(1933) A Study of the Nazi Swastika: A Study of the Nazi Claims of its Aryan Origin

8/9/2019 (1933) A Study of the Nazi Swastika: A Study of the Nazi Claims of its Aryan Origin

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The SWASTIKAA Study of the Nazi Claims

of its Aryan OriginBy W. NORMAN BROWNThe swastika is the symbol used on

flags, arm bands, books and bannersby the National Socialists of Ger-many, the Nazis.

Adolf Hitler and other leaders of theNazis have made the claim that theswastika is the historic property ofthe so-called Aryan people and thatit has a traditional Christian sig-nificance.

What is really known about the swas-tika?

What is the scientific basis for theAryan claim .^

Dr. W. Norman Brown, a distinguishedAmerican scholar, professor of San-skrit at the University of Pennsyl-vania and a leading Orientalist, sub-mits the Nazi claims to the tests ofhistorical, scientific evidence.

In this terse essay, Dr. Brown gives acomplete account of the origin of theswastika symbol and its use amongancient peoples.

EMERSON BOOKS, INC.


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THE SWASTIKAA Study of the Nazi Claims

of its Aryan Origin


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'CUxy(y i/lyr^^^

The.SWASTIKAA Study of the Nazi Claimsof its Aryan Origin

By W. NORMAN sBROWN, Ph.D.Professor of Sanskrit, University of Pennsylvania

EMERSON BOOKS, INC.NEW YORK


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COPYRIGHT, 1933 BY EMERSON BOOKS, INC.

MANUFACTURED IN THEUNITED STATES OF AMERICA


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The SWASTIKADOLPH HITLER and the Nazis use the Swas-

tika as their emblem. They claim that it is a pure"Aryan" symbol, that it originated in Europe amongthe "Aryans," and that it is a special characteristic ofthe "Aryan" peoples as a whole and of the Germanicpeople in particular. All available evidence todayindicates that these claims are unfounded. .Theyhold, too, that the Swastika had a special usage inearly Christianity; and this claim is equally baseless.

The Meaning of "Aryan"JL HE Nazis use the word "Aryan" in the sensewhich scientists give to the terms "Indo-European,Indo-Germanic." These designate a group of manypeoples united by a common culture, of which theoutstanding feature is relationship of language.

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THE SWASTIKAAt some undetermined period, more than four

thousand years ago, the original Indo-Europeanswere a group of uncivilized tribes living within acomparatively small area, possessing a fairly homo-geneous religion, employing more or less similarinstitutions, and speaking closely connected dialects.Where their early home was we cannot affirm withcertainty. Some authorities have placed it in one oranother seaion of Europe; others have argued forAsia; perhaps the weight of opinion today favorsEurope. Wherever the original habitat, we knowthat by about the year 2000 B.C. many of the tribeswere migrating towards various parts of Europe andAsia, there to clash with some of the great civiliza-tions of antiquity, and so come into the purview ofhistory. Within a few centuries they became promi-nent in world affairs, and from then on they havesteadily increased in importance imtil at present theyare the world's most powerful group of peoples andtheir languages its most widespread.

In ancient and mediaeval times the Indo-Europeansalready covered an extensive area. At the south-eastern extremity of their territory were the inhabi-

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THE SWASTIKAtants of central and northern India and those ofPersia, who are jointly known as the "Indo-Iranians"and constitute a sub-group for which the name"Aryan" is reserved by scientists. Farther north andwest were the Armenians; then came the Balto-Slavicpeoples, whose descendants today are the Lithuaniansand Letts, and the Russians, Poles, Serbs, Czechs,Croatians, Slovenes, and other Slavs. In Asia Minorwere the Phrygians. Across the Hellespont and theBlack Sea were the Scythians and Thracians. Insouthern Europe were the Greeks and Albanians,the Latins and other Italic tribes. The Celts werein western and r rthern Europe. Still farther north,between the Celts and the Balto-Slavic peoples, werethe many Germanic tribes, including the so-called"Anglo-Saxons." There were also several lesserIndo-European peoples scattered over Europe andAsia. Finally, the Hittites of the old Testamenthave been found in recent decades to possess mostinteresting Indo-European affinities. Some of thesemany peoples have since lost their identity, but thetotal number of Indo-Europeans has constantly in-

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THE SWASTIKAcreased and the range of their holdings has beenextended.

