The American Egypt Part 15

The most remarkable of all theories was that advanced by Dr. Le Plongeon, who invited the world to believe that the Mayans--or Mayax, as he insisted upon calling them--were the first of all races in the world to become architects, and that they taught the art to the ancient Egyptians and everybody else. In pursuance of this perfectly lunatic suggestion, he dated the civilisation of Central America 11,500 years back. This preposterous proposition was received with the Homeric laughter it so richly deserved. But really there was something to be said for the poor doctor's point of view. He belonged to the cla.s.s of theorists who at all hazards wish to give America the glory of having produced the very remarkable building skill shown to have existed in her central territories. The only difference between him and his fellow-theorists was that he had the courage of his convictions, and they had not. A few thousand years were trifles to a man who could theorise so bravely as Le Plongeon; and courage is always admirable. The good doctor was at least no craven, no timorous, afraid-of-his-own-shadow type of theorist; he was a t.i.tan among the theorising minnows, a genius in the art; for he possessed the genius of enthusiasm.

The others of the "indigenous" school have proved halfhearted and vague.

If you insist upon their coming to the point and saying whence the builders really came, they try to parry your insistence by asking a question in their turn--"Whence came the African Negroes?" To this the correct reply, according to Professor E. Morse, is "From Africa, of course." "Originally?" "Yes, originally: they const.i.tute the African or Negro sub-species of Man." This is a mode of arguing which is fundamentally unsound for the excellent reason that the cases of the African and American races are not a.n.a.logous. For even if the aboriginal peoples of America could be a.s.sumed to be as strictly indigenous in their habitat as the negroid peoples are generally held to be in theirs, you have still to explain an isolated outburst of civilisation in Central America marking off an extraordinarily restricted area, comparatively speaking, from the vast continental expanses north and south. But the ethnical problems of the Negro and the American are not even so far a.n.a.logous; for, as all the world knows, the generally accepted theory as to the American race is that it must be ultimately referred to the Mongoloid division of mankind, and that the New World was in prehistoric times peopled from Asia.

But if this view, supported as it is by a physical resemblance in some cases so remarkable as to quite stultify the suggestion of coincidence, were upset, you would still be confronted with the unanswerable question: If American architecture is of home-growth, why was it restricted to one very small area? For the proposition that it is indigenous almost demands the postulate that it evolved at such an early date in some form or other as to allow time for it to spread far into the north and south of the New World. If any deduction is possible from its singular localisation, it is surely that it was introduced from outside and at so comparatively recent a date before the arrival of the White race in the Americas as not to have permitted time for it to spread far.[12]

Everything then points to the exotic nature of American architecture.

Whence came its originators? Our postulates enable us to narrow the inquiry to Egypt, j.a.pan, China, India, Ceylon, and the Malay Peninsula.

Let us take these possibilities in this order.

Egypt has been a great temptation to many, and in truth it is difficult, when you are first face to face with such very Egyptian-looking statues as the Atlantean figures which we found at Chichen, and which are described on p. 98, to resist the thought that there must be some connection between the stone marvels of the Nile Valley and the palaces of Yucatan. But putting aside the extraordinary difficulties in the way of mapping a possible route by which the connection between the two peoples could be effected, all available evidence is against you. The buildings of the two races are unlike in structure and design, in ornamentation and decoration; and if this dissimilarity could be explained away, and an attempt made to link the two ethnically, there is not a shred of evidence, physically, mythologically, philologically, or such as might be derived from a community of manners and customs, to help out the effort.

With Egypt gone, we have to deal with the different parts of Asia mentioned. Asia has been popular with many theorisers. Lured on by the recollection that the greatest ethnologists agree that America was peopled from Asia via the Behring Straits, they see no difficulty in the Mayan architects coming that way too. Indeed these Straits are a very tempting spot: the narrow neck of land where the two continents almost join. It is less than 36 miles across between East Cape, Asia, and Prince of Wales's Cape, America; and on those rare days when the atmosphere permits (it is almost always foggy thereabouts), one can see across with the naked eye. Between the two capes are three small (now uninhabited) islands, and the deepest part of the channel is but 30 fathoms (180 feet). Before Behring's expedition to this region in 1728 it was thought that the continents did actually join; for Deschnev, the Russian who is said to have sailed these waters in 1648, was regarded as an inventor of fables when he stated that a pa.s.sage existed.

