Index
Everything, in one list
All 23 pages, by section. Nothing is hidden behind a menu.
The word
Section page →- The word: su + asti + kaThe Sanskrit reads roughly as conducive to wellbeing — a description of what the mark is for rather than a story about what it depicts.
- Thresholds, rangoli and kolamDrawn fresh each morning in rice flour at the entrance to a house, swept away and drawn again — a practice rather than an ornament.
- The ledger opened at DiwaliA new account book is marked before the first entry of the financial year, which makes the mark a business custom as much as a devotional one.
- Wedding cards and the kalashIt appears on invitations and on the pot set at the doorway, in contexts that are domestic rather than temple.
The four gatis
Section page →- The four gatisIn Jain teaching the four arms stand for the four states into which a soul may be born, which makes the figure a diagram of doctrine.
- The eight auspicious thingsIt appears as one of a set of eight, and the set is what gives it its position in the tradition.
- Kankali Tila, MathuraAn excavated Jain site whose sculpture and votive tablets are among the earliest dated material evidence in the tradition.
- Palm leaf at PatanManuscript libraries preserve the mark at the head of texts, which dates its use in writing rather than in stone.
The seal
Section page →- Buddhapada at AmaravatiThe Buddha's footprints are carved with marks on the soles, and the excavated slabs at Amaravati are where that convention is clearest.
- The mark on the chestIn East Asian iconography it sits on the chest of the figure, understood as a seal of the heart-mind.
- 卍 on a Japanese mapIt remains the standard cartographic symbol for a temple, printed on ordinary survey maps.
- Yungdrung, TibetThe Bon tradition uses the same shape turned the other way, with its own name and its own sense of permanence.
Mohenjo-daro
Section page →- Mohenjo-daro, 1922The seals came out of a city that had been under a mound for four thousand years, and they carry the figure among their commonest motifs.
- Marshall's report, 1931The excavation report is where the material entered the scholarly record, with plates, find-spots and measurements.
- Harappa and LothalThe same forms appear at other cities of the same civilisation, which is what makes it a shared convention rather than a local habit.
- Steatite, and how it was cutSoft stone carved and then fired to harden, which is why the seals survive and why the lines are so fine.
The meander
Section page →- The meander borderThe Greek key and its variants are drawn on a grid, and the figure appears as one term in that family rather than as a separate emblem.
- Geometric AthensThe pottery of the period is named for its ornament, and the ornament is built from repeated right angles.
- Piazza ArmerinaA Roman villa floor where the borders run for a great distance without a break, which is a statement about the workshop as much as the pattern.
- Fishbourne, West SussexThe same repertoire at the northern edge of the empire, laid by craftsmen working to the same pattern books.
1940
Section page →- Four nations decide to stopIn 1940 Navajo, Papago, Apache and Hopi craftsmen jointly declared they would no longer use a figure of their own, because of what was being done with a similar shape on another continent. It was their decision and they stated it plainly.
- What the whirling log wasIt was a distinct figure with its own meaning and its own place in Navajo practice, unrelated in origin to anything in Europe.
- What happened to the objectsPieces made before 1940 sit in museum collections and are catalogued as what they are, with the date and the maker's nation recorded.