In modern times the Indo-Europeans have spreadover all the Americas and large seaions of Africa,have taken the continent of Australia and manyislands of the Pacific, and have even visited and laidclaim to the two poles.The term "Indo-European," or in the Nazi appli-

cation "Aryan," has its fullest meaning when appliedto culture. In respea to physical stock it affirmspractically nothing. There still exist popular ves-tiges of a belief that the original Indo-Europeanswere Nordics, a physical type which is tall, long-headed, fair-haired, and blue-eyed; but that beliefis regarded by anthropologists and philologists alikeas only a myth. Nowhere throughout the entireIndo-European world do we find evidence that atany time was there a single pure physical type whichcould constitute an Indo-European race. Everywherethere is now, and has always been, race mixture.Even in Scandinavia, the stronghold today of theNordics, all evidence, including that of pre-historicarchaeology, vouches for the presence of other physi-

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THE SWASTIKAcal types side by side with the Nordics: small-framed,dark-eyed "Mediterraneans"; stocky, round-headed"Alpines"; and cross-breeds of the three.Yet even culturally the expression Indo-European,

or "Aryan," does not indicate absolute uniformity.There were at all known times variations in religion,art, language, social organization, political institu-tions, and other cultural phenomena among the dif-ferent peoples, and as time has passed, the variationsand divergences have increased. In many cases therehas been actual displacement of old institutions bynew ones imported from a non-Indo-European en-vironment. The old Indo-European religion hasnow passed away, and the Indo-Europeans of Europeand America have chiefly adopted Christianity, afaith that had its origin in a totally separate culturalgroup, the Semites. Other Indo-Europeans, as inIndia, adhere to religions that at most are only partlyAryan in character. The Indo-European religiouselements that were strong among the Hindus, whocomposed the hymns of the Rig Veda, have nowlargely been supplanted by features that were eitherfound in India by the Aryan invaders and adopted

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THE SWASTIKAby them, or else were developed among the Aryansafter their arrival. Few original religious Indo-Europeanisms remain in India or elsewhere; and,where they exist, they are embedded fossil-like inextraneous material, as, for example, our week-daynames Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,which recall the now unhonored gods of our Teu-tonic ancestors.

Of the many aspects of primitive Indo-Europeanculture, language has remained the most constant;yet it, too, has been markedly altered as the Indo-Europeans have advanced into new territories andtheir speech has clashed with the tongues they met.Anyone raised as a child to speak both English andHindi or both English and Russian, is likely to beincredulous when told that the two are linguisticcousins. Even such comparatively close relatives asEnglish and German, or the still closer French andItalian, are mutually imintelligible. Yet we candemonstrate the connection between these languages,and on the basis of these and like connections wecan reconstruct a vast amount of information aboutthe pre-historic Indo-Europeans. Language gives a

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THE SWASTIKAsub-surface skeletal similarity for Indo-Europeanculture throughout the world, which may vary pro-foundly in other, more obvious and external, quali-ties, and language, therefore, is the criterion by whichwe charaaerize a people or a person as Indo-Euro-pean.

This faa is strikingly illustrated in the UnitedStates. Our country and we are Indo-European.Yet we are a mixture of most diverse racial and cul-tural elements. We are white-skinned, brown-skinned, yellow-skinned, black-skinned. English isnow the mother tongue, not only of some whoseancestors several generations back were speakingEnglish, German, French, Italian, Russian and otherIndo-European languages, but also of some whoseancestors spoke negro dialeas in Africa, Mongoliandialeas in Asia, American Indian dialeas in this con-tinent. Yet the bond of common culture, above allcommon native language, makes us now all Indo-Europeans. Analogous conditions prevail today,and always have prevailed, throughout the Indo-European world.

