“In [our] enumeration of the circumpolar constellations of the South, we have said nothing of the stars situated at the Pole itself. The reason is simple; there are none deserving mention, and with the exception of one star in Hydræ, none approach the third magnitude. [pg 163] There is not then, in the southern sky, any star analogous to Polaris in the northern heavens.” M. Guillemin proceeds to explain, however, that this poverty of the polar regions is singularly compensated for by the stars of the equatorial zone. It seems more than probable that primitive astronomers or their descendants, who had been reared in a knowledge of the northern Polaris and of the periodical motion of the circumpolar constellations, should continue their observations in whatever latitude they found themselves. It seems possible that they may have observed the Southern Cross and recognized its closeness to the pivot or centre of rotation; but from personal experience and observation I can vouch for the fact that this constellation could never have produced upon primitive man the powerful impression caused by Ursa Major and Cassiopeia revolving around Polaris. It is, of course, impossible to conclude to what extent the ancient Peruvians revered the Southern Cross. It suffices for the present to establish the incontrovertible facts that the image of the motionless Creator, set up by the Incas, was associated with stars and with the cross and that the door of the Cuzco Temple, where this image was kept, faced the north, the direction whence, according to native traditions, the culture-heroes had come to Peru.
The following data furnish further important proof that certain peculiar ideas, symbols and metaphors were held in common by the civilizations of Peru, Central America and Mexico. Returning to the bas-relief (fig. 47), I recur to an interesting feature, which I have already pointed out, namely, that the left arm of the personage terminates in a tiger's or puma's head. In connection with this peculiarity it is interesting to note that the native historian Ixtlilxochitl cites his illustrious ancestor and namesake, the Ome Tochtli Ixtlilxochitl of Texcoco, as addressing his young son Nezalhualcoyotl as “my dearly beloved son, tiger's arm.”36 As the young prince is referred to in the same chapter as “the boy Acolmiztli [=tiger's arm] Nezalhualcoyotl,” it is obvious that the metaphor constituted a title preceding the actual name. It was Nezalhual-coyotl who instituted the worship of Tloquenahuaque, the true Creator, and discountenanced human sacrifices.
If the other analogous Santa Lucia slabs be also examined it will be seen that although the positions of the bodies and arms vary, and the form of the head is different in each instance, it is [pg 164] invariably the left arm that terminates in the individual emblem. This sort of consecration of the left hand seems particularly significant for the following reason: Padre Anello Oliva records that the Inca Yupanqui, the founder of Cuzco and the same whose vision agrees so strangely with the bas-relief, was surnamed Lloque=the left-handed,37 and was noted for having visited the whole empire three times. His reign was long and prosperous, and he left a record as a conqueror and builder. He likewise sent his son Mayta-Capac to visit the whole empire, accompanied by sages and councillors. I recall here it was Yupanqui who proclaimed to the sun-worshippers of Peru, the existence and superiority of an immutable Creator.
I have already shown how, in Peru, it was a dictum that the upper division of the empire was to bear the same ideal relation to the lower as that of an elder brother to a younger or a right hand to the left. It is, therefore, possible to infer that, on ceremonial occasions when it is recorded that the Hanan Cuzco and Hurin Cuzco people were stationed at either side of the Inca, the Hanan or chieftains constituting the nobility were to his right and the Hurin people or lower class, to his left.
It is truly remarkable that it is a passage in the Annals of the Cakchiquels, the people now inhabiting the region of Guatemala where the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs were found, that contains the clearest statement regarding the division of a tribe into two classes and the relative positions assigned to each of these, according to ceremonial usage. The passage relates: “We, the 13 divisions of warriors, and the seven tribes ... we came to the enclosure of Tulan, and coming, gave our tribute. The seven tribes were drawn up in order on the left of Tulan. On the right hand, were arranged the warriors. Firstly, the tribute was taken from the seven tribes, next from the warriors.”38
[pg 165]Buschmann has recorded the interesting fact that, in Nahuatl, the right hand is designated as “the good, clever or wise”=yec-maitl or mayectli, also ma-imatca or ma-nematca (from yectli=good and imati=to be clever or wise). Molina's dictionary furnishes us with the following Nahuatl names for the left hand, etc.
Opoch maitl, Opuch maitl, Opuch maye: left hand.
Opochiuia=v. to do something with the left hand.
Topuchcopa, the left, at the left hand, or side.
In Mexico the totemic lord of the chase was named Opochtli. The much-discussed name Huitzil-opochtli is considered by some to signify “the left-handed humming-bird.”
The foregoing proves that in Peru, Guatemala and Mexico a caste-division was associated with left-handedness and that the expression “left-handed” was employed as an honorific or distinctive title. It is obvious that before reaching the point when the left hand would be invested by a distinctive mark, as in the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs, the above ideas must have been prevalent for a very long time.
I have already pointed out that a striking similarity of ideas survives amongst the Zuñi Indians of to-day.
As to the native tiger's head (puma or ocelot?) we find that it is the chief symbol of the central human figure on the great monolithic doorway of Tiahuanaco, Peru, a fact which testifies to a further community of thought.
