Tkegear. — On Maori Spirals and Sun-ivorship. 293 



the sacred book of the Brahmins, and you will find that the 

 Aurora weaved during the night the robe of her husband, the 

 Sun. One Vedic hymn advises the Aurora not to stretch out 

 her web too far lest it get burnt,* and the Dawn is described 

 as adorning herself for her, husband, the Sun, with a display of 

 luminous garments.! The Greeks carried on the myth under 

 the form of Arachne, the weaver who was transformed into a 

 spider, but Arachne is only a variant of Aurora. The cobweb 

 has become a symbol of dawn because in the early morning it 

 has such beauty. Keightleyl says, "Every lover of nature 

 must have observed and admired the beautiful appearance of 

 the gossamers in the early morning, when covered with dew- 

 drops, which, like prisms, separate the rays of light and shoot 

 the red, blue, yellow, and other colours of the spectrum in 

 brilliant confusion." 



Finally, I would call attention to the antiquity in which 

 this "good-luck" symbol was applied to ships. Bharata is 

 the hero of India after whom the land was called, and after 

 whom the native speaks of it to this hour, as "the Land of 

 Bharata" — i.e., India. In the great poem of the Eamayana 

 that recounts the deeds of his sons we are told§ that when 

 Bharata had to choose a ship to embark in he selected one 

 having the sxuastika as its symbol. The Samayana poem was 

 extant (although then unwritten down) five hundred years 

 before the Christian era. If, then, two thousand four hundred 

 years ago ships were afloat in the seas of Asia bearing the sign 

 of the sun-god as an emblem of " good fortune," is it at all 

 curious that a maritime people like the sun-worshipping 

 Maoris should give their warships a benediction by carving on 

 the bow-piece a symbol known in ancient time all over the 

 world? II 



* "RigVeda," v., 79, 9. 

 t " Rig-Veda," i., 134, 4. 



I " Fairy Mythology," Appendix, p. 513. 



§ " Ramayana," vol. ii., p. 348, ed. Gorresio. 



I I I have to acknowledge my indebtedness in this paper to Mr. Thomas 

 Wilson, the learned author of a monograph on the f^iuastika in the 

 report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894. To him I ov?6 many of the 

 references and examples of forms of the cross. It would be a waste of 

 time for a student in the colonies to attempt to glean after Mr. Wilson in 

 such a field, and so I have drawn upon the intellectual granary he stored 

 up in his paper for inquirers to use, and value in the using. — E. T. 



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