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THE SWASTIKAIn a narrower way the same sort of situation exists

inside of nationalities. Where common languagedoes not exist, nationality is ever in peril from innerdissension, as in the old Austrian Empire, or in Bel-gium, or in Canada. For, of the many elementsthat may contribute to the national consciousness,that of common language is the most important.The English, for example, are the result of crossingbetween numerous tribes, of which the most promi-nent were Celtic and Germanic; and English civili2a-tion derives from the Celtic, the Danish, the Anglo-Saxon, the Norman-French, the Roman, the Greek,and through these last from the entire western Asi-atic and Egyptian tradition. In Germany today theGerman language is spoken not merely by thosewhose forbears were Germans, but also by somewhose ancestors were Czechs, or Celts, or Prussians(a people who in mediaeval times belonged to theBaltic group, like the present Lithuanians). A"pure" German people or a 'pure" English peopledoes not exist, unless we recognize native languageas constituting the criterion of national purity.From a scientific point of view, all those in England

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THE SWASTIKAand Germany who speak English or German as theirmother tongue are by that faa English or German.Similarly, those who speak any Indo-European lan-guage as their native tongue are Indo-Europeans.Any effort to differentiate by religion or previous an-cestral affinity is unscientific.

II

Some Groups of People The Indo-EuropeansHave Encountered

l^ONTRASTED with die Indo-Europeans areother groups of peoples, such as the Ural-Altaic,including the Mongolic, the Finnish, the Magyar(Hungarian), the Turkish, and others; or theHamitic, in northern Africa; or the Semitic insouth-western Asia. With some of these and othersnot so well-known to Americans, the Indo-Europeanshave had important contact as they have wanderedover the earth.

There is the Dravidian group, which was in Indiabefore the Aryans arrived there from the northwest

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THE SWASTIKAabout 1500 B.C. or later, and appear already to havehad a civilization. The Aryans have ever since beendriving the Dravidians before them as they have ad-vanced to the east and the south until today thelatter are almost confined to the lower part of thepeninsula.

Another group consists of the Semites, who occu-pied Arabia and Phoenicia and at least part of Meso-potamia when the Indo-Europeans came into AsiaMinor and Persia. The Semites, through the Baby-lonians and Assyrians, gave Persia a large part of itscivilization; and through the Jews and Arabs, gavethe world the religions of Judaism, Christianity, andMohammedanism.

Another group, concerning which archaelogy al-most daily gives us new knowledge, is one which by3000 B.C. extended across the Iranian plateau fromBaluchistan in the east to the borders of the Meso-potamian region and Asia Minor on the west, andfrom the Caucasus and the Caspian in the north tothe Persian Gulf in the south. This region was latertaken over by the Persians, and appears to have been

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THE SWASTIKAalong the route by which the Aryans got to India.We still know relatively little about this culture, butthere is considerable evidence to indicate its existenceand the name "Japhetic" has been applied to itthesame term was once proposed for the "Indo-Euro-pean," but never won acceptance.To the west of the Japhetic culture was another,

still not well known to us, which archaeologistsdesignate as "Anatolian."

Another important culture for the Indo-Europeanslay yet farther to the west, and is called the "Ae-gean." It was strong at Hissarlik, the site of ancientTroy, during the third and second millennia B.C. ; inthe eastern part of Asia Minor; in Crete, Cyprus, andthe Aegean islands; and on the Grecian mainland;and its civilization was the precursor of the classicalGreek. "What the relations were between Dravidian, Ja-

phetic, Anatolian and Aegean during the fourth andthird millennia B.C. we are only now beginning tolearn. It is probable that all these cultures, whichradiated from the Highland Zone, were ultimately