The affinity of the Eskimos to the j.a.panese has long been a favourite theme of ethnologists, and Dr. Torrell, who devoted much time and study to this question, thinks he has proved past all dispute that the two peoples are kinsmen. But be this as it may, and whether one accepts or not the peopling of the Americas from Asia via the Behring Straits, it is as good as impossible to maintain that the builders came into America by this route. Were this so, we should most certainly find traces of their march south to the chief field of their activities. The most fanatical of the theorists must surely admit that the fact that we do not is an insuperable objection to their theory. That a migrating race of architects pa.s.sed through the whole length of North America and kept their art a profound secret till they reached the centre of the New World, is literally unthinkable.

No; if America was peopled from Asia, it was in times so remote that the inhabitants of Asia did not themselves know the art of building. The age of American Man has been a keenly debated question. Nothing has yet been found which can be reckoned a proof that he existed previous to the present geological epoch. Dr. Lund, who has devoted much time to the problem, states that he found but one trace of man among those of the extinct mammalia, and this was dubious, for there were signs that the strata where they were discovered had been disturbed within some recent period during which the human remains had possibly been buried. But American Man must at least be prehistoric; and being so, he is all too early, if he was to bring the knowledge of building with him. And if it is urged that the mysterious architects came in well within historic times, after the New World was already peopled by their kinsmen, the lack of traces of them and their art is more than ever a full answer.

That the builders came from Asia we are convinced; but they came direct to Central America by sea.

Taking j.a.pan as first of the Asiatic countries from which the builders may have come, there is much made of the close similarity of the objects found in the sh.e.l.l-heaps of North America and the upper Amazon on the one hand, and on the other those of North and South j.a.pan, especially those of Omori. The pottery is much alike: you have the crenellated fillet and the cord markings. But these features of prehistoric pottery have been shown to exist among many peoples. Again, there is a close resemblance in the stone implements found; but Sir John Evans in his _Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain_ points out that stone implements are identical in most lands. He instances those of the Nile Valley, which are so precisely like those found in the Kentish oolite that the most experienced archaeologist could not tell them apart. But if there is nothing in this positive evidence, there is much in the negative evidence available. The architecture of j.a.pan is derived from the Chinese, and is of a comparatively recent date. It is in all ways dissimilar to that of Central America. Further, that the j.a.panese early possessed the potter's wheel is proved by their ancient mortuary vessels. There was not a potter's wheel in America. Again, the j.a.panese ritual of the third and fourth centuries, as contained in the Kojiki and Nihonji, have no a.n.a.logy with Mexican ritual. Again, in j.a.pan and Korea we find bronze mirrors and bells unknown in America, and an early knowledge of tempering steel in j.a.pan is quite lacking in the land of the Mayans.

What about China? Here there are vague resemblances between the buildings of the two peoples; but at most they are those features in which one might trace a similarity between the productions of any two building races. As in j.a.pan, ritual and customs are all distinct from those found among the Mayans. Those who would have us believe that Central American civilisation was of Chinese origin have been much influenced by that fable promulgated by the Chinese historian Li Yen, who lived in the seventh century. He states the existence of a country which he calls the "Land of the Fusang," and which he declared lay 40,000 li eastward of China. Li Yen had the tale from a Buddhist priest Hwui Shan; but the curious point is that the latter described himself as a priest coming from the "Land of the Fusang," and says nothing as to how he got there, or how he became a Buddhist in this unknown country.