[pg 166]This central figure exhibits two tigers' heads on each shoulder and six around its head, disposed as rays and interspersed with what resemble drops of water. The transverse ornament carved on the breast exhibits four divisions, each of which terminates with a tiger's head. Four similar heads, looking upwards, are on the central decoration beneath the figure and the broad band at the base terminates in two large tigers' heads. What is more, on the fragment of a finely carved hollow stone object, which is preserved at the British Museum and was found at Tiahuanaco by Mr. Richard Inwards, there are the finest representations of the swastika which have as yet been found on the American Continent, and each of its branches terminates in a tiger's head, resembling those sculptured on the monolithic doorway. The fragment consists of the half of what seems to me to have been the top or handle of a staff or sceptre. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. C. H. Read of the British Museum, for a rubbing of the carved fragment and for the permission to reproduce it here (fig. 49). The central swastika is angular and its form recalls that of the Mexican Calendar swastika (fig. 9). At each side of it are portions of what originally were two rounded swastikas, which also terminate in tigers' heads. These and the size of the fragment seem to justify the inference that another square swastika was originally sculptured on the opposite side, making two rounded and two square swastikas in all.
It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this fragment, for it proves to us that in Tiahuanaco, the swastika was a sacred symbol. Its association with the puma or ocelot, links it to the central figure on the monolithic doorway and, possibly, connects this with the Mexican identification of the ocelot with the Ursa Major, with “the lord who walks around,” or the lord of the underworld, Tezcatlipoca. The two forms of swastika seem to testify that, in Tiahuanaco also, the idea of the Above and Below prevailed and that the angular form symbolized the subdivision of the earth and the rounded one that of the heavens. The rows of personages sculptured on the doorway at each side [pg 167] of and facing the central figure seem to indicate that this commemorates an establishment of tribal organization.
The distribution of the sculptured figures is as follows:
The figures on the upper row to the right and left, making sixteen in all, are all alike—so are the sixteen figures on the second and the sixteen on the third rows.
Without attempting to describe all the insignia which characterize the figures on each of the three rows, I refer the reader to the magnificent plates contained in Drs. Stübel and Uhle's monumental work on the Ruins of Tiahuanaco, and merely note that each figure in the uppermost row exhibits a bird's head in front of its head-dress. All figures in the second row are completely masked as condors. In the third row a tiger's head decorates each head-dress. It is curious to find that whilst the birds' and tigers' heads designate their wearers as heads or chieftains, these emblems strikingly coincide with the classification of the highest Mexican warriors into two divisions, known as “the ocelots and the eagles.” If attention is bestowed upon the number of emblems or figures and their distribution it will be seen, in the first case, that the central figure exhibits on his person twelve tigers' heads in all, i. e., six on his head, two on each arm and two on his breast-plate. Sixteen chieftains exhibit the same emblem and the carved fragment with the swastika appears to have originally exhibited sixteen tigers' heads, distributed into homogeneous groups of four.
It cannot be denied that the forty-eight figures on the doorway are first divided into two groups of twenty-four by being placed to the right and left of the central figure. Each division of twenty-four is grouped as 3×8, which is also 6×4, and yielding a total of 12×4 or 4×12 figures.
Curiously enough the number 12 coincides not only with the number of heads exhibited by the central figure, but the entire bas-relief offers a certain agreement with the numerical divisions of Cuzco which I have summarized as having been divided into two halves and four quarters and subdivided into 12 wards, the names of which doubtlessly corresponded with those of their inhabitants. Personally I am inclined to consider that the purpose of the Tiahuanaco [pg 168] bas-relief was to establish a certain tribal organization and impose certain distinctive insignia upon each tribe. The inference that each sculptured figure was differentiated from the other by being painted in various colors is justified by Molina's account, already cited, that “in Tiahuanaco the ‘Creator’ had his chief abode, hence the superb edifices in that place, on which edifices were painted many dresses of Indians ... thus each nation uses the dress with which they invest their huaca and they say that the first that was born [in Tiahuanaco] was there turned into stones, others say that the first of their lineages were turned into falcons, condors and other animals and birds.”
It is with deference, however, that I submit my conclusion and refer the question to the supreme authority of Drs. Stübel and Uhle and Mr. Bandelier, whose attainments and exhaustive researches in the region of Tiahuanaco qualify them to utter a final judgment upon this interesting subject. According to Dr. Max Uhle the civilization established at Tiahuanaco antedates that of the Incas. It may yet be proven that whilst Tiahuanaco was settled in remote times by colonists from the North, the Inca civilization was due to a later migration. It certainly appears that, in Tiahuanaco and Cuzco, the identical fundamental scheme of government and organization prevailed.
I shall yet have occasion to point out that in Mexico and Yucatan and Central America there are also monuments exhibiting multiples of 12 and 4 and also 16 chieftains. Meanwhile it is worth while to note here briefly, some analogies to Mexican and Maya antiquities found in Peru.
I am much indebted to Sir Clements D. Markham, the President of the Royal Geographical Society, for the kind permission to reproduce here a hasty drawing he made, in 1853, of a gold plaque (size 5-8/10 inches) found in Cuzco (fig. 50). It was then in Lima, being the property of the President of Peru, General Echerrique. This curious relic exhibits the image of a monstrous face surrounded by a band with subdivisions containing various signs. The plaque was looked upon by its owner as a Calendar, but Sir Clements Markham, after studying its subdivisions with a view of ascertaining their agreement with the twelve divisions of the Peruvian year, preferred to let his notes on the subject remain unpublished, not having come to a satisfactory conclusion on the subject. I am permitted, however, to state that Sir Clements Markham specially [pg 169] noted the resemblance of a sign, which is represented on the cheeks of the central figure and recurs four times on the encircling band, to the well-known Maya glyph ahau=chief, lord.