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THE SWASTIKArelated; about the ethnic conneaions of their orig-inators little is, as yet, known.One of the most impressive results when cultures

clash is the comparative ease with which they ex-change minor, and sometimes major, elements. Amost instmaive illustration lies in the thoroughness^with which the Indo-Europeans of Europe now ad-here to the Semitic faith Christianity. Wherever theIndo-Europeans, as barbarians, conquerd a civilizedpeople, they were always quick to learn from theconquered. Rome civilized the Teutons who rav-aged her lands and burned her city. The Persiansbuilt upon the great civilizations that had precededthem; so did the Aryans in India; so, too, didthe Greeks. The Indo-Europeans have had a geniusfor political conquest and the assimilation, develop-ment, and propagation of more advanced culturesthey have met. In their pristine state they werestrong of body and mind, but uneducated. Thosewhom they vanquished gave them an educationwhich they utilized to build their present intellectual,social, industrial, and political structures.

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THE SWASTIKAIII

Early History of the Swastika

JL HE Swastika is one of the many minor bor-rowings which the Indo-Europeans have made fromtheir neighbors.

The origin of this, as of many other widespreadsymbols, is lost in the obscurity of pre-history. Wedo not know when it came into being, preciselywhere it came into being, or why it came into being.We know that in different localities and at differenttimes it has had varying meaning. It has been con-sidered an emblem of the sun, of female fertility, ofthe macrocosm in the form of a man. Today inGermany it is a symbol of the Aryan struggle to-ward the light. But the oldest of the known inter-pretations may, like the youngest, be only a ration-alization of an auspicious character which the symbolhad acquired for some reason long since forgotten.The one interpretive faa about the Swastika that

seems constant is that it signifies good luck. Thevery name Swastika is a Sanskrit word meaning

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THE SWASTIKAarchaeological excavation in very recent years, andwith their aid we are now able to outline a roughand provisional history of the symbol's origin andearly migration, as has not been possible before.The outstanding faa about the Swastika in an-

tiquity is that its earliest known habitat is a wideterritory beginning at the valley of the river Indus inIndia and extending westward across Persia and AsiaMinor to Hissarlik (ancient Troy) on the shore ofthe Hellespont.

In the Indus ValleyFor combined age, frequency, and perfea execu-

tion, the examples from the Indus Valley are themost interesting.

In 1924 the Archaeological Survey of India an-nounced the first results of excavations it had beenconduaing in that valley at two sites named Mohen-jo Daro and Harappa, and in 1931 it described thework to date in three bulky and compendious vol-umes with copious and excellent illustrations. Ar-chaeology has made many dramatic discoveries, andthe discovery of the Indus Valley civilization was

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THE SWASTIKAamong its most dramatic. Until that time we had nomaterial remains from India to indicate a civilizationearlier than the first millennium B.C. Now, witha relatively few turns of the spade, we got evidencethat highly organized cities had existed in westernIndia fully two thousand years earlier. These twocities were large and well laid out; the houses wereelaborately built of brick with several storeys andmany rooms. A charaaeristic feature was the care-ful provision for drainage, both of houses and ofstreets. Writing was in existence, but as yet we havenot succeeded in reading it. There have been foundremains of pottery, stone, and metal. We can drawinferences about the religion. Art was well devel-oped, especially as illustrated on the many seals,which exhibit both animal and linear geometricaldesigns.

This civilization was not limited to those twosites; in the Indus valley there are other moundsawaiting excavation. Many problems of great in-terest have arisen from the Mohenjo Daro andHarappa discoveries, and much important knowledgehas come from them. Chief of all is the faa that

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THE SWASTIKAIndia's civilization can be pushed back to a periodthat approaches the known antiquity of Mesopo-tamia and Egypt. Second to this is the fact that thisnewly found culture shows double similarities, onthe one hand, to the later historic civilization ofIndia from the first millennium B.C. on, and on theother hand, to ancient and still partly buried civiliza-tions west of it in Baluchistan, Persia, Mesopotamia,and even Egypt.