In an article in vol. lv. of _New Annals of Voyages_ ent.i.tled "Researches regarding the Country of the Fusang," H. J. von Klaproth points out that this could not have been Mexico because of the horses and carts mentioned, and these were of course unknown in Mexico in pre-Conquest times. He says j.a.pan was the place, and this he supports by showing that it was early called Fusang (beautiful). The distance as given by Li Yen is, according to Klaproth, no difficulty, as the "li"

was a very variable measure, quite apart from the fact that the priest would have no accurate means of measuring. His 40,000 li may be on a par with the mulberry trees thousands of feet high and the silkworms 7 feet long which form part of his fairy tale, as Professor E. Morse points out in his pamphlet _Was Middle America peopled from Asia?_

In a problem like this small proofs are often most valuable, and if all else were lacking, the absence in Central America of the glazed roofing-tile so common in China from 2000 B.C. is very significant seeing that pottery-glazing had been brought to a high point of perfection there. Again, in China the potter's wheel and the plough were in common use from the earliest times, but there is no trace of either in Central America. Indeed, no one has been able to produce a piece of real evidence for the theory that the Chinese endowed the Mayans with their art of building.

But if in Egypt, j.a.pan, and China we have not been even "warm" as children's forfeit-games have it, when we turn to India and the Malay Peninsula we are growing distinctly "burning." In such a problem the evidence most valuable is perhaps afforded by the opinions of those who have not worked in the special field of archaeology, and are thus untrammelled by theories. Let us start with one or two such opinions, and then we will pa.s.s from this general to the particular evidence which to our minds proves that America obtained her architecture from this part of Asia.

Mr. R. Spence Hardy in his book _Eastern Monachism_ (London, 1850), after seeing drawings of the monuments of Yucatan, on p. 22 writes, "The ancient edifices of Chichen in Central America bear a striking resemblance to the topes of India. The shape of one of the domes, the apparent size, the small tower on the summit, the trees growing on the sides, the appearance of masonry here and there, the style of ornamentation, and the small doorways at the base, are so exactly similar to what I have seen at Anuradhapura that when my eyes first fell upon the engravings of the remarkable ruins, I supposed that they were represented in ill.u.s.tration of the dagobas of Ceylon."

Writing in _The Edinburgh Review_ for April, 1867, another author says, "The great temple at Palenque so closely corresponds in its princ.i.p.al details with that of Boro Budor, in the province of Kedu (Java) ... as to place beyond all reasonable debate the common purpose and origin of both. Both were elevated on a series of graduated platforms or terraces; and are reached by successive flights of steps, facing the cardinal points. The chambers in both are disproportionately small, with no apertures, except the doorways, for the admission of air and light; their curved ceilings, formed of stones overlapping each other, triangular-wise and const.i.tuting what is known as the cyclopean arch, are precisely alike."

Other authors might be quoted to show that the general appearance of the two sets of ruins is so similar as to attract the attention of the casual visitor; but we will now pa.s.s to our particular evidence. As will have been seen from many of our ill.u.s.trations, the buildings of Central America were, with but a few exceptions, built on pyramids. Now it is a fact that wherever Buddhism prevailed in ancient times we find the truncated pyramid, either of the square or round form. As at the temple of Boro Budor, these pyramids generally had buildings on the top. They were built of earth and rubble covered with a layer of bricks or hewn stone, the whole then plastered over with stucco which, according to Spence Hardy, is composed of lime, cocoanut water, and the juice of the paragua. The ruins of Chichen, Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, Labna and all the others we visited were built in the same way. The pyramids are invariably built of earth and rubble covered over with a layer of hewn stone slabs of various sizes. The walls of buildings, as in the Tennis Court at Chichen, often had a section in the centre filled up with rubble. And in most cases the whole had been stuccoed over.

Now let us take that most characteristic of all features of Mayan architecture, the so-called Mayan arch. In the strict sense it is not an arch at all. It never reached the stage of being curved, but was a series of inverted steps rising to the roof and crowned with a slab, as will be plainly seen in our ill.u.s.tration. Sometimes the steps were hewn off so as to give an even surface on which plaster was smeared. Now this peculiar arch is found in ancient Buddhist structures and nowhere else in the world. John Crawfurd in his _History of the Indian Archipelago_ (3 vols.: Edinburgh, 1820), in vol. ii. p. 200, when speaking of the interior of the buildings there, writes: "The stones overlap each other within so as to present to the eye the appearance of inverted steps of a stair.... The builders of Bramhanan had possessed the art of turning the elliptical arch and vault, for the entrances and doorways are all arched and the roofs vaulted. A circular vault or arch, however, is nowhere to be found among the ruins; and the principle of turning an arch is nowhere carried to such a length as to convey the impression of grandeur or magnificence." This might as appropriately have been written of the Mayan buildings. Where in the very few instances the arch was continued along more than one side of the building, as in the Castillo of Chichen, it does not make a circular turn, but comes to a corner and then goes off at right angles. The only circular turning arch we saw was the continuously rounded one in the Caracol at Chichen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM OF MAYAN ARCH.]