It is, indeed, a cursive representation of a human head and moreover resembles those figured on the garment of a gigantic red sandstone statue found at Ak-Kapana and figured in Stübel and Uhle's Tiahuanaco. On this garment the heads alternate with squares and form a close design. This resemblance between the conventional faces on this archaic statue and those on the gold plaque has made me attach more importance to the latter and at all events regard it as preserving ancient native symbolism. In connection with these I wish to point out that the plaque itself offers a certain resemblance to well-known Mexican calendars, the centre of which usually exhibits a face which is surrounded by a band with day or month signs. It is remarkable that above each eye there are four dots, especially as the Quechua word for eye=naui is homonymous with the Nahuatl numeral four=nahui, and this is so constantly associated with an eye in the Mexican sign [pg 170] Nahui ollin=four movements (cf. fig. 2). As strange a coincidence as this is furnished by the mark on the forehead of the image, not because the latter resembles the sect mark of the Vishnu worshippers, but because it offers a marked analogy to the Mexican Acatl sign which is frequently carved or painted as a cane standing in a square receptacle with recurved ends. I am strongly tempted to interpret this symbol according to the native mode of thought, as signifying the centre, the union of the Above and Below and to regard the upper part of the face itself as a representation of the Above, the heaven, with its two eyes (the Moon and Sun), whilst the lower part and teeth, as in Mexico, signified the Below, the earth and underworld. By means of the head on each cheek and the number four over each eye, the dual and quadruple rulerships of the empire could well have been expressed. Postponing a more thorough study of the gold plaque, I merely note here that it exhibits curious analogies not only to Maya but also to Mexican symbolism.
Another instance of the same kind is furnished by a possibly modern but curious small silver pendant of unquestionably native workmanship. It is preserved at the Ethnographical Museum at Vienna and is figured in the Report of the International Congress of Americanists which was held at Berlin in 1888 (pl. 1, fig. 4, p. 96). Reputed to be from Cuzco, it represents a figure of the sun surrounded by eight straight and intermediate undulating rays. Two serpents are figured beneath the sun; their bodies extend across the pendant and their heads with open jaws almost meet in the centre. A figure, wearing a peculiar head-dress, is kneeling in worship beneath the symbols, which undoubtedly recall the Mexican mode of representing two serpents meeting, as on the Calendar Stone of Mexico, for instance.
As I am tracing analogies at present, I should like to ask the reader to compare the symbols figured and designated by Salcamayhua as that of the earth (see his fig. c, pl. lxvi) with the sacred vase from the Maya MS. (his fig. ii, pl. lix) and the form of the Peruvian symbol for the sea (his fig. e, pl. lxvi) with the peculiar Mexican shell ornament (fig. 1, no. 10). Insufficient though the above analogies may seem in themselves, they are valuable in conjunction with the other data presented and strengthen the conclusion that the same symbolism prevailed in Peru as in Central America, Yucatan and Mexico.
[pg 171]Let us now rapidly journey northwards from Peru to these countries and briefly record the traces of the existence of the same ideas and quadruplicate form of government which we may encounter en route. In the elevated plains of Bogota we find positive proof that the Muyscas held the same ideas as their southern and northern neighbors. Their culture hero, Bochica or Ida-can-zas, was the personification of the Above and of its symbol, the Sun, whilst his wife was Chia, a name suspiciously like Quilla, the Quechua for moon. He was high-priest and ruler but counselled the Muyscas to elect one of themselves, a chief named Hunc-Ahua, to be their Za-que or civil ruler. Ida-can-zas instituted the Calendar and taught the Muyscas to appoint four chiefs of tribes whose names or titles are recorded as Gameza, Busbanca, Pesca and Toca. The institution of a dual government is indicated by the record that the high-priest dwelt at the sacred town Aura-ca and the Za-que at Tunja.
It is extremely curious to notice that Ida-can-zas, in Bogota, did precisely what Cortés found it expedient to do after the Conquest of Mexico. The latter assumed the supreme rulership over the nobility, became the “lord of Heaven” and instituted a native chieftain, bearing a female title, as his coadjutor, the lord of the earth, and the ruler of the people of the lower class.
It may be worth making the passing remark that the title of the Muysca culture-hero contains the word “can” and thus recalls the Maya Kukulcan and that the title Za-que offers a certain resemblance to the Maya title Chac, whilst the name Hunc-ahua seems strangely similar to Hun-ahau which in Maya would signify “one lord.” It is for Muysca scholars to enlighten us as to the derivation and meaning of the above titles and name.
Regretting the lack of time and documents which have prevented me from obtaining further data I now return to Guatemala and the vicinity of the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs. Referring to the introduction to their Annals39 we learn that the Cakchiquel tribe was but one of four allied nations, each of which had its capital, named Tecpan, as follows:
Nations: Capitals.
Cakchiquel: Tecpan Quauhtemallan,
Quiche: Utatlan,
Tzutuhil: Atitlan,
Akahal: Tezolotlan.
According to Mr. A. P. Maudslay's authoritative statement, these nations were engaged in warfare against each other at the time of the Conquest. Tezolotlan was termed the “tierra de guerra” the land of war, and the precise locality of its tecpan or former capital has not been traced, although it seems to have been close to Rabinal or in the valley of that name.
