Lord Kingsborough is no doubt warranted in holding that the Nahuas were of old world origin at a very remote period prior to their having developed any special tribal characteristics, because of their singular and we think certain knowledge of the Mosaic deluge; but he is not justified in claiming for them any particular relationship to the Jewish or any Shemitic people.[655]
In a preceding chapter we have given the deluge tradition from Ixtlilxochitl, who states that the waters rose fifteen cubits (caxtolmoletltli) above the highest mountains, and that a few escaped in a close chest (toptlipetlacali), and after men had multiplied, they erected a very high zacuali or tower, in order to take refuge in it should the world be again destroyed. He further states that then their speech was confused, so that they could not understand each other, and that they dispersed to different parts of the earth.[656] Whether the native historian of Tezcuco who gives us this account, so remarkable for its similarity to the Mosaic, was influenced by Spanish priests and warped from the truth, we are not prepared to affirm at this distant day, since such an assumption would strike the very keystone from the arch upon which all historical evidence rests. Much of the aversion to the view that the Mexican deluge legends are authentic and of old world origin, has been generated by the unscientific and presumptuous style of most of its advocates. Lord Kingsborough himself is ever ready to catch at a straw, and out of customs the most remote to evolve an analogy. Nevertheless, we are not at liberty to reject the Mexican deluge legend as a fable without assuming the burden of proof.[657] Remarkable parallels (?) in the history of both Jews and Mexicans are thought to be discovered by the sanguine Kingsborough. Of a number, two or three specimens will suffice. Hue hue Tlapalan is claimed to have been situated on the Californian coast since the Gulf of California until a late period was called the red river or gulf, a name they brought with them.[658] Again: “As the Israelites were conducted from Egypt by Moses and Aaron who were accompanied by their sister Miriam, so the Aztecs departed from Aztlan under the guidance of Huitziton and Tecpalzin, the former of whom is named by Acosta and Herrera, Mixi, attended likewise by their sister Quilaztli, or as she is otherwise named Chimalman or Malinatli, both of which names have some resemblance to Miriam as Mixi has to Moses.”[659] “The destruction of the rebellious Kohra (Gen. xvi) is repeated after the arrival of the Mexicans at Tulan, who, enchanted with the land, were unwilling to go further in search of their promised land. They murmured at Huitzilopochtli, and suffered a dreadful punishment at his hands that night by the death of every one who had rebelled against his will.”[660]
Lord Kingsborough discovers in a Mexican painting in the Bodleian library, a symbol resembling the jaw-bone of an ass, from the side of which water flows forth. This, of course, commemorated the story of Sampson.[661] Among the conspicuous doctrines held by both Jews and Mexicans, we note that the latter believed their children to be the gift of Tezcatlipoca as the former ascribed them to the favor of Jehovah.[662] The doctrine of sin and atonement was held by the Mexicans. Confession and sacrifice of atonement were common, for “half the offerings represented in the Mexican paintings were trespass-offerings, or sacrifices for the commission of sins.”[663] “The Mexicans, like the Jews, were accustomed to do penance by sitting on the ground, in which posture their priests are often represented in the Mexican paintings.”[664] “The Mexicans were as punctilious about washings and ablutions as the Jews.”[665] Baptism was considered the means of regeneration in Yucatan,[666] and was practised by the Mexicans as a religious ceremony.[667] Both peoples had devils and the leprosy,[668] both considered women who died in child-bed as worthy of honor as soldiers who fall in battle.[669] The doctrine of hell, according to the most orthodox theology, was held by the Mexicans.[670] Both Jews and Mexicans believed in the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul.[671] The latter people sprinkled the face of a corpse with water as a baptism after death.