The Stone God, indeed, is a prominent figure in their mythology, as it was in their daily life. This was the sacred Chay Abah, the Obsidian Stone, which was the oracle of their nation, and which revealed the will of the gods on all important civil and military questions. To this day, their relatives, the Mayas of Yucatan, attach implicit faith to the revelations of the zaztun, the divining stone kept by their sorcerers, and if it decrees the death of any one, they will despatch him with their machetes, without the slightest hesitation.[43-1] The belief was cherished by the rulers and priests, as they alone possessed the power to gaze on the polished surface of the sacred block of obsidian, and read thereupon the invisible decrees of divinity. (See above, p. [25]).
As the stone came from the earth, it was said to have been derived from the under world, from Xibalbay, literally the unseen or invisible place, the populous realm in Quiche myth, visited and conquered by their culture hero, Xbalanque. Hence in Cakchiquel tale, the Chay Abah represented the principle of life, as well as the source of knowledge.[43-2]
The Cakchiquel Annals do not pretend to deal with[44] mythology, but from various references and fragments inserted as history, it is plain that they shared the same sacred legends as the Quiches, which were, in all probability, under slightly different forms, the common property of the Maya race. They all indicate loans from the Aztec mythology. In the Cakchiquel Annals, as in the Popol Vuh and the Maya Chronicles, we hear of the city of the sun god, Tulan or Tonatlan, as the place of their origin, of the land Zuiva and of the Nonoalcos, names belonging to the oldest cycles of myths in the religion of the Aztecs. In the first volume of this series I have discussed their appearance in the legends of Central America,[44-1] and need not refer to them here more than to say that those who have founded on these names theories of the derivation of the Maya tribes or their ruling families from the Toltecs, a purely imaginary people, have perpetrated the common error of mistaking myth for history. It is this error that renders valueless much that the Abbé Brasseur, M. Charnay and others of the French school, have written on this subject.
Xahila gives an interesting description of some of their ancient rites ([Sec. 44]). Their sacred days were the 7th and 13th of each week. White resin was burned as incense, and green branches with the bark of evergreen trees were brought to the temple, and burned before the idol, together with a small animal, which he calls a cat, “as the image of night;” but our domestic cat was unknown to them, and what animal was originally meant by the word mez, I do not know.
He mentions that the priests and nobles drew blood with[45] the spines of the gourd tree and maguey, and elsewhere ([Sec. 37]) refers to the sacrifice of infants at a certain festival. The word for the sacrificial letting of blood was
ohb, which, by some of the missionaries, was claimed as the root of the word
abuil, deity.
Human sacrifice was undoubtedly frequent, although the reverse has been asserted by various historians.[45-1] Father Varea gives some curious particulars. The victim was immolated by fire, the proper word being