Note 663 — Chapter X · THE SWORD IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA, AND ANCIENT INDIA.

The careless confusion of Svastika, the worshipper-sect, with Svasti, the symbol, was made by me in my Commentary on Camoens (chap. iv. ‘Geographical’). Burnouf (Emile), in La Science des Religions, made the Svasti the feminine principle; and the Pramantha, or perpendicular fire-stick, the male. If used on sacrificial altars to produce the holy fire (Agni), the practice was peculiar, and not derived from every-day-life: as Pliny knew (xvi. 77), the savage uses two, never three, fire-sticks. The Svasti is apparently the simplest form of the guilloche. According to Wilkinson (II. chap. ix.), the most complicated form of the guilloche covered an Egyptian ceiling upwards of a thousand years older than the objects found at Nineveh. The Svasti spread far and wide, everywhere assuming some fresh mythological and mysterious significance. In the north of Europe it became the Fylfot or crutched cross.