the purpose of remedying cracking walls, are regarded by every right-thinking country person as a protection against lightning and fire. Unconsciously Svastika permeates our whole existence. We cannot even sit down to dinner without finding it set before us in some of our table appointments; and nowhere is the symbol more constantly and more permanently evident than in oriental rugs and carpets. In every specimen of these, of whatsoever provenance, and no matter how much the flowing line of curves may have encroached on the rectilineal design of convention, the Svastika is traceable.

S X f

Irons on Old Houses.

x

Double.

Sunsnakes.

Single.

It may not be at once discovered in the main body of the pattern, though it is always present, but it is invariably and inevitably to be found in the border, which it may at once be said is as much an historical asset as is the central design itself. ¶Of course throughout the natural working of Time's processes, the merging of myths and the blending of conceptions, certain bold and salient developments, if projected with sufficient force and persistency, must ever remain paramount. This is the case with the Svastika and with that other symbol, that of the lotus, with which it is almost invariably found in conjunction. There are many indeed who claim that the two symbols are indivisible. Professor Goodyear, no mean authority, is specially insistent on this point. He holds that it is the lotus that is the keynote of decoration. The lotus, he contends, is the Tree of Life, or rather the accepted Tree of Life is really the lotus in one or another of its many aspects. The spiral scroll, he urges, comes from the bent sepals of the lotus much exaggerated, which being squared becomes the Greek fret or meander or key pattern, and this doubled forms the Svastika. The Lotus and the Tree of Life will form the subject of the next article.