Next, let us take the interior wall paintings of the buildings of both countries. Most of the inner walls of the buildings in Central America bear traces of paints on the plaster. The biggest room at Chichen, that on the south side of the Nunnery, 47 feet by 9, was once covered with paintings from the floor to the apex of the roof. So were the smaller rooms. But owing to vandalism and natural decay of the plaster, they cannot now be properly traced. There is, however, enough to show that they represented the inhabitants of the city. Again, in the House of the Tigers, standing up gaunt and majestic on the wall of the Tennis Court, the everyday life of the builders is depicted by the artist in blues, greens, yellows, and a reddish brown.

Now turn to the ancient Buddhist edifices. Spence Hardy (_Eastern Monachism_, p. 230) says: "The whole interior, whether rock, wall, or statue, is painted in brilliant colours, but yellow much predominates.

In one place the artist has attempted to depict part of the early history of the island, beginning with the voyage of Wijaya, which is represented by a ship with only the lower mast, and without sails; alongside are fishes as large as the vessel. In representing the buildings of the great dagobas of Anuradhapura, the proportions are no better preserved and these artificial mountains appear to be little larger than the persons employed in finishing them.... The ornamental paintings, where proportion was not of paramount importance, are very neat, and all the colours appear to be permanent and bright." This lack of proportion in the human figures is very noticeable at Chichen, the figures often entirely dwarfing the huts in which they are supposed to be standing.

Next, let us take the isolated example of decoration, about which there has been much controversy, the Red Hand. We have before spoken of this strange mark on the walls of Mayan buildings. It looks like a hand that has been dipped in a reddish-brown pigment, almost blood-colour, and then pressed upon the wall. This in many cases it undoubtedly is, for the actual lines of the hand can be discerned. Now Le Plongeon, in his _Vestiges of the Mayans_, was the first, we believe, to call attention to the fact that _The New York Herald_ of April 12th, 1879, in describing General Ulysses S. Grant's visit to Ram Singh, Maharajah of Jeypoor, says, "We pa.s.sed small temples, some of them ruined, some others with offerings of grains or fruits or flowers, some with priests and people at worship. On the walls of some of the temples we saw the marks of the human hand as though it had been steeped in blood and pressed against the white wall. We were told that it was the custom, when seeking from the G.o.ds some benison, to note the vow by putting the hand into a liquid and printing it on the wall. This was to remind the G.o.ds of the vow and prayer, and if it came to pa.s.s in the shape of rain, or food, or health, or children, the joyous devotee returned to the temple and made offerings."

Stephens, in the appendix of vol. ii. of _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_, gives a communication from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who writes: "The figure of the human hand is used by the North American Indians to denote supplication to the Deity or Great Spirit.... In the course of many years' residence on the frontiers, including various journeyings among the tribes, I have had frequent occasion to remark the use of the hand alone as a symbol, but it has generally been a symbol applied to the naked body after its preparation and decoration for sacred or festive dances. And the fact deserves further consideration from these preparations being generally made in the arcanum of the medicine or secret lodge or some other private place, and with the skill of the priest's, or medicine man's, or juggler's art. The mode of applying it in these cases is by smearing the hand of the operator with white or coloured clay, and impressing it on the breast, the shoulder, or other part of the body. The idea is thus conveyed that a secret influence, a charm, a mystic power, is given to the dancer, arising from his sanct.i.ty or his proficiency in the occult arts. This use of the hand is not confined to a single tribe of people. I have noticed it alike, among the Dacotahs, the Winnebagoes, and other Western tribes, as among the numerous branches of the Red Race still located east of the Mississippi River above the lat.i.tude of 42 degrees who speak dialects of the Algonquin languages."