It is well known that, under the rulership of Tizoc, the Mexicans extended their conquests into Guatemala. Buschmann has, moreover, proven that the foregoing names of the capitals, of what were at one time four provinces, are pure Nahuatl, which fact establishes the existence of Nahua supremacy in these regions.
It is curious to find that one of the Santa Lucia slabs seems to commemorate the existence of a central rulership and that of the four quarters. It is reproduced in Mr. Strebel's publication already cited and represents a central personage holding a head and a tecpatl, whilst four lesser personages, each carrying a head, are figured as walking away in four opposed directions. As, according to native symbolism, the head is the symbol for chieftain this slab seems to commemorate the establishment and at all events testifies to the existence in Guatemala of the scheme of government now so familiar.
In their Annals, the Cakchiquels record, as I have already shown, that they carried their tribute to “the enclosure of Tulan,” a designation which supports my inference, previously maintained, that Tulan was derived from the Maya tulum,=a fortification, an enclosed place or that which is entire, whole, etc., and applied always to the metropolis of a state.
An ancient Cakchiquel legend relates, moreover, that, according to the “ancient men,” there had been four Tulans: one in the east, one in the north, one in the west and one “where the god dwells.” This would obviously have been situated towards the south in order to accord with the general scheme. I cannot but think that this record testifies to the existence of an extremely ancient state which starting from one metropolis had gradually developed into four great Tullans, to one of which the four tecpans of Guatemala pertained. The fact that the Spaniards found the four nations living close together, with capitals or tecpans bearing Nahuatl names and in constant warfare with each other, seems to indicate the destruction of their own ancient metropolis or Tullan by their Mexican [pg 173] conquerors and the consequent disintegration of their former government.40
The Mendoza Codex teaches us that when the Mexicans conquered a land they first burnt and utterly destroyed the teocallis situated in the heart of its central capital. They razed this to the ground, and carried off to their own metropolis the totemic images of the rulers of the tribe. The barbarous institution of human sacrifice, which was only practised to a great extent by the Mexicans when the necessity to obtain more plentiful food supplies for their rapidly increasing population forced them to become a nation of warriors and conquerors, seems indeed to have been adopted as a fear-inspiring, symbolical rite commemorating the conquest and destruction of an integral government.
The victim, usually a chieftain taken prisoner in warfare and clad with his insignia and the raiment of his people, was stretched on the stone of sacrifice and, figuratively speaking, represented his country and its four quarters. The tearing out of his heart by the high-priest, armed with the tecpatl, the emblem of supreme authority, signified the destruction of the independent life of his tribe as much as did the burning of the teocalli, and of its capital. It would seem as though the horrible custom of annually sacrificing one or more representatives of each conquered tribe, had been adopted as a means of upholding the assumed authority, inspiring awe and terror and impressing the realization of conquest and utter subjection. It is known that sometimes a member of a conquered tribe voluntarily offered himself as a victim in order to release his people from their obligation, and thus earned for himself immortality.
An insight into the native association of ideas is afforded by Sahagun's note that the lord or chieftain was “the heart of his Pueblo,” which means town as well as population. The death of the sacrificed chief, therefore, actually conveyed the idea of the destruction of the tribal government to his vanquished subjects. It remains to be seen whether the subsequent partition of portions [pg 174] of his dead body amongst the priesthood and their ritual cannibalism did not signify the absorption of the conquered population into the communal life of their victors. The preservation of the victim's skull on the Tzompantli, as a register of the conquest of a chieftain, would also be the logical outcome of the native line of thought and symbolism.
At the risk of making a somewhat lengthy digression I will again refer here to a point I have already touched upon, namely, the Mexican employment of the human figure as an allegorical image of their Empire or State, the idea being that the four limbs represented its four governmental and territorial divisions and that these were governed by the head=the lord of the Above or heaven, and the heart=the lord of the Below or earth. A careful study of the native Codices has shown me that such was the native allegory which indeed can be further traced. The territory of a state reproduced the organization of the human body with its four limbs, each of these terminating in minor groups of five.
According to the same set of ideas the cursive image of a state could be conveyed by a main group of five dots, situated in the centre of four minor similar groups. Cross-lines expressing the partition into four quarters would complete such a graphic and cursive presentation of the scheme and not only signify its territorial but also its governmental features. It is noteworthy that, in Nahuatl as in the Quechua, the title for minor chief is homonymous with the word for fingers.
The Nahuatl pilli is a title for a chieftain or lord and also signifies child and fingers or toes. A finger is ma-pilli, the prefix ma, from maitl=hand, designating the fingers as the children of the hand. The thumb is qualified by the prefix uei=great.
Having gained a recognition of the above facts it is not difficult to understand the meaning of certain sceptres in the form of an open hand which occur as symbols of authority borne by chieftains in the native Codices.41 I know of one important instance, indeed, where an arm with an open hand is represented as standing upright in the centre of a circle divided into sections and zones (similar to fig. 28, nos. 1, 3, 5, and 6).
The above mentioned examples, which I shall illustrate later, [pg 175] have led me to infer that whilst the arm symbolized one of the four divisions of the State, the hand symbolized its capital, the thumb its central ruler and the fingers his four officers or pilli, the rulers of the four quarters of the minor seat of government. In another publication I shall produce illustrations showing that the foot was also employed as an emblem of rule and that Mexico, Yucatan and Central America furnish us with actual proofs that the hands and the feet respectively symbolized the upper and lower divisions of the State.
