Fig. 14.
A. The so-called "sea-goat" of Babylonia, a creature compounded of the antelope and fish of Ea.
B. The "sea-goat" as the vehicle of Ea or Marduk.
C to K—a series of varieties of the makara from the Buddhist Rails at Buddha Gaya and Mathura, circa 70 b.c.-70 a.d., after Cunningham ("Archæological Survey of India," Vol. III, 1873, Plates IX and XXIX).
L. The makara as the vehicle of Varuna, after Sir George Birdwood. It is not difficult to understand how, in the course of the easterly diffusion of culture, such a picture should develop into the Chinese Dragon or the American Elephant-headed God.
I have already called attention[152] to the part played by the makara in determining the development of the form of the elephant-headed god in America. Another form of the makara is described in the following American legend, which is interesting also as a mutilated version of the original dragon-story of the Old World.
In 1912 Hernández translated and published a Maya manuscript[153] which had been written out in Spanish characters in the early days of the conquest of the Americas, but had been overlooked until six years ago. It is an account of the creation, and includes the following passages: "All at once came the water [? rain] after the dragon was carried away. The heaven was broken up; it fell upon the earth; and they say that Cantul-ti-ku (four gods), the four Baccab, were those who destroyed it.... 'The whole world', said Ah-uuc-chek-nale (he who seven times makes fruitful), 'proceeded from the seven bosoms of the earth.' And he descended to make fruitful Itzam-kab-uin (the female whale with alligator-feet), when he came down from the central angle of the heavenly region" (p. 171).
Hernández adds that "the old fishermen of Yucatan still call the whale Itzam: this explains the name of Itzaes, by which the Mayas were known before the founding of Mayapan".
The close analogy to the Indra-story is suggested by the phrase describing the coming of the water "after the dragon was carried away". Moreover, the Indian sea-elephant makara, which was confused in the Old World with the dolphin of Aphrodite, and was sometimes also regarded as a crocodile, naturally suggests that the "female whale with the alligator-feet" was only an American version of the old Indian legend.
All this serves, not only to corroborate the inferences drawn from the other sources of information which I have already indicated, but also to suggest that, in addition to borrowing the chief divinities of their pantheon from India, the Maya people's original name was derived from the same mythology.[154]