There is thus no doubt that the "red hand" of the Mayans had its a.n.a.logy among the tribes of North America; and thus by itself it is of little moment in the present argument. But we have made a singular and most important discovery. On the friezes of the Stupa of Bharahat in India, found in 1873 by Sir Alexander Cunningham--the date of the building of which is accepted as approximately 200 B.C.--are rows of hands carved.

These hands are precisely similar in shape to those we discovered in great numbers on the ruins in the island of Cozumel, and to those we saw on other Mayan ruins. There can be no doubt as to the ident.i.ty of this symbolic decoration, and we believe that here exists a most important link in the chain of evidence connecting America and the East.

There are those who will at once declare that the very fact that the symbol can be shown to have had a wide use in North America forbids the idea that it came from the East. This is clearly not so. If the date which we shall suggest as the likely one for the arrival of the Eastern immigrants in Central America be even approximately accurate, there would be ample time for the symbol to spread sufficiently into the north for Schoolcraft in the middle of the nineteenth century to find it broadcast among very distant tribes. Among such a proverbially superst.i.tious race as the American Indians, such a symbol would rapidly "catch on," and the fact that a very extended trade existed between the natives of Yucatan and the tribes around the Gulf of Mexico from early times makes its introduction a very easily explained fact.

Next, let us make a brief examination of the architectural ornamentation of the ancient buildings of the Buddhist East and those of Central America, and see if there exist any similarities which are of a nature to help the proof of the connection. Much has been made of that peculiar feature of Mayan decorative art, the "snouted mask" or "elephant trunk,"

common on the buildings of Palenque, Chichen and Uxmal, and many other cities. This is shown in many of our ill.u.s.trations. It is a trunk-like projection which is used as an ornamentation on the cornices. In this some have eagerly found a reminiscence of India's elephant. There would not seem to be the least reason for these zoological speculations. An examination of the ornament reveals a rudely carved face on the wall behind; and if we turn to the _Codex Cortesia.n.u.s_ we find recurring therein the figure of a deity with a peculiarly elongated nose, an exact miniature of this much discussed architectural ornamentation. Thus there can be little doubt that the "snouted mask" was the symbol of a deity, possibly the Tapir-G.o.d, who is always represented with a snout which is a parody of that of the real animal.

But if there is nothing in the elephant theory of the so-called "snouted mask," there is a very curious type of ornamentation in some of the Mayan buildings which may prove of great import in this connection. At Labna, at Copan and elsewhere, are found, as the finish of cornices, alligators' heads--the one we saw at Labna having a half-curled "elephant trunk,"--with jaws agape, from within them a grotesque face peering out. This is so peculiar a design that it must be admitted that a parallel to it in any land would be at least suggestive. We have found an exact parallel where we should most have hoped to find it. Heads of the alligator's congener, the crocodile, exist in large numbers at Boro Budor and in the ruined Buddhist cities of Ceylon. In his _Cambodge et Java_ (1896) M. Albert Tissandier gives ill.u.s.trations of the gargoyles decorating the terraces of Boro Budor, showing them to be the fantastic heads of crocodiles, surmounted by a half-curled elephant trunk. He writes (we translate): "This type of crocodile, ornamented with the trunk of an elephant, appears to be of Singhalese origin. I have remarked numerous examples at Anuradhapura in Ceylon, the building of which is much more ancient than Boro Budor, and also at Polonnaruwa....

The arcades (at Boro Budor) end at the base in a head of a crocodile like the gargoyles I have described above. From out the open jaws of these monsters peers in each case a little demon with grinning face." It is difficult indeed to believe that so singular a design and detail of decoration should have been evolved at once in ancient Buddhist India and among the American Indians of Yucatan and Guatemala.

An exhaustive comparison of the ornamentation of Mayan and Eastern buildings would doubtless yield valuable data; but when we state that there are many hundreds of patterns of decoration employed on the buildings of Yucatan, it will be seen that this would need a volume to itself. Broadly speaking, the decorations of the two types of architecture are dissimilar; and if one reflects, this is really no more than one would expect. As we have said, the Eastern introducers of building could not bring with them much knowledge of detailed ornamentation. The actual decorative designs on Mayan structures might be reasonably expected to be developed in the country. Only in spots where the invaders had their actual settlements should we find any characteristic designs. And this is exactly what we do find at Copan and Quirigua, which we shall presently try to show were among the very earliest, if not _the_ earliest, of their locations. At these two places the ruins consist chiefly of stelae and altars, and the decorations of these are un-American and Oriental in character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NUNNERY, UXMAL.]