[672] Numerous analogies are found to exist between the Mosaic and the religious code of the Mexicans, as in profanity, sabbath-keeping, disobedience to parents, the smiting of a servant to death, and in the punishment by stoning of persons guilty of fornication and adultery.[673] Kingsborough maintains that circumcision was performed on the eighth day, declaring it to have “prevailed thousands of leagues along the coast of the Atlantic, amongst nations very remote from each other, and who spoke very different languages.”[674] Both peoples had a mutual disgust for swine flesh, and refused to eat the blood of any animal.[675] The latter statement is altogether unwarranted in fact. The ceremonial of both peoples have many features in common. As the Jews killed the paschal lamb in the evening, so the Mexicans offered up their sacrifices at night.[676] The Jews in Mexico substituted llamas for sheep in their sacrifices.[677] Both Jews and Mexicans worshipped toward the east, or toward their chief temples, and both called the south by the designation of “right-hand of the world.”[678] Both burned incense toward the four corners of the earth.[679] As David leaped and danced before the ark of the Lord, so did the Mexican monarchs before their idols.[680] Both peoples had an ark, and Duran states that in the ark of the Aztecs which figured so prominently in their migration, was the image of their invisible god.[681] Numerous analogies relating to astrology, omens, witchcraft, dreams, etc., are recorded.[682] References to prophecy are not wanting: Quetzalcoatl predicted the destruction of the temple of Cholula, furnishing a parallel to Christ’s prophecy of the destruction of the temple.[683] In the Mexican mythology, by means of an active imagination, he finds an allusion to the “stone which was carved without hands.”[684] A tiger represented in the Bologna MS. he supposes to be the lion of the tribe of Juda—the Jews of the New World having metamorphosed it into a tiger.[685] Kingsborough supposes that the crosses found in Mexico may have been carried there by Irish monks, “especially,” he adds, “as M. de Humboldt informs us that the first Spanish monks and missionaries gravely discussed the question of whether Quetzalcoatl was an Irishman.”[686] The fanaticism of the eminent Americanist, however, reaches its culmination in his supposed discovery of analogies to Christ in Mexican mythology. The story of the virgin, the annunciation, and the identity of Christ and Quetzalcoatl, are clearly discernible to his practised eye.[687] Christ stilled the tempest, and, like Quetzalcoatl, was god of the air.[688] In Yucatan, in the priestly fable of Bacab, he finds a complete and true account of the trinity.[689] It is hardly necessary for us to remark that these ingenious comparisons, tinged with a coloring of fanaticism and yet so full of interest, are useless to the cause of science and prove nothing. With the single exception of the remarkable tradition of the deluge and its literal correspondence in detail to the Mosaic account, we must dismiss the multitude of supposed analogies between Mexican and Hebrew traditions, customs and religion, which Kingsborough and others have discovered, as either imaginary or accidental.[690]
The hypothesis that the Nahua religion may have received some of its characteristics from India is altogether plausible and not without support in resemblances. The cosmological conception of the egg and serpent is found, as previously stated, on Brush Creek, in Adams County, Ohio. It certainly comes to us from Asiatic India. Serpent worship, not only among the people of the mounds but especially of Mexico, is the most patent fact revealed to us in ancient American sculpture. “Humboldt thinks he sees in the snake cut in pieces, the famous serpent Kaliya or Kalinaga, conquered by Vishnu, when he took the form of Krishna, and in the Mexican Toua-tiuh, the Hindu Krushna, sung of in the Bhagavata-Purana.”[691] Count Stolberg and Tschudi have both made arguments in favor of this view.[692] Humboldt characterizes Quetzalcoatl as the Buddha of the Mexicans, the founder of the monastic establishments resembling those of Thibet and Western Asia.[693] He further considers the flood of which they speak, identical with that of which traditions are preserved by the Hindoos, the Chinese, and the Shemitic peoples.
