Of the Buddhist monks, Sir Monier Williams in his Buddhism, p. 312, describing their daily life, writes: "Arranging themselves in line, they set out with the abbot at their head to receive their food. Silently they move on through the streets, fixing their eyes steadily on the ground six feet before them, meditating on the vanity and mutability of things, and only halting when a layman emerges from some door to pour his contribution of rice or fruit or vegetable into their alms bowls."
The Mayan priests were not only bound to celibacy, but they were never allowed to come into contact with women. This was the Buddhist rule, though slowly to be much relaxed. Sir Monier Williams, p. 152, says, "There is evidence that among certain monkish communities in Northern countries the law against marriage was soon relaxed. It is well known that at the present day Lamaseries in Sikkim and Thibet swarm with children of monks, though called their nephews and nieces." A further curious parallel is that women took part in the ritual of both Mayans and Buddhists. Gautama had an early order by which women were admitted to nunneries under the same rules as men. Among the Mayans, women were ministrants in the temples, as at Isla de Mujeres, while at Chichen, Uxmal and other cities, there were large nuns' houses.
Sir Monier Williams on p. 83 says, "The eating at midday the one meal and at no other time" was the custom of the Buddhist priests, and they "fasted on prescribed days." H. Bancroft, in his Native Races of the Pacific States (1875-6, New York), says that among the priests of Mexico "fasting was observed as an atonement for sin, as well as a preparation for solemn festivals. An ordinary fast consisted of abstaining from meat for a period of one to ten days, and taking one meal at noon; and at no other hour could so much as a drop of water be touched." Sir Monier Williams (p. 313) says, "When the midday meal is over, all return to work. Some undertake the teaching of the boy scholars. Others read the texts of the Tripitaka with their commentaries, or superintend the writers who are copying manuscripts. Some of the older members sink into deep meditation." Father Torquemada, a leading historian of Mexico, tells us that the priests "passed much of their time in contemplation and in writing the annals of the country." It may be here worth mention that the Zapotecan (Mayan) priests obtained their inspiration by a species of auto-suggestion terminating in an ecstatic trance. This would certainly seem to be a parallel to the Buddhist trance.
Sir M. Williams on p. 506 says, "Everywhere throughout the Buddhist countries the supposed impressions of the Buddha's feet are as much honoured as those of the god Vishnu by Vaishnavas.... No true Vaishnava will leave his house in the morning without marking his forehead with the symbol of Vishnu's feet." The Jains worship the footprint on Mount Parasnath in Bengal; while there are sacred footprints of Buddha at Bharahat, Sanchi, Amaravati, and the famous Adam's Peak in Ceylon and at Phra Bat in Siam, the latter two supposed to represent the right and left feet respectively as he stepped in one stride from Ceylon to Siam.
Now it is a very strange fact that there is this legend of sacred footprints in America, and more curiously still, the legend associates itself with the East. In his Hero Myths, p. 220, D. G. Brinton says, speaking of the arts of the Muycas of New Granada, "The knowledge of these various arts they attributed to the instruction of a wise stranger who dwelt among them many cycles before the arrival of the Spaniards. He came from the East.... In the province of Ubaque his footprints on the solid rock were reverently pointed out long after the Conquest." A second footprint was found by Dupaix at Zachilla, the ancient capital of the Zapotecs, a Mayan tribe; while a third which Brinton examined in Nicaragua, an account of which is given in his The Ancient Footprints in Nicaragua, was simply the footprint of an ordinary man impressed on volcanic rock before the lava hardened. Brinton points out that the foot which made the mark was sandalled, showing that it was done by a native. But that these legendary marks had very commonplace origins does not affect the curious community of legend which thus appears to have existed between Central America and Buddhist lands.
Many minor habits and customs might be cited to show how strangely alike the Mayans were, and still are, to some Buddhist peoples. Thus all Mayan mothers carry their babies sitting a-straddle of their hips, though other American Indian women carry the little ones Apache-fashion in a cradle-board, or in a bundle like the Mexican Aztecs, slung on their backs; and this carrying on the hip, peculiar to the Mayans, is the invariable manner of carrying the child in India, Burma and Siam to-day. Another point is that the manuscripts in both countries are folded peculiarly, namely in a zigzag way. Dr. Brinton says in his Maya Chronicles (1882), "The Maya MSS. consisted of one long sheet of a kind of paper made by macerating and beating together the leaves of the maguey and afterwards sizing the surface with a durable white varnish. The sheet was folded like a screen (i.e. zigzag) forming pages about 9 × 5 inches. Both sides were covered with figures and characters painted in various brilliant colours. On the outer pages boards were fastened for protection." This might be an account of the Buddhist olas as they exist today and as doubtless they have always existed.
Again, the system of Castes—peculiar to the East and unknown to the North American Red Indians—existed among the Mayans, as we have described in Chapter XIV. The ancient Mayans, too, had two languages—one for use in addressing superiors and one for inferiors, and this was the case in Cambodia and Java.
Many minutest customs of the two peoples show parallels which are hard to explain except as the result of intercourse. Thus baby-girls in Java wore a string round the waist, from which hung a shell, the removal of which during maidenhood and until the marriage night was regarded as sinful. This had its exact replica among the Mayans, whose girl-children often still wear the shell. The Mayan carvings of priests' figures always show a carved medallion of jade or stone worn hanging by a chain round the neck. Almost without exception this badge-like ornament hangs round the neck of the ancient Buddhist figures sculptured in the East, and is said to be still worn by the priests in Siam and Burma to-day. In the East, as in Mexico, the points of the compass were represented by colours, though it is not proved they followed the same sequence. In Buddhist countries a piece of green jade is sometimes buried with the dead, and this has been proved to have been a Mayan custom, the stone being thought to have magic properties in speeding the deceased to another world. Such minute similarity of custom and belief as is shown by these examples cannot be mere coincidence. Taken separately, there is not one that would prove the affinity between the East and America; but when taken together, they certainly form striking evidence.
But there is one thing yet lacking, a missing link in the chain of evidence binding together the Buddhist East and Tropical America. Professor E. Morse, in his paper Was Middle America Peopled from Asia? has justly pointed out that "to go straight across the ocean (Pacific) is one matter, but to go from latitude 30° on one side of the Pacific almost to the Arctic Ocean and down on the other side nearly to the Equator is quite another exploit." Most truly said, for such a voyage is possible, but most improbable. Those who would have us believe that Middle America was peopled from Asia have agreed in assuming that it was via the Behring Straits or the Aleutian Islands. We agree with Professor E. Morse (if we have read his pamphlet correctly) that if some means of getting Eastern invaders across the Pacific and not round it were shown, it would go far to prove the Asiatic origin of Central American civilisation.
The Japan Current (Kuro Siwa) has been the route accepted by all who believe that Central American civilisation hails from Japan and China. It runs swiftly along the coast of China and Japan towards the Behring Straits, and there bifurcates, one part running into the Arctic Ocean and the other turning down and running parallel with the coast of America. This current has proved irresistibly attractive, for it is certain that those swept on by it would have land in sight the whole way, and Charles Waldcott Brooks has shown in his report to the California Academy of Science on the Japanese Vessels wrecked in the North Pacific Ocean, that ships from Asia could easily reach the Oregon and Californian coasts by drifting, as he has proved in the case of several derelicts.