Swaztika

The swastika (as a character 卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious icon used in the Indian subcontinent, East Asia and Southeast Asia, where it has been and remains a sacred symbol of spiritual principles in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In the Western world, it was historically a symbol of auspiciousness and good luck, but in the 1930s, it became the main feature of Nazi symbolism as an emblem of Aryan race identity, and as a result, it has become stigmatized in the West by association with ideas of racism, hatred, and mass murder.

The swastika is an icon widely found in human history and the modern world. It is alternatively known in various European languages as the Hakenkreuz, gammadion, cross cramponnée, croix gammée, fylfot, or tetraskelion, and in Japan as the Manji. A swastika generally takes the form of a rotationally symmetrical arrangement (a wheel) with four equally spaced legs of identical length each bent at 90 degrees in a uniform direction to create a pattern akin to a four-armed spiral. It is found in the archeological remains of the Indus Valley Civilization and Mesopotamia, as well as in early Byzantine and Christian artwork.

The name swastika comes from Sanskrit (Devanagari: ), and denotes "conducive to well being or auspicious". In Hinduism, the clockwise symbol is called swastika symbolizing surya (sun), prosperity, and good luck, while the counterclockwise symbol is called sauvastika symbolizing night or tantric aspects of Kali. In Jainism, a swastika is the symbol for Suparshvanatha – the 7th of 24 Tirthankaras (spiritual teachers and saviours), while in Buddhism it symbolizes the auspicious footprints of the Buddha.

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