It is thus curious to compare the name for thumb=uei-ma-pilli and the name Uei-mac (literally, great hand) which Sahagun gives as that of the “temporal” coadjutor of the Mexican culture-hero Quetzalcoatl, as well as the term, our toe=totecxopilli with the well-known title Totec=our chief or lord. In Yucatan the word for hand=kab is, as I shall demonstrate further on, actually incorporated in the title of the lords of the four quarters=Bakab. I am almost inclined to find a trace of a similar association in the Quechua word for fingers=pallca and the title palla bestowed upon noble women.
I have already mentioned in the preceding pages that the natural basis of the all-pervading native numerical division into 4×5=20 was the finger and toe count. The following table exhibits the general custom to designate 20 as one man or one count.42
In the latter case the affix kal seems to be derived from the same source as the verb kal=to close up or fasten something, and to signify something complete or finished. At the same time the Maya uinal is the Maya name for the twenty calendar-signs, and the same association is demonstrated as existing in Mexico by the well-known picture in the Vatican Codex i (p. 75), which represents a man surrounded by the twenty Mexican calendar-signs.
As I shall treat of the same subject more fully in another publication, [pg 176] I shall but briefly touch upon the intimate connection there existed between these calendar-signs and the twenty classes into which the population was strictly divided. It is known that an individual received the name of the day on which he was born and it is possible to prove that this determined his position in the commonwealth, his class and his future occupation. Each child was formally registered by the priestly statisticians at birth, and at about the age of six, when his name was sometimes changed, he entered one of the two educational establishments where he was brought up by the State, under the absolute control of the priesthood and rulers. It can be gleaned that one of the chief cares of the latter was to maintain the same average number of individuals in the distinct classes, to which the various forms of labor were allotted and who became in time identified with these. In order to keep the machinery of state in perfect adjustment, individuals had sometimes to be transferred from the class into which they were born, to another. In some cases this seems to have been arbitrarily ordered by the authorities, but the latter appear to have guided themselves by the position of the parents and to have established the custom that an individual might alternatively be transferred into the paternal or maternal class, but not into any other. As each class was, moreover, divided into an upper and lower one, it was possible for each person to elevate himself from the lower to the higher by individual merit or to incur abasement, for unworthy conduct, and being, as we have already seen, “reduced to the official rank of women.”
The direct outcome of such a form of organization was stringent laws governing marriage, it being expedient that certain classes only should intermarry, not only to avoid complications but also to ensure a certain degree of coöperation conducive to the prosperity of the State. In the tribal laws still existing amongst the native tribes of North America, I see the logical survivals of an ancient scheme of organization.
After gaining the above recognition of some of the actual duties of the priest-rulers of ancient Mexico, it is possible to understand the meaning of the native sentence, noted by Sahagun, that the native games of patolli and tlachtli constituted a practice in “the art of government.” From this it is clear that the former, played by two individuals with dice and markers upon a mat in the shape of a cross, and symbolical of the Four Quarters, was originally [pg 177] invented by the priest-rulers for an eminently practical purpose. The mat being an image of the quadruple state and its subdivisions, it was possible to make it serve as a register-board exhibiting the distribution of the population, the number of individuals in each class and its death and birth rates. We are informed that when parents, according to the inflexible law, carried their newborn child to the priest, he consulted his books full of day-signs and foretold what its future was to be.
A proof that it was the positions of the stars which determined the season and furnished the means of fixing a date, is furnished by the fact that the stars were also “consulted” and believed to exert an influence upon the destiny of the child.
The implicit faith in the predictions of the priests and in the absolute influence of the position of the heavenly bodies and the date of its birth upon the individual indicates that the parents were kept in ignorance as to the workings of the machinery of state and that the priesthood were reverenced for their power of prophecy. The belief that they could personally exercise a favorable influence over the destiny of the child seems also to have been encouraged in the parents, since an offering of gifts at the period of registration was customary. After the Conquest, when the native government had been completely broken up, and the enforced registration of birth and the prediction of the priest had utterly lost their original significance, native parents still consulted the surviving members of the priest-rulers; and these ancient statisticians, in order to gain a livelihood, continued to consult their books and uttered predictions as of yore, although their power to control their fulfilment had vanished forever. Ancient Mexico thus furnishes us with an interesting and instructive explanation of the origin of divinatory practices, prognostication at birth, etc. It shows us that, under the ancient form of established government, the sign of the date of a child's birth actually did control his future destiny, while it was unquestionably in the power of the priesthood, not only to predict his future, but also to exert a favorable or unfavorable influence upon it.
The above facts help us to understand the origin not only of divination, propitiation and the belief in the influence of day-signs, but also of the native games which became popular after the Conquest, when their original use and meaning had become obsolete.
Deferring further discussion of this interesting matter I will but [pg 178] draw attention to Mr. Stewart Culin's important study of “American Indian Games,”43 which clearly establishes their “interrelation” and at the same time proves that they were based, as first distinctly insisted upon by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, on the central idea and that of the four quarters of the world. Mr. Culin has gone so far as to fix the place of origin of the “platter or dice class of games which he has found recorded as existing among some 61 American tribes, in the arid region of the southwestern United States and Northern or Central Mexico,” and to conceive that “in ancient Mexico we find traces of its highest development.”
