Tregeak. — 071 Maori Spirals and Sun-worship. 285 



examples, the statements, and the speculations would entail 

 very prolonged study, and need a diligent as well as a clear 

 brain to escape utter confusion of memory. The process, 

 however, even if nothing else came of it, would be very useful 

 to those who, living in a narrow little world of their own 

 interests, have no idea of the great rivers of thought that, 

 unknown to them, are in far-off and little-known places 

 bearing day and night their tribute to the ocean of human 

 knowledge. Only one of these rivers — nay, a stream— can be 

 approached in this paper, but my writing may tend to show 

 not only how little I know, but also how little any other man 

 knows cxbout things close to us and regarded as common and 

 devoid of interest. 



My paper will therefore be contracted into such an inquiry 

 into sun-worship as may be conducted along lines pointed out 

 by the sioastika cross. Although this sign may be only one 

 of the numerous symbols used in the ancient world, it has this 

 royal pre-eminence : that it is at once the oldest and the most 

 widely spread of all such characters. I have alluded to the 

 large bibliography that would contain the names of all books 

 dealing with this cross, and I will try not to weary with long 

 quotations or too many references. I may briefly state that 

 it was known almost universally in the ancient world under 

 some of its many forms. In seven-times-buried Troy, in 

 Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia, Great Britain, France, Italy, 

 Eussia, India, China, Korea, Japan, and the Americas, over 

 three-fifths of the inhabited earth's surface the sioastika is 

 found in evidence. This curious symbol in its square shape 

 is formed like a Greek cross with a bent arm at each angle, 

 the bends all being made in the same direction. It has many 

 variants, and it is in one of its variants that I shall try to 

 trace its presence in New Zealand. I diverge for a moment 

 by premising that nothing in this paper has anything to do 

 with the use of the cross in the Christian religion. Those 

 who are so ignorant of archteology and ethnology as not to 

 know that the cross was used by great peoples ages before 

 the Christian era need not proceed further, but must begin 

 elsewhere at the ABC of antiquarian research. 



Of course, there are many persons whose theories on the 

 subject refuse to admit that the sioastika has anything to do 

 with the sun or sun-worship. This denial may be true if the 

 subject is only studied in its modern or comparatively modern 

 phase. There may be nothing in the sioastika as employed 

 to-day by Buddhists or Brahmins to show connection on 

 their part with sun-worship ; but we have to deal with the 

 study of origins, and try to find out what was the early 

 meaning of the sign. Some writers, for instance, insist that 

 the swastika was a representation of the Aryan fire-drill, 