Unfortunately, we do not know just what peopledeveloped this great culture. It did not rise amongthe Aryans, for it was in existence fifteen hundredyears before the Aryans invaded India. A guess isthat it belonged to the Dravidians, the people whomthe Aryans pushed before them as they advanced.If we could read the numerous inscribed seals, weshould probably be able to settle that question.Among the finds at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa

there were many seals with splendid representationsof the Swastika. In the volumes published by theArchaeological Survey of India in 1931 fifteen ofthese are reproduced, and this number shows thatthe design was by no means sporadic, but rather was

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THE SWASTIKAexceedingly common. India, during her historicperiod, has been the Swastika's home par excellence;and it has long been known that the symbol hadthere, for over two thousand years, a frequency andvariety of usage not paralleled elsewhere. Now wesee that the Swastika was also thoroughly well es-tablished in India's more ancient antiquity. It ap-pears among her first civilized remains, as early as2500 B.C., possibly 3000 B.C., and appears in formsperfealy developed, in contrast with slightly olderbut more primitive and less perfea forms foundfarther westward. It existed in India before thearrival of the Aryans, who gave it the Sanskrit nameSwastika. Like other symbols which the Aryans ofIndia used on coins and stone sculpture, it came tothem from non-Aryan predecessors. It was a singleminutia of the spoils the viaors had taken from thosethey had vanquished.

In the ''Japhetic'^ RegionIn a number of localities west of India many other

early examples of the Swastika have been found.Recent cursory explorations in Baluchistan have re-

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THE SWASTIKAvealed an extensive and ancient civilization, as old asthat of the Indus Valley, yet like it unknown adecade ago, and among the few remains broughtback from the preliminary reconnaissance of its sitesare seals bearing the Swastika. Still farther to thewest, in the general "J^P^^^^^ ' ^^gioiij which wementioned above, more seals have been found show-ing several varieties of the Swastika, including themost primitive yet identified. These, too, are froma time around 3000 B.C. And in early painted pot-tery of Susa, Persia, in that same region and of thatsame period, there have been found some excellent,beautifully executed examples.

In this same Japhetic region, there also appears atthis time the triskelion. This consists of three bentradii, or three bent legs, radiating from a commoncentre, a device known to us from the Greeks andother peoples of Europe, and sometimes regarded asa variant of the Swastika.These various examples of the Swastika (and the

triskelion) date from before the Indo-Europeanarrival into that region, which we believe was after2000 B.C.

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THE SWASTIKA

In the Aegean CultureThe next chronological stratum for the Swastika

appears to be Hissarlik, the site of Homer's Troyand of many older cities that had risen and perishedbefore it. There, in the "second city," known alsoas the "burnt city," dated around 2000 B.C., it hasbeen found frequently on terra cotta. Ancient His-sarlik was a part of the "Aegean" civilization; andthroughout the bronze period of that civilization,down to around 1100 B.C., the Swastika appears onpottery ornamented with geometrical designs and onother objects. At Hissarlik or elsewhere in AsiaMinor the Indo-Europeans may for the first timehave met the Swastika. It was not long after 2000B.C. that the Hittites were establishing their empirenearby, and it is possible that other Indo-Europeanelements were then sifting into the population ofthat region.

Entry Into EuropeHissarlik may reasonably be considered the point

from which the Swastika spread to Europe. Byway of the Aegean it went to Greece, and in post-

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THE SWASTIKAMycenean times, that is, after the Grecian phase ofthe Aegean civilization had collapsed, it appearsupon vases of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Athens from theseventh century B.C. It is depiaed on a funeral car,and on the figure of the goddess Artemis and otherAsiatic deities. It also reached northern Italy, whereit has been found on certain urns often regarded asfunerary.

The great bronze industry of the Aegean, andespecially of Hissarlik, sent its wares and its tech-nique along the trade routes into Europe. When,late in the bronze period, ornamented objects appearin the lower Danube region, the Swastika is amongthe designs. The Celts, who were proficient work-ers in bronze and gold, used it.

Finally the Germans acquired it, and used itabundantly. They were employing it for ornamentat the end of the bronze period, and after their con-taa with the Romans they decorated elaborateplaques with it. In at least one instance, the Swas-tika and other symbols appear with a male figure,who is possibly a god, but certainly not the Christian

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THE SWASTIKAGod. Both the Gallic and the Germanic peoplesemployed it, and during the Gallico-Roman periodin Aquitania and Britain, it is found on altars, whereit is associated with the thunderbolt, a faa whichrecalls the association the Swastika is said to have inScandinavia with the god Thor.