I place the utmost value upon Mr. Culin's painstaking and conscientious researches and regard them as strongly corroborating my views exposed in the preceding pages. His identification of the pictured diagram in the Féjérvary Codex, as the counting circuit of the Four Quarters, with a presiding god in the middle, as in Zuñi, does credit to his perspicacity. I agree with him in considering that this chart could have been employed after the Conquest for a game or for divination, but trust that, upon perusal of this paper, he will admit that primarily the Féjérvary diagram expressed the native scheme of government and the calendar, which was no other than a means of ruling the classes by binding each of these to a special day and totemic sign. Each of the twenty classes or clans had its day, known by a particular sign which was also its totemic mark. As the day-signs recurred periodically, the chief or head of each clan became its living representative, assumed a totemistic costume and became the “living image of the ancestral teotl,” or god of his people, of whose activity he rendered account to the central government. It is significant that the common native title for lords or chieftains was “tlatoque,” literally, “the speakers,” and that they were closely designated as the spokesmen of his people, who habitually kept silence in his presence.
The fact that the names and signs of the days are identical with the totemic tribal distinctions imposed for governmental reasons, is one which I shall proceed to demonstrate more fully. Meanwhile attention is now drawn to the chapter on the 7-day period in Dr. Daniel G. Brinton's “Native Calendar of Central America and Mexico,” in which he surmises that the tribal divisions of the Cakchiquels “were drawn from the numbers of the Calendar.”
[pg 179]According to the native records the institution of the Calendar was simultaneous with that of tribal organization and a minute study of both features reveals that it could not have been otherwise.
From the dawn of their history the Cakchiquels, as I have already shown, were divided into thirteen divisions of warriors (Khob, constituting the upper class) and seven tribes (Amag, constituting the lower class). A totem and a day being assigned to each division and tribe, they were, once and for all time, placed in a definite position towards each other and towards the state, and the order in which their chieftains were to sit in general council, and to assume or perform certain duties, was thus instituted. The 20-day period thus constituted a “complete count” and synopsis of the “thirteen divisions of warriors and seven tribes,” but it also fulfilled other not less important purposes.
The day-signs were so ordered that the first, eleventh and sixteenth were major signs employed to designate the years, and identified with the four quarters, elements and their respective colors. The 20-day period, consisting as it also did of 4 major signs and of 4×4=16 minor signs, was as closely linked to the idea of the Four Quarters as it was to the Above and Below, represented by the 13+7 division. It is therefore evident that a simultaneous reckoning of periods consisting of 5, 7, 13, and 20 days was ingeniously combined. I shall show in my special treatise how “the lords of the Night” employed in their astronomical calendar, 9-night and 9-moon periods for purposes of their own and how these also served to carry out certain ideas of organization, controlling persons. Although it embodied the results of long-standing primitive astronomical observation and accorded with the seasons and movements of the celestial bodies, the native Calendar was primarily a governmental institution, designed to control the actions of human beings and bring their communal life in accord with the periodical movements of the heavenly bodies.
In my Note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System, communicated to the International Congress of Americanists at Stockholm, in 1894, I stated certain historical and astronomical facts which showed that the New Cycle, which began in 1507 with the year Acatl, had commenced on March 14th three days after the vernal equinox and that this delay had obviously been intentional, in order to wait for the new moon, which fell on March 13th at 11.40 a. m., and the planet Venus, “which was possibly visible both [pg 180] as morning and evening star between March 14th and 18th.” The above facts, which have remained unchallenged since their publication, afford an insight into the astronomical attainments of the sun-priests and moon and star-priests and show an evident desire to begin a new era at a favorable time, when there was a conjunction of the heavenly bodies. Thus the terms of office of the lords of the Above and Below were entered upon and the machinery of state set into motion, in unison with striking celestial phenomena. It is impossible not to realize how great must be the antiquity of a system which, evolving from the rudimentary, ceremonial division of a tribe into seven parts, as a consequence of its primitive observation of the Septentriones, developed into a great and complex government dominated and pervaded by the abstract conceptions of the seven-fold divisions of the Above, Below, Middle and Four Quarters.
Deferring further comment I will proceed to demonstrate the practical value, for governmental purposes, of the classification of a community into twenty divisions with as many representative heads, their localizations at given points of the compass, and association with a calendar-sign and day, and will only refer to what I have already published in my Note on the Calendar, namely, how, by means of the combination of 13 numerals with the 20 signs, a unit of 260 days was obtained, and how each sign was combined but once with the same number, and a perfect system of rotation of periods, regulating office, labor, etc., was instituted. It is not possible for me to enlarge here upon the features and merits of the system which I do not hesitate to term one of the most admirable and perfect achievements of the human intellect. My present purpose is to lay stress upon the fact that, in Mexico, the major calendar-signs were borne as titles by the rulers of the four quarters who presided in rotation over a year—the name of this and of their title being always in correspondence.
Nezahualcoyotl, the lord of Tezcoco, is recorded as possessing the title Ome Tochtli=2 Rabbit, and would obviously have presided over the calendar periods of that name. This inference is undoubtedly corroborated by Nuñez de la Vega's following statement, quoted by Boturini:44
“Instead of the Mexican signs Acatl, Tecpatl, Calli and Tochtli, the Tzendals, inhabiting Chiapas, employed in their Calendar [pg 181] the names of four of their chieftains: Votan, Lambat, Been and Chinax.... They also figured a man named Coslahuntax, as seated in a chair....” Boturini remarks that this person should more correctly be named Imos or Max and was “the head of the 20 lords who were the symbols of the 20 days of the Calendar. Being the principal and initial sign, Coslahuntax represented in himself the period of thirteen days.” As Dr. Brinton rightly notes45 the name of the personage should be Oxlaghun tax, literally signifying “the thirteen divisions or parts.”
