THE ANTIQUITY OF MEXICAN RELIGION
Until the beginning of the present century most Americanists held that Mexican civilization and consequently Mexican religion were the outcome of but a few generations of native progress. It is true that the Nahua people had behind them a relatively brief history of national and tribal life, but modern research has shown that they were undoubtedly the heirs of a civilization having early foundations and of considerable achievement and complexity, the religious aspect of which had arrived at a high state of development.[3] Evidences of the archaic character of this faith are rapidly accumulating, but many years must yet be dedicated to the examination and comparison of the data concerning it before it is possible to speak with any degree of certainty regarding the causes which contributed to its formation and evolution.
Although we must necessarily regard Mexican religion as having had a progressive history spread over many generations, we are at present almost ignorant of the gradual changes which accompanied its growth. An effort will be made to outline the probable nature of these mutations, but the endeavour will not receive any great measure of [[5]]assistance from the abundant but chaotic and unclassified material amassed by Americanists during the last twenty years, which in its present condition is not of much value as regards this particular branch of the subject, but which it is the writer’s intention to employ, so far as it is capable of illustrating the question before us.
THE LITERATURE OF MEXICAN RELIGION
It is necessary at this stage to deal briefly with the sources of Mexican religious history. A literature, bewildering in its scope and variety, has grown up around the subject of Mexican antiquity as a whole, and it is perhaps well for the student if he approaches it with only a partial realization of the spacious character of the material he must review. I have thought it best in such a work as this to relegate most of the bibliographical matter to an appendix, where an endeavour has been made to supply the student with a trustworthy catalogue of such manuscripts and works as are essential to the study of Mexican religion. It is hoped that this may prove of guidance and assistance and spare much initial toil. But for the present I will confine my remarks to such general observations upon the sources from which we partly glean our knowledge of the ancient Mexican faith as will serve the immediate purpose. These sources are four in number: (I) The native codices or paintings; (II) the native annals; (III) native art-forms in architecture, sculpture, pottery, and mural painting, depicting gods and other divine beings; and (IV) the writings of the Spanish conquerors of Mexico.
(I) The Native Codices.—These are paintings executed by native Mexican artists upon agave paper, leather, or cotton. Through the misguided zeal of the early Spanish religious authorities, who regarded them as of diabolic character, only some twelve of these remain to us, the greater number of which possess a mythological or religious significance. In their pages we find representations of many of the principal deities of the Mexican pantheon, as well as illustrations of [[6]]several passages in Mexican myth, and they frequently depict the tonalamatl or priestly Book of Fate, with its highly complex symbolism.[4] Close familiarity with these manuscripts is indispensable, as they constitute one of the few original sources of our knowledge of the aspect, costume, and insignia of the Mexican deities. All of them have been handsomely, if expensively, reproduced, and these are detailed in the bibliography.
Here it is only necessary to remark upon the several theories which have regard to their place of origin. Dr. H. J. Spinden, in his valuable Study of Maya Art, objects that “most of the detailed accounts of religious beliefs and ceremonies that have come down to us refer primarily to the Valley of Mexico, while nearly all the really elaborate codices of a religious nature come from either the Zapotecan-Mixtecan area or from the Maya.”[5] We are not here concerned with the Maya manuscripts, and with regard to the Zapotec and Mixtec examples we have the assurance of Seler,[6] which is founded upon critical evidence of value, that an entire group of these manuscripts—and that by far the most important, the Codex Borgia group—“belongs to a Mexican-speaking people” who inhabited the districts of Teouacan, Cozcatlan, and Teotitlan del Camino, and who, though separated from the Nahua of the Valley of Anahuac at an early period, yet in great measure retained the ancient beliefs common to both. Nearly all of the deities represented in this group of manuscripts so closely resemble in their aspect, costume, and general symbolism the drawings and descriptions of gods known to have been worshipped in the Mexican area proper, as to make it positively certain that they represent the same divine beings with merely trifling differences of detail due to local environment. The separation of the Nahua of the Plateau of Mexico and those of the more southerly region was of such duration as to justify the belief that their religious ideas had diverged considerably. But the subsequent conquest of the southern area by the Northern [[7]]Nahua must have resuscitated old common beliefs among their kindred in the south, and weakened the ideas they had adopted or developed in that environment. This is proved by the considerable variation in type between the oldest southern pottery representing what are presumably divine forms and the pictures of the gods in the later manuscripts of the Codex Borgia group.
(II) The Native Writings.—These “annals,” as they are sometimes called, the work of natives who wrote in Spanish, constitute a mine of aboriginal information of nearly equal value with that contained in the codices, but considerable discrimination is necessary in using them in view of the tendency of their authors to corrupt traditional material when inspired by patriotic or other motives. This, however, manifestly does not apply with equal force to accounts of a mythical or ritual nature and to historical events, which offer a much greater temptation than the former to scribes manifestly ignorant of the virtues of literary integrity. The Mexican annals are of two classes: those which represent the historical or traditional relics of native communities, such as the Annals of Quauhtitlan, also known as the Codex Chimalpopocâ; and those which are the work of educated Mexicans or half-breeds, prone to magnify the splendour of the ancient races. Ranking almost as a third or separate class are the sacred songs or hymns included in the Mexican MS. of Sahagun’s Historia General, which that most unwearied of workers received at first hand from approved native scribes. The several native writings will be found described in the appendix, and the hymns, or rather a translation of them into English prose, will be met with in the descriptions of the several deities to which they apply.