But if there is little similarity between the minuter architectural details of the Mayan and Buddhist buildings, we believe that, carefully studied, the former, and particularly, as we should have expected, those at Copan and Quirigua, exhibit distinct survivals of Buddhist influence.

Mr. Maudslay, in his superb series of photographs of stelae (_Biologia Centrali-Americana_), shows clearly in the hands of nearly every figure what he calls a "manikin staff"--a short stick surmounted by a human figure issuing from feathers or leaves. He cannot explain it, but we believe that it may be nothing less than a much corrupted survival of the sacred lotus held by Buddhist images. In photographs of carvings at Bharahat and also at Boro Budor, the Buddhas and their attendants appear to hold just such short staves, really the rubbery stem, surmounted by the lotus-flower, out of which seems to issue in some instances a kind of face. There appear, too, in the grasp of many figures on the friezes at Bharahat short sticks surmounted by manikins seated on bannerets. The "manikin staves" at Copan may be a blended memory of these two Buddhistic symbols.

Again, Mr. Maudslay noticed a detail of Mayan decoration which has escaped other students. He points out that at Palenque and elsewhere is represented a plant which he calls a water plant because fish are seen feeding on the flowers. "The leaves and flower-buds," he writes, "are very clearly drawn, and have somewhat the appearance of those of a water lily." He is probably right: it is a water lily--the Buddhist lotus--which figures, often with fish swimming round, in almost every carving at Boro Budor and the ruined Buddhist cities. The drawing he gives of the Palenque carving is so exact a copy of the Buddhist lotus as to be quite amazing.

The figures on the stelae at Copan and Quirigua, in many instances have across their b.r.e.a.s.t.s what looks like a broad band. We believe this to be another Buddhist survival--viz. the ola or palm-leaf book which Buddha is nearly always shown holding, and which appears in the famous rock statue of King Parakrama in the ruins of Polonnaruwa (see H. W. Cave, _Ruined Cities of Ceylon_), exactly as portrayed in Guatemala.

The headdresses of the stelae statues are most reminiscent of the triple tiara of Buddhist images. The large square or round ear-ornaments at Quirigua are precisely like those in the sculptures of Boro Budor and in the island of Madura, a report on the ruins of which latter was published in 1904 by the Dutch Government (_Archaeologisch Onderzoek op Java en Madura_). A plate in the latter work represents stelae found in Madura in feature and decoration so amazingly like those of Quirigua that one might be forgiven for thinking one was looking at one of Mr.

Maudslay's superb photographs. The latter noted at Copan curious forehead marks which suggest to us the sacred Buddha markings. On the north face of the gigantic monolithic turtle at Quirigua is a cross-legged figure which in Mr. Maudslay's plate exhibits in the fullest manner many Buddhist survivals.

At Palenque, again, there are the very peculiar Temples of the Cross and the Foliated Cross, which appear to have no parallels in other Mayan ruins. We suggest that here too is a Buddhist survival, namely that the "Crosses" (it is more obvious in the foliated one) are crude representations of the Sacred Tree of Buddhism, the "Tree of Wisdom,"

traditionally a pippul-tree, beneath which Gotama attained Buddha-hood, and which occurs again and again on the Boro Budor friezes and on all the ancient Buddhist carvings, and around which figures are grouped in adoration as are those in the Palenque reliefs. As the Palenque tablets suggest that the "Cross" is the direct object of worship, it may be worth while here to mention that in the oldest Buddhist sculptures Buddha himself is never represented directly, but always under a symbol; either the sacred footprints--Buddha-pats--or the tree beneath which his meditations led him to divine knowledge.

But the faces of the statues will take us a step further: for they seem to be representations of those human types peculiar to Cambodia, Siam, and the Malay Peninsula, as will be seen from the ill.u.s.trations. They have the elongated, somewhat oblique eye of those peoples; they have not the American, but the Siamese nose. They are beardless (for this reason some have declared them to be women), and they wear an Oriental headdress such as is found in none of the admittedly Mayan ruins, and which we believe we have identified as the ancient Indian turban shown clearly in the carvings at Bharahat.