We thus see that, whilst the names of the chiefs of the four quarters constituted the four major calendar-signs, one supreme lord embodied the attributes or “powers” of the 13 divisions of warriors and principal division. Thus the 13 divisions seem to have been regarded as 12 plus an all-embracing 1.
Nuñez de la Vega continues: “In the representations of their calendar they painted seven black persons, corresponding to the seven days of their reckoning.” Boturini adds: these seven black men were no other than the principal priest-rulers of this nation.... “They held in great veneration the ‘lord of the black men,’ who was entitled Yal-ahua.” Boturini comments on this utterance and explains that the latter was no other than the high-priest.
I point out the evident identity of Yal-ahua to the Mexican Yoal-tecuhtli=the lord of the Night, one of the titles given to Polaris and to his earthly representative, the high priest of the Earth and nocturnal cult. As already explained this personage bore in Mexico the female title, Cihuacoatl=Woman-serpent; but we also find this name for the earth-mother alternating with Chicome-coatl=literally, seven serpents. In Beltran de la Rosa's “Arte Maya” we find the word “Ahaucchapat,” translated as “Serpent with seven heads” and are thus led to infer that the Mexicans and Mayas had conceived the image of a “serpent with seven heads” as an allegory of the seven tribal divisions united in one body and bestowed this title to the representative of the Earth-cult, the high priest of the Below. It follows that, just as the number 13 resolves itself into 12+1, so the mystic number 7 proves to have been considered as 6+1, precisely what might be expected as the natural sequence of the derivation of the number from a circumpolar constellation, consisting of seven stars, [pg 182] one of which was Polaris. Nuñez de la Vega and Boturini's testimony teaches us that the Tzendals were organized into twenty divisions and that thirteen of these were embodied in one chief, while the seven others, associated with black, were personified by the high priest. The information that one individual was thus believed to unite in his person the attributes of several classes and that the lords of the four quarters and each of the twenty divisions bore names which were also calendar-signs, gain in value when it is realized that, in the opinion of Drs. Schellhas and Brinton, the invention of the native Calendar system may probably be assigned to the ancient inhabitants of Chiapas, where the Tzendals now dwell.46 In treating of the ruins of Palenque situated in this region, I shall again refer to the Tzendals.
Meanwhile, let us examine the Cakchiquel tradition about Cucumatz, the sorcerer chief of the Quichés, since it also treats of the 7-day period. We are told that he “ascended to heaven for seven days and descended into the under world for seven days and then assumed, in rotation, four different animal forms during as many periods of seven days.”
It is impossible not to recognize from this that, like the Zuñis of to-day, the Quichés “symbolized the terrestrial sphere by referring to the four cardinal points, to the zenith and nadir, the individual himself making the seventh number,” and that Cucumatz, who was evidently the high priest and head of the seven tribes, assumed the totemistic attributes of each of these, in rotation, for periods of seven days each. In this case we have an interesting and suggestive variant of the scheme and it suggests the possibility that, possibly actuated by ambition, Cucumatz had grasped and united in his person the prerogatives of the chiefs or heads of each tribe. On the other hand, it may be that it was the original custom for the high priest to be a sort of animated calendar sign in unison with the separate chiefs of each tribe, who represented, in rotation, the totemistic ancestors of their people.
Having shown how the lords of the Four Quarters were indissolubly linked to the four major calendar-signs which also symbolized the elements, let us examine the data establishing that the capital of each of the four provinces was named a tecpan. From Duran I have already quoted that in the Mexican metropolis there [pg 183] were two tecpans or official houses in which the affairs of the government were attended to and councils held. It is significant that one of these was named “the tecpan of men” and the other “the tecpan of women.” Whilst the metropolis, the seat of the dual government, thus had its two tecpans which were presided over by the two supreme rulers, we have learned from other sources of the four tecpans in Guatemala and that Texcoco, near the city of Mexico, was also termed a tecpan and that its ruler bore as a title one of the four major calendar-signs. These facts explain his position and the reason why the “lord of Texcoco” was one of four lords who supported Montezuma when he met Cortés in full state. A careful investigation of the derivation and true significance of the word tecpan yields interesting results. Cen-tecpan-tli means, a count of twenty persons; the verb tecpana signifies, “to establish something in concerted order; to establish order amongst people.” The verb tecpancapoa means, to count something in regular order.
The Maya verb tepal=to govern or reign, or to be “one who mediates,” appears to be allied to the above Nahuatl words and it is not unlikely that the employment of the flint-knife or tecpatl as an emblem of office had been suggested by the fact that its Nahuatl name resembles, in sound, the above words formed with tecpan, and also the Maya verb tepal. It thus constituted a bilingual rebus, expressing the sense=to govern, to rule, to regulate, etc., and, employed as the symbol of the North and Polaris, it conveyed the idea that the latter was not only the producer of life but the regulator of the Universe.
From the fact that a tecpan constituted a minor integral whole and comprised the rule over twenty classes of people, we see that whilst the four provincial tecpans were in themselves miniature reproductions of the metropolis, they but filled the same position in relation to this as the four limbs to the body of a man or quadruped. A final proof of how completely this analogy was recognized by the native rulers is furnished by the Maya titles which embody the word kab=arm and hand.
