Endless knot

What it is

The endless knot is a design built from a single line that crosses itself repeatedly, so the pattern has no loose finish. In Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism it is counted among the Eight Auspicious Symbols (Ashtamangala), a group of fortunate marks used in religious art. It also works as a cultural badge in regions where Tibetan Buddhism took hold, and closely related interlacing appears in Chinese, Kazakh and Celtic ornament, which is why the same shape turns up in settings far apart from one another.

Where it comes from

The sign is old. It occurs on clay tablets left by the Indus Valley civilization, dated to about 2500 BC, and on an inscription from a later historic period. Buddhist, Hindu and Jain use came afterwards and gave it religious meaning, but the motif also appears in Islamic art. One suggestion is that it travelled along trade routes and through contact with China, the Mongols and Iran; that is offered as a likelihood rather than a settled finding.

Tools and materials

Forms vary. A simple version is drawn as flat interlacing; richer ones add doubled lines and extra loops, as on a Chinese lacquerware dish about four hundred years old. The knot is worked in cord, painted on lacquer, and drawn in a Burmese Pali manuscript, where it sits alongside the text. What it is made of is line and crossing rather than any special substance, and in the Himalayan tradition its Tibetan name is dpal be'u.

What it is for

The mark is held to be fortunate, and it is used where blessing matters: on images and on the bodies of holy figures. Jain tradition places it on the chests of the 24 tirthankaras. Hindu tradition ties the Shrivatsa to shri, the goddess Lakshmi, and says it rests on Vishnu's chest where she lives; the Vishnu Purana has Kalki, the tenth avatar, arriving with it, and the name is among those of Vishnu in the Vishnu Sahasranama.

Peoples and places

The knot is common in Tibet, Mongolia, Tuva, Kalmykia and Buryatia, all places shaped by Tibetan Buddhism, and its names follow those languages: dpal be'u in Tibetan, түмэн өлзий in Mongolian, 盘长结 in Chinese, Banchōmusubi in Japanese. Beyond that sphere it appears in Chinese knotting, in Kazakh design and in Celtic interlace. Among Hindus the Shrivatsa is treated as a favourable mark in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and Jains of the Svetambara sect list it among their eight auspicious items.

What people believe

Buddhist explanations of the knot are several, and they sit side by side. The line with no end stands for samsara, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Its crossings are read as wisdom and compassion wound together, as opposed forces in the world of manifestation meeting and resolving into harmony, or as wisdom joined to method. One reading makes emptiness (shunyata) and dependent origination two aspects of a single thing; another says religious teaching and civil affairs lean on one another; a further one gives the Buddha's wisdom neither a beginning nor an end.

Compare and confuse

In Sanskrit the mark is Shrivatsa, the usual name in Hindu and Jain settings, while Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese and Japanese each supply their own term. The endless knot is kin to other interlaced ornaments, especially Celtic knotwork and Chinese knotting, with which it is easily confused. It belongs to the wider set of eight auspicious signs that several Indian religions share, so the same shape can carry different meanings depending on where it is found.

Today

The symbol stays in use both as religious ornament and as a design motif. A stylised version of the endless knot was taken as the logo of China Unicom, the state-owned Chinese telecommunications operator. Older examples survive on lacquerware and in manuscript pages, and the knot is still named in the decorative and liturgical vocabulary of Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.

Questions people ask about Endless knot

Good reading and sources

• Endless knot on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data