The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations Part 12

It is with deference, however, that I submit my conclusion and refer the question to the supreme authority of Drs. Stubel and Uhle and Mr.

Bandelier, whose attainments and exhaustive researches in the region of Tiahuanaco qualify them to utter a final judgment upon this interesting subject. According to Dr. Max Uhle the civilization established at Tiahuanaco antedates that of the Incas. It may yet be proven that whilst Tiahuanaco was settled in remote times by colonists from the North, the Inca civilization was due to a later migration. It certainly appears that, in Tiahuanaco and Cuzco, the identical fundamental scheme of government and organization prevailed.

I shall yet have occasion to point out that in Mexico and Yucatan and Central America there are also monuments exhibiting multiples of 12 and 4 and also 16 chieftains. Meanwhile it is worth while to note here briefly, some a.n.a.logies to Mexican and Maya antiquities found in Peru.

I am much indebted to Sir Clements D. Markham, the President of the Royal Geographical Society, for the kind permission to reproduce here a hasty drawing he made, in 1853, of a gold plaque (size 5-8/10 inches) found in Cuzco (fig. 50). It was then in Lima, being the property of the President of Peru, General Echerrique. This curious relic exhibits the image of a monstrous face surrounded by a band with subdivisions containing various signs. The plaque was looked upon by its owner as a Calendar, but Sir Clements Markham, after studying its subdivisions with a view of ascertaining their agreement with the twelve divisions of the Peruvian year, preferred to let his notes on the subject remain unpublished, not having come to a satisfactory conclusion on the subject. I am permitted, however, to state that Sir Clements Markham specially noted the resemblance of a sign, which is represented on the cheeks of the central figure and recurs four times on the encircling band, to the well-known Maya glyph ahau=chief, lord.

[Ill.u.s.tration.]

Figure 50.

It is, indeed, a cursive representation of a human head and moreover resembles those figured on the garment of a gigantic red sandstone statue found at Ak-Kapana and figured in Stubel and Uhle's Tiahuanaco. On this garment the heads alternate with squares and form a close design. This resemblance between the conventional faces on this archaic statue and those on the gold plaque has made me attach more importance to the latter and at all events regard it as preserving ancient native symbolism. In connection with these I wish to point out that the plaque itself offers a certain resemblance to well-known Mexican calendars, the centre of which usually exhibits a face which is surrounded by a band with day or month signs. It is remarkable that above each eye there are four dots, especially as the Quechua word for eye=naui is h.o.m.onymous with the Nahuatl numeral four=nahui, and this is so constantly a.s.sociated with an eye in the Mexican sign Nahui ollin=four movements (_cf._ fig. 2). As strange a coincidence as this is furnished by the mark on the forehead of the image, not because the latter resembles the sect mark of the Vishnu worshippers, but because it offers a marked a.n.a.logy to the Mexican Acatl sign which is frequently carved or painted as a cane standing in a square receptacle with recurved ends. I am strongly tempted to interpret this symbol according to the native mode of thought, as signifying the centre, the union of the Above and Below and to regard the upper part of the face itself as a representation of the Above, the heaven, with its two eyes (the Moon and Sun), whilst the lower part and teeth, as in Mexico, signified the Below, the earth and underworld. By means of the head on each cheek and the number four over each eye, the dual and quadruple rulerships of the empire could well have been expressed. Postponing a more thorough study of the gold plaque, I merely note here that it exhibits curious a.n.a.logies not only to Maya but also to Mexican symbolism.

Another instance of the same kind is furnished by a possibly modern but curious small silver pendant of unquestionably native workmanship. It is preserved at the Ethnographical Museum at Vienna and is figured in the Report of the International Congress of Americanists which was held at Berlin in 1888 (pl. 1, fig. 4, p. 96). Reputed to be from Cuzco, it represents a figure of the sun surrounded by eight straight and intermediate undulating rays. Two serpents are figured beneath the sun; their bodies extend across the pendant and their heads with open jaws almost meet in the centre. A figure, wearing a peculiar head-dress, is kneeling in worship beneath the symbols, which undoubtedly recall the Mexican mode of representing two serpents meeting, as on the Calendar Stone of Mexico, for instance.

As I am tracing a.n.a.logies at present, I should like to ask the reader to compare the symbols figured and designated by Salcamayhua as that of the earth (see his fig. _c_, pl. LXVI) with the sacred vase from the Maya MS.

(his fig. II, pl. LIX) and the form of the Peruvian symbol for the sea (his fig. _e_, pl. LXVI) with the peculiar Mexican sh.e.l.l ornament (fig. 1, no. 10). Insufficient though the above a.n.a.logies may seem in themselves, they are valuable in conjunction with the other data presented and strengthen the conclusion that the same symbolism prevailed in Peru as in Central America, Yucatan and Mexico.

Let us now rapidly journey northwards from Peru to these countries and briefly record the traces of the existence of the same ideas and quadruplicate form of government which we may encounter en route. In the elevated plains of Bogota we find positive proof that the Muyscas held the same ideas as their southern and northern neighbors. Their culture hero, Bochica or Ida-can-zas, was the personification of the Above and of its symbol, the Sun, whilst his wife was Chia, a name suspiciously like Quilla, the Quechua for moon. He was high-priest and ruler but counselled the Muyscas to elect one of themselves, a chief named Hunc-Ahua, to be their Za-que or civil ruler. Ida-can-zas inst.i.tuted the Calendar and taught the Muyscas to appoint four chiefs of tribes whose names or t.i.tles are recorded as Gameza, Busbanca, Pesca and Toca. The inst.i.tution of a dual government is indicated by the record that the high-priest dwelt at the sacred town Aura-ca and the Za-que at Tunja.