But we must revert directly to the all-important evidences afforded by a study of Copan. Here, following up our argument that the peculiar characteristics of the invading builders would tend to weaken as they mixed more with the Indians, or as their lessons, perhaps after their deaths, were adapted to purely native ideas and designs, we find an ill.u.s.tration in point in Piedras Negras, a ruined city on the Usumacinta discovered by Herr Teobert Maler. Here, some way from their first settlement, the distinctly Oriental influence is on the wane, but it is still strong. A carving there unearthed by Herr Maler is so reminiscent of Buddhist monuments that it must appeal to the most undiscerning. The figure of the seated G.o.d is, in truth, the best the sculptor could do from memory.

Again, at Palenque the influence of the East is fading still more from the work; yet is there some remaining. The figures have the characteristic features of the Americans, and the native headgear; but the att.i.tude is the typical Buddhist one, and there is moreover one figure which takes us back to the purer orientalism of Copan. "The princ.i.p.al figure," says Stephens, "sits cross-legged on a couch ornamented with two leopard's heads; the att.i.tude is easy, the physiognomy the same as that of the other personages, the expression calm and benevolent.... The headdress differs from most of the others at Palenque in that it wants the plume of feathers" (_Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan_, vol. ii., p. 318). In the Buddhist carvings Buddha is often represented seated on a couch carved in the form of a tiger or lion, or really two, for the body is double-headed. This seat is spoken of in the Sanskrit as _Simhasana_, literally "the seat of lions," so called from the crouching animals, which, however, appear in all carvings as only two. Too much must not be made of this singular circ.u.mstance, perhaps, because such animal seats have been found at Persepolis, and again in the island of Cyprus, and the Greeks got the idea from a.s.syria. Stephens found one of these animal couches at Uxmal, but on this there was no figure. There may not be anything in the occurrence of these seats in America; but we think it at least suggestive.

At Palenque in the Cross Tablets we have the chief figures standing on dwarf crouching human forms. At Tikal, north-east of Lake Peten, a carved wooden lintel discovered by Mr. Maudslay depicts two figures standing on two crouching bodies which he believed to represent prisoners. Elsewhere in Mayan ruins the design prevails. Now in the Indian, Cambodian, and Javanese ruins recur again and again these crouching figures, acting as footstools for the chief personages of the sculpture. Sometimes they are human, sometimes apes or demons. They are the equivalents--it is believed--of the Hindu Garudas, who took in Hindu myth many forms; and we suggest that the Mayan fondness for this queer design was another heritage from their architectural tutors.

In our description of Palenque we have mentioned one of the most curious of all the reliefs--that representing, according to Stephens, women with children in their arms. The Oriental survivals would seem to be specially strong at Palenque, and it would not surprise us if in these women-figures there is hidden a cogent proof of the origin of America's first architects. In _Buddhist Art in India_, Professor A. Grunwedel writes: "At Sikri, Yusufzai, excavated by Major H. A. Deane in 1888, was found a statue of a woman accompanied by three children, one of which sits astride of her right hip in true Indian fashion, and which she is about to suckle. Among sculptures at Lah.o.r.e Museum is a statue of a woman completely draped and holding on her left arm a child. It is suggested that these are forms of Haritri--'Mother of the Demons.' She was the mother of five hundred demons or yakshas, to feed whom she daily stole a child. Buddha rebuked and converted her. An image of her was found sitting in the porch or in a corner of the dining-halls of Indian monasteries holding a babe in her arms." Why should not the Palenque figure be a representation of the Hindu G.o.ddess Haritri?

A still more remarkable similarity is ill.u.s.trated by a tower-like building at Yaxchilan into which is let at about the middle a huge human face. This queer edifice has probably replicas as yet undiscovered in the forests of Guatemala. If it could be shown to have a counterpart in the Malay Peninsula, that would be a connecting-link between the two civilisations which would need some explaining away, would it not? Well, we have traced such a counterpart just where it ought to occur, if our theory is to hold good, viz. in the forests of Cambodia. At Angkor there are several such structures built of large blocks of hewn stone. Of these extraordinary towers M. L. Fournereau in _Des Ruines d' Angkor_ (Paris, 1890) gives some excellent photographs. It would need a bold man to say that the fact of these Cambodian towers having such a striking replica at a spot near the earliest settlements of our supposit.i.tious Oriental architects is due to coincidence.

