swastika
स्वस्तिक svastikaAn ancient auspicious symbol named from svasti, well-being; drawn at thresholds and beginnings for good fortune. Entirely distinct from the later Nazi Hakenkreuz.
Where this term appears
- The Swastika: An Ancient Symbol and Its Meaning Deities
To understand the svastika honestly, you have to do one difficult thing: hold its ancient meaning and its modern theft apart, and refuse to let the second erase the first.
- What Does Om Mean? Deities
Om, also written Aum, is the *pranava*, the primordial sound-syllable that the Upanishads treat as the audible form of *Brahman*, the ultimate reality. It is…
- The Aryan Migration Debate History
Most historians and linguists hold that speakers of Indo-Aryan languages, who composed the Vedas, entered the northwest of the subcontinent through gradual…
- The Indus Valley and the Question of Hindu Origins History
The Indus or Harappan civilisation flourished from about 2600 to 1900 BCE, long before the Vedic hymns. Some of its images have been read as early forms of later…
- The swastika was sacred for 5,000 years before the Nazis Journal
Years later, in Mein Kampf , he described the labour of it with a designer's satisfaction: "a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black swastika in the middle...