Some Ancient Civilizations Ignorantof the Swastika

One of the most interesting features of the historyof the Swastika is its comparative absence in certainsections of the civilized world of antiquity. Egyptseems to have been without it until very late, whenGreece had arisen. Ancient Assyria and Palestine,as far as I know, were also without it.

Although by 2000 B.C. it extended from the Indusacross to the Hellespont, it passed to the north of thegreat Semitic territory and missed that people. TheJews did not use it. Early Christianity seems not tohave known it. The Christians used the Swastikaonly after their religion was well established inEurope.

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THE SWASTIKAFurther Diffusion of the Swastika

The later history of the symbol is voluminous.Almost forty years ago Mr. Thomas Wilson, of theUnited States National Museum, wrote and pub-lished (1896) a 250-page treatment of it on the basisof the material then available. Since then muchmore material has been discovered, including part ofthat which I have used above. A treatment today asthorough as that of Mr. Wilson's for its time couldwell make a book half as long again as his.When Buddhism spread from India, it popular-

ized the symbol in Central Asia, Tibet, China, Japan,and other regions. As the cultures of Greece, Rome,and Byzantium, and then later of Arabia, were takenabroad by various conquerors, the Swastika becamecommon in northern and other parts of Africa.A curious problem lies in the presence of the

Swastika in America before the time of Columbus.It is frequent in northern, central, and southernAmerica, and has many variant forms. It is possiblethat it may have originated on this continent inde-pendently of Europe and Asia; on the other hand,

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THE SWASTIKAit may have migrated here. Early contaas betweenAsia and America are now accepted, but their natureand extent are uncertain.

IVConclusions

UR available evidence permits us to make cer-tain more or less definite generalizations about theSwastika. Its early centre of gravity appears to havebeen the Iranian plateau, but the exact place oforigin may have been anywhere between the Induson the east and hithermost Persia or upper Irak onthe west. It was spread over that entire region by3000 B.C. It appears next in the Aegean culture,particularly at Hissarlik, from about 2000 B.C. on;and from there it went on the one hand to Greece,and on the other to the lower Danube. From thesetwo regions it spread throughout the rest of Europe.

It was not invented by the Indo-Europeans. Thepeoples among whom it first appeared were the so-called ''Japhetic" and Indus Valley peoples. What-

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THE SWASTIKAever these various peoples were, they were not Indo-Europeans; and the Indo-Europeans, as far as ourevidence indicates, did not know the Swastika untila thousand years after the time of its earliest pre-served specimens. The Indo-Europeans may havemet it in Asia Minor very early in the second millen-nium B.C., or in upper Irak or in Persia shortly after-wards, and again in India shortly after that. TheGermans do not seem to have had the symbol untilthe first millennium B.C.

It has had a very high position in the cult of cer-tain Indian religions, and possibly was important incertain western Asiatic religions. But it has held nogreat value in Christian symbolism, where its oc-currence is only incidental and relatively late, notprimary.

It is clearly neither a peculiarly Aryan nor a pe-culiarly Christian emblem; where these groups haveit, they have borrowed it from older religions ormore early civilized peoples.The present Nazi claims are imtenable. Just as

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THE SWASTIKAtheir use of the Swastika as an Aryo-Christian sym-bol, with aspeas of anti-Judaism, anti-pacifism, andanti-Marxism, is entirely arbitrary. The term"Aryan" or "Indo-European" signifies nothing ofrace integrity and only a relative degree of culturaluniformity, while the Swastika is far too ancient andgeneral a human property to bear their limited con-struaion.

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(1933) A Study of the Nazi Swastika: A Study of the Nazi Claims of its Aryan Origin

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Transcript of (1933) A Study of the Nazi Swastika: A Study of the Nazi Claims of its Aryan Origin