In a problem like this small proofs are often most valuable, and if all else were lacking, the absence in Central America of the glazed roofing-tile so common in China from 2000 B.C. is very significant seeing that pottery-glazing had been brought to a high point of perfection there. Again, in China the potter's wheel and the plough were in common use from the earliest times, but there is no trace of either in Central America. Indeed, no one has been able to produce a piece of real evidence for the theory that the Chinese endowed the Mayans with their art of building.
But if in Egypt, Japan, and China we have not been even "warm" as children's forfeit-games have it, when we turn to India and the Malay Peninsula we are growing distinctly "burning." In such a problem the evidence most valuable is perhaps afforded by the opinions of those who have not worked in the special field of archæology, and are thus untrammelled by theories. Let us start with one or two such opinions, and then we will pass from this general to the particular evidence which to our minds proves that America obtained her architecture from this part of Asia.
Mr. R. Spence Hardy in his book Eastern Monachism (London, 1850), after seeing drawings of the monuments of Yucatan, on p. 22 writes, "The ancient edifices of Chichen in Central America bear a striking resemblance to the topes of India. The shape of one of the domes, the apparent size, the small tower on the summit, the trees growing on the sides, the appearance of masonry here and there, the style of ornamentation, and the small doorways at the base, are so exactly similar to what I have seen at Anuradhapura that when my eyes first fell upon the engravings of the remarkable ruins, I supposed that they were represented in illustration of the dagobas of Ceylon."
Writing in The Edinburgh Review for April, 1867, another author says, "The great temple at Palenque so closely corresponds in its principal details with that of Boro Budor, in the province of Kedu (Java) ... as to place beyond all reasonable debate the common purpose and origin of both. Both were elevated on a series of graduated platforms or terraces; and are reached by successive flights of steps, facing the cardinal points. The chambers in both are disproportionately small, with no apertures, except the doorways, for the admission of air and light; their curved ceilings, formed of stones overlapping each other, triangular-wise and constituting what is known as the cyclopean arch, are precisely alike."
Other authors might be quoted to show that the general appearance of the two sets of ruins is so similar as to attract the attention of the casual visitor; but we will now pass to our particular evidence. As will have been seen from many of our illustrations, the buildings of Central America were, with but a few exceptions, built on pyramids. Now it is a fact that wherever Buddhism prevailed in ancient times we find the truncated pyramid, either of the square or round form. As at the temple of Boro Budor, these pyramids generally had buildings on the top. They were built of earth and rubble covered with a layer of bricks or hewn stone, the whole then plastered over with stucco which, according to Spence Hardy, is composed of lime, cocoanut water, and the juice of the paragua. The ruins of Chichen, Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, Labna and all the others we visited were built in the same way. The pyramids are invariably built of earth and rubble covered over with a layer of hewn stone slabs of various sizes. The walls of buildings, as in the Tennis Court at Chichen, often had a section in the centre filled up with rubble. And in most cases the whole had been stuccoed over.
Now let us take that most characteristic of all features of Mayan architecture, the so-called Mayan arch. In the strict sense it is not an arch at all. It never reached the stage of being curved, but was a series of inverted steps rising to the roof and crowned with a slab, as will be plainly seen in our illustration. Sometimes the steps were hewn off so as to give an even surface on which plaster was smeared. Now this peculiar arch is found in ancient Buddhist structures and nowhere else in the world. John Crawfurd in his History of the Indian Archipelago (3 vols.: Edinburgh, 1820), in vol. ii. p. 200, when speaking of the interior of the buildings there, writes: "The stones overlap each other within so as to present to the eye the appearance of inverted steps of a stair.... The builders of Bramhanan had possessed the art of turning the elliptical arch and vault, for the entrances and doorways are all arched and the roofs vaulted. A circular vault or arch, however, is nowhere to be found among the ruins; and the principle of turning an arch is nowhere carried to such a length as to convey the impression of grandeur or magnificence." This might as appropriately have been written of the Mayan buildings. Where in the very few instances the arch was continued along more than one side of the building, as in the Castillo of Chichen, it does not make a circular turn, but comes to a corner and then goes off at right angles. The only circular turning arch we saw was the continuously rounded one in the Caracol at Chichen.
DIAGRAM OF MAYAN ARCH.