Among the musical instruments used by the Mayas there were two kinds of drums—the Tunkul and the Zacatan. They are still used by the aborigines in their religious festivals and dances.
The Tunkul is a cylinder hollowed from the trunk of a tree, so as to leave it about one inch in thickness all round. It is generally about four feet in length. On one side two slits are cut, so as to leave between them a strip of about four inches in width, to within six inches from the ends; this strip is divided in the middle, across, so as to form, as it were, tongues. It is by striking on those tongues with two balls of india-rubber, attached to the end of sticks, that the instrument is played. The volume of sound produced is so great that it can be heard, is is said, at a distance of six miles in calm weather. The Zacatan is another sort of drum, also hollowed from the trunk of a tree. This is opened at both ends. On one end a piece of skin is tightly stretched. It is by beating on the skin with the hand, the instrument being supported between the legs of the drummer, in a slanting position, that it is played.
Du Chaillu, Stanley and other travelers in Africa tell us that, in case of danger and to call the clans together, the big war drum is beaten, and is heard many miles around. Du Chaillu asserts having seen one of these Ngoma, formed of a hollow log, nine feet long, at Apono; and describes a Fan drum which corresponds to the Zacatan of the Mayas as follows: “The cylinder was about four feet long and ten inches in diameter at one end, but only seven at the other. The wood was hollowed out quite thin, and the skin stretched over tightly. To beat it the drummer held it slantingly between his legs, and with two sticks beats furiously upon the upper, which was the larger end of the cylinder.”
We have the counterpart of the fetish houses, containing the skulls of the ancestors and some idol or other, seen by Du Chaillu, in African towns, in the small huts constructed at the entrance of all the villages in Yucatan. These huts or shrines contain invariably a crucifix; at times the image of some saint, often a skull. The last probably to cause the wayfarer to remember he has to die; and that, as he cannot carry with him his worldly treasures on the other side of the grave, he had better deposit some in the alms box firmly fastened at the foot of the cross. Cogolludo informs us these little shrines were anciently dedicated to the god of lovers, of histrions, of dancers, and an infinity of small idols that were placed at the entrance of the villages, roads and staircases of the temples and other parts.
Even the breed of African dogs seems to be the same as that of the native dogs of Yucatan. Were I to describe these I could not make use of more appropriate words than the following of Du Chaillu: “The pure bred native dog is small, has long straight ears, long muzzle and long curly tail; the hair is short and the color yellowish; the pure breed being known by the clearness of his color. They are always lean, and are kept very short of food by their owners. * * * Although they have quick ears; I don’t think highly of their scent. They are good watch dogs.”
I could continue this list of similes, but methinks those already mentioned as sufficient for the present purpose. I will therefore close it by mentioning this strange belief that Du Chaillu asserts exists among the African warriors: “The charmed leopard’s skin worn about the warrior’s middle is supposed to render that worthy spear-proof.”
Let us now take a brief retrospective glance at the FACTS mentioned in the foregoing pages. They seem to teach us that, in ages so remote as to be well nigh lost in the abyss of the past, the Mayas were a great and powerful nation, whose people had reached a high degree of civilization. That it is impossible for us to form a correct idea of their attainments, since only the most enduring monuments, built by them, have reached us, resisting the disintegrating action of time and atmosphere. That, as the English of to-day, they had colonies all over the earth; for we find their name, their traditions, their customs and their language scattered in many distant countries, among whose inhabitants they apparently exercised considerable civilizing influence, since they gave names to their gods, to their tribes, to their cities.
We cannot doubt that the colonists carried with them the old traditions of the mother country, and the history of the founders of their nationality; since we find them in the countries where they seem to have established large settlements soon after leaving the land of their birth. In course of time these traditions have become disfigured, wrapped, as it were, in myths, creations of fanciful and untutored imaginations, as in Hindostan: or devises of crafty priests, striving to hide the truth from the ignorant mass of the people, fostering their superstitions, in order to preserve unbounded and undisputed sway over them, as in Egypt.
In Hindostan, for example, we find the Maya custom of carrying the children astride on the hips of the nurses. That of recording the vow of the devotees, or of imploring the blessings of deity by the imprint of the hand, dipped in red liquid, stamped on the walls of the shrines and palaces. The worship of the mastodon, still extant in India, Siam, Burmah, as in the worship of Ganeza, the god of knowledge, with an elephant head, degenerated in that of the elephant itself.
Still extant we find likewise the innate propensity of the Mayas to exclude all foreigners from their country; even to put to death those who enter their territories (as do, even to-day, those of Santa Cruz and the inhabitants of the Tierra de Guerra) as the emissaries of Rama were informed by the friend of the owner of the country, the widow of the great architect, Maya, whose name Hema means in the Maya language “she who places ropes across the roads to impede the passage.” Even the history of the death of her husband Maya, killed with a thunderbolt, by the god Pourandara, whose jealousy was aroused by his love for her and their marriage, recalls that of Chaacmol, the husband of Moó, killed by their brother Aac, by being stabbed by him three times in the back with a spear, through jealousy—for he also loved Moó.