ia the swastika is found accompanied
by the primordial set of ideas which also form the basis of the Chinese
and ancient American civilizations. The Middle is, moreover, associated in
India with the idea of immovability, repose and centrifugal power and
rule, incorporated in the supreme divinity whose symbol is the wheel and
who is represented as dual and quadruple in nature, _i. e._ with four
hands (as two persons), and with four heads (four persons), the six
persons thus symbolized being united in the person of the seventh, the
synopsis of them all. The seven-day period; the seven zones of the earth;
the seven divine footsteps towards the north; the seven councillors of the
Brahmin king, etc., all prove that, whereas six directions in space were
worshipped in India, they were inseparable from the sacred seventh which
united all of them. The mythical sacred mountain Meru, the throne of the
supreme eternal power, constituted the fixed centre of the world and
strikingly exemplified quadruplicate division and organization, being
associated with four lakes and four rivers; four mythical animals and four
guardians. In consonance with this plan Brahma was endowed with four heads
and four hands; the empire was divided into four quarters and seven zones,
and the population into four castes identified with four colors, and
governed by a king and seven councillors. The wheel, associated in the
case of Mithra with the serpent, constituted the emblem of supreme
dominion and rule which was connected with the idea of an extension to the
four quarters. The swastika was but another expression of the same idea
and represented also an image of the universal scheme. This sign and the
pole-star were both associated, in the native mind, with the
life-producing union of the male and female principles of nature and the
sacred element fire, under which form the supreme god was anciently
worshipped. The lotus flower symbolized the universe, its unity and
complexity; the number of petals represented usually agreeing with the
number of the cosmical divisions. Two points should further be briefly
referred to: The division of time into seven-day periods coincides with
the septenary scheme of organization resting upon the seven directions in
space. The sacred soma tree, the hom, was an object of cult in India. The
custom of planting a Bodhi tree wherever Buddhist missionaries established
their doctrine indicates its association with the idea of an est