Advocates of Scandinavian analogies in religion are not wanting. Although Viollet-le-Duc finds parallels existing between the Brahmanistic ideas of divinity and passages of the Popol Vuh, still he is of the opinion that the strongest resemblances have been found to exist between the religious customs of the Scandinavians and those recorded in the Popol Vuh.[694] Humboldt remarks, “we have fixed the special attention of our readers upon this Votan or Wodan, an American who appears of the same family with the Wods or Odins of the Goths and of the peoples of Celtic origin. Since, according to the learned researches of Sir William Jones, Odin and Buddha are probably the same person, it is curious to see the names of Bondvar, Wodansdag and Votan designating in India, Scandinavia, and in Mexico, the day of a brief period.”[695]
Lafitau, in his Mœurs des Sauvages, is as enthusiastic in his advocacy of the theory that the ancient Americans derived their religion from the Greeks, as Kingsborough is certain that it was of Jewish origin. He devotes his fourth chapter, and furnishes numerous illustrations, in support of his view.[696] Our limited space precludes the possibility of presenting in full the analogies discovered by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg between the Mexican deities and those of Greece and Egypt. If we hesitate sometimes in accepting his conclusions, we cannot but wonder at his erudition and his zeal in research. He calls attention to the fact that the cult of Pan and Hermes were identical in Greece, and refers to Maia, a personification of the earth, and the mother of the Hermes having been the consort of Zeus or Pan himself. So in Mexico he finds Pan in the person of Cipactoual, who, under the name of Cuextecatl, has for his consort Maia or Maiaoel. This god was adored in all parts of Mexico and Central America, and at Panuco or Panco, literally Panopolis, the Spaniards found upon their entrance into Mexico, superb temples and images of Pan.[697] The names of both Pan and Maia enter extensively into the Maya vocabulary, Maia being the same as Maya, the principal name of the peninsula, and pan, making Mayapan, the ancient capital. In the Nahua language pan or pani signifies “equality to that which is above,” and Pantecatl was the progenitor of all beings. The Abbé has little difficulty in proving the identity of Zamna, Hunab-ku and other Maya deities, with the gods of Greece.[698] In the name of the Egyptian god Horus, he finds the significance of hurricane, or in the dialects of the Antilles, huracan or urogan, the god Hurakan of the Quichés. Also in the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol which Salvolini found equivalent to the phonetic K, namely, the singular reptile Uraeus, which resembles a serpent in an erect position with an enlarged body, and employed extensively as a decoration in hair of the Egyptian deities and the Pharaohs; he sees the emblem of Quetzalcoatl (Ketzalcohuatl) the feathered-serpent, called Gukumatz in Quiché, and Kukulcan in Maya. The same symbol is represented on the Egyptian monuments with a feather rising from the serpent’s crest.[699] It would be easy to pursue these ingenious comparisons through a number of pages, but we question their value in throwing any light on the subject in hand. The reader will find them scattered in profusion through the voluminous writings of the learned Abbé. It is sufficient to say that most of the seeming analogies between the new and old world religions cannot be other than accidental, since it is probable that the aborigines entered our continent at a very remote antiquity, long before the religions with which theirs have been so persistently compared, took on their distinctive features. If after they were separated from the rest of the world by seas and mountains, the Americans developed religious systems presenting analogies to those of other lands, it furnishes us but another proof of the common parentage and brotherhood of the race, of the universal outgoing of the human mind after the deity, and the sameness of mental operations and processes under the same given conditions.[700]
CHAPTER X.
LANGUAGE AND ITS RELATION TO NORTH AMERICAN MIGRATIONS.
Diversity of Languages in America—Causes of Diversity—Richness of American Languages—Polysynthesis—Grimm’s Law—The Maya-Quiché Languages—Stability of the Maya—Oldest American Language—The Maya compared to the Greek, the Hebrew, the North European, the Basque, West African, and the Quichua Languages—Epitome of Maya Grammar—The Mizteco-Zapotec Languages—The Nahua or Aztec—The Classic Tongue—Ancient and Modern Nahua—Epitome of Aztec Grammar—Geographical Extension of the Aztec—In the South—In the North-west—Buschmann’s Researches—Sonora Family—Opata-Tarahumar-Pima Family—Moqui and Aztec Elements—Aztec in the Shoshone and in the Languages of Oregon and the Columbian Region—Line of Aztec Elements—The Nahua probably the Language of the Mound-builders—The Otomi—Supposed Chinese Analogies—Japanese Analogies—Geographical Names.