It has already been mentioned in the preceding pages that the rulers of the four quarters were entitled Ba-cab and that in the Dresden Codex an image of the four quarters was figured by four bones. The word for bone being bac and for arm being kab, it is obvious that the arm-bone or humerus would furnish a rebus, expressing [pg 184] the title of the four Bacabs—a conclusion which throws light upon the signification of the cross-bones of native pictography and also of the incised and decorated human arm and leg bones which have been found in Mexico and Yucatan.
At the same time the word kab also recurs in the title Ah-Cuch-Cab which signifies “the ruler or chief of a town or place,” Cuchil being the name of the latter. Both of these words so closely resemble cuxabal and cuxtal, the word for “life,” that it is not impossible that the native mind often associated the town as a centre of life, and thought of their chief as one whose symbol was a “life-dispensing hand.” In order to grasp the full significance of the symbol of the hand in Maya sculptured and written records it is necessary to bear these facts in mind.
In 1895 Mr. Teobert Maler unearthed in the centre of the public square at “El Seibal,” Guatemala, a sculptured stela exhibiting the figures of a chieftain over whose head an open hand was carved. It is impossible not to interpret this as a mark that the chieftain had once been the ruler of a town and that this, in turn, was one of four minor capitals belonging to a central metropolis. A hand, enclosed in quadrangular lines and represented on the garment of a chieftain, was found by Dr. Le Plongeon at Uxmal, and I believe that this should be interpreted in the same manner.
In my essay on Ancient Mexican Shields (Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, band v, 1892) I reproduced two interesting instances of the employment, as the name-sign of a ruler in native pictography, of a hand on the palm of which an eye is depicted. The effigy of a hand, the sacred Kab-ul, which was kept in a place in Yucatan to which people from all quarters resorted regularly in great numbers, resolves itself into the symbol of an ancient capital to which great high-roads led from the cardinal points. But important as this capital may have been, its connection with the hand-symbol proves that it was originally one of four minor centres and formed but a part of a greater whole. It would correspond to the image, in one of the native Codices, of a subdivided circle with an arm and hand standing in its middle, and its Bacab would undoubtedly have carried a sceptre in the shape of an open hand, such as depicted in the Codices as a staff of office.
While we thus find the human figure distinctly associated with the lords of the four quarters of the Above we find the four lords of the Below, entitled Chac, symbolized by the quadruped figure [pg 185] of the native jaguar=chacoh, associated with the color red=chac and with rain, storms, thunder and lightning, all of which phenomena were, singly and collectively, termed Chác.
If ever there has been an instance where language or the resemblance in sound of certain words has caused certain symbols to amalgamate with a name or title, it is surely this, and light is thereby thrown upon the development of symbolism and associations of thought amongst primitive people.
The Chacs of Yucatan were identical with the Tlalocs, the octli or rain lords of Mexico, whose function, as votaries of earth-cult, was the regulation of agriculture, irrigation and the collection and distribution of all products of the soil. It is interesting to trace that, in other regions of Yucatan, presumably where no chacohs or jaguars existed, the minor rulers of provinces seem to have been termed ocelots=Balam, a title found associated with Maya rulership.
With the foregoing data in mind it is easy to grasp the meaning of the talon of a beast of prey, employed as an emblem of rank or office in the native Codices or bas-reliefs and to perceive that this was the symbol of a Chac or Balam, one of the four lords of the earth or Below, just as the hand was that of the lords of the Above. The complete image of the dual State is thus shown to have consisted at one time of an ideal group consisting of a man with a beast of prey, a jaguar or ocelot. In Mexico we have the man-bird and the man-ocelot respectively representing the rulers of the two great divisions of the State.
At Chichen-Itza and elsewhere in Yucatan sculptured figures of ocelots supporting circular vessels have been found and there are interesting instances of the combination of the human figure with ocelot=Balam attributes. One monolithic figure, discovered at Chichen-Itza by Mr. A. P. Maudslay, and belonging to the category of the recumbent statues bearing circular vase-like receptacles, already described, exhibits a human head and form, whilst the body is covered with a spotted skin. In the sculptured image of Mictlan-tecuhtli (fig. 19) a human head is accompanied by limbs of equal length-terminating in wild beasts' talons. The positions of the limbs are better understood when compared with the following illustration, to which I shall revert (fig. 51). Meanwhile, I shall merely remark that in both of these curious bas-reliefs we seem to have images of the quadruple terrestrial and celestial [pg 186] governments. Fig. 51, which is a corrected drawing of one of those contained in Leon y Gama's “Descripcion de las dos Piedras,” furnishes an interesting example, in accord with the image of Mictlantecuhtli, of the employment of the group of five as a symbol of the centre and four quarters, and exhibits four limbs associated with four heads (the quarters and their chiefs), while the hands hold two other heads, symbolical of the dual rulers of the State.
Two facts which throw an interesting light upon the growth of native symbolism are worth mentioning here. As a symbol on the head of Mictlan-tecuhtli, the lord of the North, two representations of a centipede are distinguishable. In Nahuatl the name of this is “centzonmaye,” literally, four hundred hands. It can thus be seen that the idea of one body with a multitude of hands had occurred to the native philosophers as a suitable allegory for their conception of a central celestial and terrestrial rule which guided the activity of innumerable appointed hands and dispensed, through these, not only life and favors but also death or chastisement.