Tregear, — On Maori Spirals and Sun-tvorshij). 289 



kind (fig. 11) is the representation of a pottery vase found in 

 Arkansas, United States, in an ancient burial-mound. You 

 will see very distinctly how the four arms of the cross make 

 the double volute, precisely as in the bow-piece of the Maori 

 war-canoe. If the Maori spirals are not szvastika, then the 

 figure on the vase is not a siuastika, and yet experts distinctly 

 state that the latter is a form of the famous cross. 



I do not for a moment contend that the ordinary spiral 

 must necessarily always be a sun-symbol. Such a figure is 

 so easily made, and so easily imitated, that it might become a 

 pattern of barbaric decoration without any religious or mys- 

 tical meaning in the mind of the artist. The cup-markings 

 which are so widely known, and the concentric circles to be 

 found on the churinga, the soul-sticks of the Australian 

 blacks, are instances in point. They may be symbols of the 

 sun or of a dozen other things ; they are so easily made and 

 so ornamental that the mind must be of extreme simplicity 

 that can not only imitate but originate such marks. Conceive, 

 for instance, a savage picking up a forked branch and idly 

 sticking one end of the fork in the ground or in the ashes ; he 

 moves the point of the other arm round in a ring, describing 

 a circle. Squeezing the fork slightly, he makes a concentric 

 circle inside the first, and so on. The wonder would be that 

 if it was done once it should not be done again often. The 

 same rule holds good for the spiral. Any one who has rolled 

 up a slip of paper or a ribbon from its end and then lets it go 

 knows how it uncurls in a spiral form, and a savage who did 

 the same with a long flexible leaf or a thin strip of pliant 

 bark would immediately see its value for decoration if he had 

 the slightest taste for carving or painting. Granting, then, 

 that the spiral ornament might have originated independently 

 in a hundred places, that it is not difficult to copy, and that it 

 might symbolize a thousand things, is the same true of the 

 double spiral? Not by any means. The double spiral is not 

 only unlikely to be often invented, but it is an exceedingly 

 difficult figure to draw. Now that I have tried to draw some 

 of them true to scale I am filled with admiration of a native 

 carver who, without my drawing instruments and books of 

 logarithms, can describe such pure and perfect curves. As 

 any mathematician would tell you, a man who could calculate 

 and lay out the lines of the double spiral is one whose know- 

 ledge of figures is above the average. Of course, the Maoris 

 had no such knowledge, but their best carvers must have not 

 only had great aptitude for their work, sometimes amounting 

 almost to genius, but they must also have had long and care- 

 ful training before the eye could fix and the hand delineate 

 these flowmg volutes. Such a figure, so difficult and so invari- 

 able in its position as a bow ornament, would never have been 

 19 



