170 



1S88.] J.*.-' [Briutou. 



As in Chinese philosophy, the Universe is made up of oppo- 

 sites, heaven and earth, light and darkness, day and night, land 

 and water, concave and convex, male and female, etc., the highest 

 terms for which are Yin and Yang ; these are held to be brought 

 into fructifjang union by Ta Ki. Abstractly, the latter would 

 be regarded as the synthesis of the two universal antitheses which 

 make up all phenomena.* 



The symbolic representation of Yin and Yang is a circle di- 

 vided by two arcs with opposite centres, while the sj^mbol of 

 Ta Ki adds a third arc from above uniting these two, 







Fig. 4. Fig. 5. 



It is possible that these symbols are of late origin, devised to 

 express the ideas above named. One Chinese scholar (Mr. S. 

 Culin) tells me that it is doubtful if they occur earlier than the 

 twelfth century, A. D., and that they were probably introduced 

 for purposes of divination. In this case, I believe that they were 

 introduced from the South, and that they originally had another 

 and concrete significance, as I shall explain later. 



Others consider these s^^mbols as essentially Mongolian. The 

 Ta Ki or Triskeles is to them the Mongolian, while the Svastika 

 is the ethnic Arj^an symbol. Such writers suspect Indo-Euro- 

 pean immigration where they discover the latter, Chinese immi- 

 gration where they find the former emblem. 



The Svastika, I need hardly say, is the hooked cross or gam 

 mated cross, usually represented as follows : 



Fig. 6. 



the four arms of equal length, the hook usually pointing from left 

 to right. In this form it occurs in India and on very early (neo- 



* I am indebted for some of these explanations to Mr. K. Sungimoto, an intelligent 

 Japanese gentleman, well acquainted with Chinese, now resident in Philadelphia. 