Then there are the curious figures carved on the walls of the Nunnery at both Chichen and Uxmal and on other Mayan ruins. They sit cross-legged in Buddhistic fashion in niches in the walls surrounded by an oval-shaped ornamentation. These are like the images in the niches of the temples of all great Buddhist buildings; the oval-shaped ornamentation may easily be, it really looks exactly like, the aureole which invariably surrounds the figure of the Buddha at Boro Budor and elsewhere. Moreover these figures in Yucatan have a nimbus too, just like the Buddhas. We are not of course endeavouring to show that the Yucatecan figures represent Buddha; but we are suggesting that the Oriental pattern and designs for religious statuary had sunk deep into the Mayan mind.

Though the sculptures of the two civilisations are not, as has been said, strikingly alike in detail, they are similar in subjects. They represent, for the most part, when not strictly religious, processions, battle-scenes, and pictures of the daily life of the people. There are, too, bas-reliefs showing the conquered submitting to the conqueror, the details being much like those of the famous carving on the rock at Behistun. There is not much in such similarities, as the carvings of any race would tend to be stereotyped in a common form. Where valuable evidence would be looked for is in the fields of religion and mythology.

So far, wherever we have been able to show similarities between the architectures of America and the East, Buddhism has been the prevailing religion of the part of the latter in question. Do we then find any likeness between the religion of the Mayans and Buddhism?

In entering upon this part of our inquiry, we must remember that the religion of a mere handful of invaders, as we must presume the Oriental builders to have been, would not appeal to the natives so much as would their arts. When you have admitted the conservative tendencies of all peoples in matters religious, it gives an added weight to any genuine parallels which are traceable between two religions in such an argument as the present. We believe we can show such genuine parallels; but first we must refer once more to the suggestion that the elephant was sacred to the Mayans. We have shown that no reliance can be placed on the zoological deductions made from the so-called elephant-trunk ornaments on the Mayan buildings. But on the general question, the fact that the elephant has apparently never been indigenous to America would seem to settle the matter. No race has ever been shown to have worshipped an animal they have never actually seen. Some writers have tried to prove that the elephant or its congener, the mammoth, existed in America contemporaneously with man. Professor Newberry, in an article "The Ancient Lakes of Western America" (_U.S. Geological Survey Report_, Washington, 1871), writes: "The elephant and mastodon continued to inhabit the interior of our continent long after the glaciers had retreated beyond the upper lakes, and when the minutest details of surface topography were the same as now.... It is even claimed here as on the European continent that man was a contemporary of the mammoth and that here, as there, he contributed largely to its final extinction."

For this view there would seem little real evidence. The so-called elephant figures dug up during the excavation of mounds in Wisconsin and Iowa in 1880, although declared by their finders to be miniature representations of elephants, have no tusks and are far more like the tapir of Central America. This is the American animal nearest approaching in form the elephant of Asia. That the tapir was worshipped by the Mayans there is no doubt: ample proof exists. It is certainly possible enough that this was an indigenous cult, and cannot be held to be reminiscent of an earlier worship of the elephant. What would seem to militate against such an explanation is the nature of the tapir.

Animal-worship undoubtedly arose in the majority of cases from one of two motives: fear or grat.i.tude for utility. The former motive is ill.u.s.trated in the adoration of the larger carnivora; while the worship of the whale, the horse, and the cow are examples of the latter. But the tapir is neither feared (he is very shy, has no tusks or other means of offence, and lives entirely in the swampy woods, never willingly meeting man); nor is he of the least use, though it is possible his flesh has on occasions been eaten. With this, we will finally leave the elephant-cult question, with the suggestion that the tapir being the nearest approach to the elephant in the New World, may have been adopted as its successor by the invaders and afterwards became a deity of the Mayans.

Now let us see what are the parallels between Buddhism and the Mayan religion, whether in legend, doctrine, or ritual.