THE “COXCOX” FALLACY
It is unnecessary in this place to deal at any length with the quite artificial myth given by Siguenza and Clavigero, [[54]]based on a mistaken interpretation of certain Mexican paintings. Briefly, they state that Coxcox, “the Mexican Noah,” and his spouse Xochiquetzal escaped from the deluge in a boat which grounded on the peak of Colhuacan: “the Ararat of Mexico.” Dumb children were born to them, who received innumerable languages from a polyglot dove. Garcia y Cubas published in his Atlas Geografico a letter from Ramirez (April 1858) in which the then conservator of the National Museum of Mexico showed the fallacy of Siguenza’s interpretation and proved that the pictures in question referred to the wanderings of the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico.
A flood myth which has for its hero one of the giants who were supposed to inhabit the earth in the first age (or rather the first age according to the version which is supported by the Calendar-stone), states that Xelhua, the giant in question, escaped the deluge by ascending the mountain of Tlaloc in the terrestrial paradise, and afterwards built the pyramid of Cholula. The interpreter of the Codex Vaticanus A says of this story: “In this first age giants existed in that country.… They relate of one of the seven whom they mention as having escaped from the deluge, that, the earth becoming populous, he went to Chululan and there began to build a tower which is that of which the brick base is still visible. The name of that chief was Xelhua; he built it in order that should a deluge come again he might escape to it. Its base is 1,800 feet in circumference. When it had already reached a great height lightning from heaven fell and destroyed it. Those Indians who were under that chief who had escaped from the deluge, named Xelhua, made bricks out of a mountain in Tlalamanalco called Cocotle, and from Tlalamanalco to Chulula Indians were placed to pass the bricks and cement from hand to hand: and thus they built this tower, that was named Tulan Chulula, which was so high that it appeared to reach heaven. And being content, since it seemed to them that they had a place to escape from the deluge if it should again happen, and from whence they might ascend into heaven—[[55]]a chalcuitl, which is a precious stone, fell from thence and struck it to the ground. Others say that the chalcuitl was in the shape of a toad; and that whilst destroying the tower it reprimanded them, inquiring of them their reason for wishing to ascend into heaven, since it was sufficient for them to see what was on the earth. The base of the tower is at the present day still remaining and its circumference is 1,800 feet.”
This myth has equivalents in the Hindoo story of the manner in which Hanuman, king of the monkeys, built a bridge from India to Ceylon, and in Scottish legend, where Corstorphine Church, near Edinburgh, is the scene of the building, the stones being passed on from hand to hand by the “Picts” from Ravelston Quarry, some considerable distance away. But it bears a more striking resemblance to the story of the tower of Babel, the work of another being of gigantic origin—Nimrod. Xelhua was the mythical ancestor of the people of Tehuacan, and Teotitlan del Camino. It may be that his myth has been sophisticated by the priestly writers who set it down, and in any case it seems to be ætiological or explanatory of the Pyramid of Cholula.
THE FALL OF THE GODS
In the literature of ancient Mexican mythology we find persistent vestigial notices of a fall of the gods, or rather of certain deities from “heaven.” Thus in the interpretation of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis we find a divine locality called Tamoanchan described as the “mansion” from which they fell, and “where they gathered roses.” The same paragraph[27] relates that Tamoanchan “is the place where these gods were created whom they feared: it signifies the Terrestrial Paradise, and accordingly they relate that those gods being in that place transgressed by plucking roses and branches from the trees, and that on this account Tonacatecutli and his wife, Tonacacigua, became highly incensed, and cast them out of that place, and that some of them came [[56]]to earth and others went to hell.” One of these, the divinity most frequently associated by the Codices with this event, Ixnextli, is spoken of in the same work[28] as “Eve, always weeping and looking at her husband Adam. She is called Ixnextli, which signifies ‘Eyes blind with ashes,’ and this refers to the time subsequent to her sinning by plucking the roses.” In Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Plate VII, Kingsborough) she is associated with a god Ueuecoyotl and is represented as kneeling on a chair with head averted. There is no doubt that the name given her here, and which is supplemented by the name Xochiquetzal, is that of a variant of the latter, who is the goddess of flowers.
In his interpretation of this goddess in his work on the Aubin-Goupil tonalamatl (pp. 118–119) Seler gives it as his opinion that the insignia of the goddess Tonacaciuatl, consort of the creative deity Tonacatecutli, is identical with that of Xochiquetzal, and proceeds to say that this strongly suggests “that the home of the cosmogonic speculations embodied in the names of Tonacatecutli and Tonacaciuatl was to be sought in the region where dwelt the goddess Xochiquetzal, and this was assuredly not Mexico proper, but appears to have been the group which in one place is comprised by Torquemada under the name Chalmeca, Olmeca, Xicalanca, Tepaneca, Xochimilca, and Tlalhuica. Here by Chalmeca are to be understood the dwellers about the volcano, and by Olmeca, Xicalanca, the aborigines of the Tlaxcallan district.… Originally the goddess Xochiquetzal is perhaps nothing more than the deity of one of those mountains from which the life-giving waters flow down from the fields.” It is easy to believe that Xochiquetzal is a variant of Tonacaciuatl; but it is not necessary to infer therefrom that the Olmec-Tlaxcaltec version of the myth relating to her with its cosmogonic speculations was prior in origin to that which found acceptance at Mexico, even although the Olmecs were regarded as an older race. Tonacatecutli and his consort were believed to be Toltec deities, and had thus a greater antiquity behind them than Olmec myth could invest them [[57]]with. Codex Vaticanus A tells much the same story regarding Ixnextli and was probably inspired from the same source.