It is extremely curious to notice that Ida-can-zas, in Bogota, did precisely what Cortes found it expedient to do after the Conquest of Mexico. The latter a.s.sumed the supreme rulership over the n.o.bility, became the "lord of Heaven" and inst.i.tuted a native chieftain, bearing a female t.i.tle, as his coadjutor, the lord of the earth, and the ruler of the people of the lower cla.s.s.

It may be worth making the pa.s.sing remark that the t.i.tle of the Muysca culture-hero contains the word "can" and thus recalls the Maya Kukulcan and that the t.i.tle Za-que offers a certain resemblance to the Maya t.i.tle Chac, whilst the name Hunc-ahua seems strangely similar to Hun-ahau which in Maya would signify "one lord." It is for Muysca scholars to enlighten us as to the derivation and meaning of the above t.i.tles and name.

Regretting the lack of time and doc.u.ments which have prevented me from obtaining further data I now return to Guatemala and the vicinity of the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs. Referring to the introduction to their Annals(39) we learn that the Cakchiquel tribe was but one of four allied nations, each of which had its capital, named Tecpan, as follows:

Nations: Capitals.

Cakchiquel: Tecpan Quauhtemallan, Quiche: Utatlan, Tzutuhil: At.i.tlan, Akahal: Tezolotlan.

According to Mr. A. P. Maudslay's authoritative statement, these nations were engaged in warfare against each other at the time of the Conquest.

Tezolotlan was termed the "tierra de guerra" the land of war, and the precise locality of its tecpan or former capital has not been traced, although it seems to have been close to Rabinal or in the valley of that name.

It is well known that, under the rulership of Tizoc, the Mexicans extended their conquests into Guatemala. Buschmann has, moreover, proven that the foregoing names of the capitals, of what were at one time four provinces, are pure Nahuatl, which fact establishes the existence of Nahua supremacy in these regions.

It is curious to find that one of the Santa Lucia slabs seems to commemorate the existence of a central rulership and that of the four quarters. It is reproduced in Mr. Strebel's publication already cited and represents a central personage holding a head and a tecpatl, whilst four lesser personages, each carrying a head, are figured as walking away in four opposed directions. As, according to native symbolism, the head is the symbol for chieftain this slab seems to commemorate the establishment and at all events testifies to the existence in Guatemala of the scheme of government now so familiar.

In their Annals, the Cakchiquels record, as I have already shown, that they carried their tribute to "the enclosure of Tulan," a designation which supports my inference, previously maintained, that Tulan was derived from the Maya tulum,=a fortification, an enclosed place or that which is entire, whole, etc., and applied always to the metropolis of a state.

An ancient Cakchiquel legend relates, moreover, that, according to the "ancient men," there had been four Tulans: one in the east, one in the north, one in the west and one "where the G.o.d dwells." This would obviously have been situated towards the south in order to accord with the general scheme. I cannot but think that this record testifies to the existence of an extremely ancient state which starting from one metropolis had gradually developed into four great Tullans, to one of which the four tecpans of Guatemala pertained. The fact that the Spaniards found the four nations living close together, with capitals or tecpans bearing Nahuatl names and in constant warfare with each other, seems to indicate the destruction of their own ancient metropolis or Tullan by their Mexican conquerors and the consequent disintegration of their former government.(40)

The Mendoza Codex teaches us that when the Mexicans conquered a land they first burnt and utterly destroyed the teocallis situated in the heart of its central capital. They razed this to the ground, and carried off to their own metropolis the totemic images of the rulers of the tribe. The barbarous inst.i.tution of human sacrifice, which was only practised to a great extent by the Mexicans when the necessity to obtain more plentiful food supplies for their rapidly increasing population forced them to become a nation of warriors and conquerors, seems indeed to have been adopted as a fear-inspiring, symbolical rite commemorating the conquest and destruction of an integral government.

The victim, usually a chieftain taken prisoner in warfare and clad with his insignia and the raiment of his people, was stretched on the stone of sacrifice and, figuratively speaking, represented his country and its four quarters. The tearing out of his heart by the high-priest, armed with the tecpatl, the emblem of supreme authority, signified the destruction of the independent life of his tribe as much as did the burning of the teocalli, and of its capital. It would seem as though the horrible custom of annually sacrificing one or more representatives of each conquered tribe, had been adopted as a means of upholding the a.s.sumed authority, inspiring awe and terror and impressing the realization of conquest and utter subjection. It is known that sometimes a member of a conquered tribe voluntarily offered himself as a victim in order to release his people from their obligation, and thus earned for himself immortality.

An insight into the native a.s.sociation of ideas is afforded by Sahagun's note that the lord or chieftain was "the heart of his Pueblo," which means town as well as population. The death of the sacrificed chief, therefore, actually conveyed the idea of the destruction of the tribal government to his vanquished subjects. It remains to be seen whether the subsequent part.i.tion of portions of his dead body amongst the priesthood and their ritual cannibalism did not signify the absorption of the conquered population into the communal life of their victors. The preservation of the victim's skull on the Tzompantli, as a register of the conquest of a chieftain, would also be the logical outcome of the native line of thought and symbolism.

At the risk of making a somewhat lengthy digression I will again refer here to a point I have already touched upon, namely, the Mexican employment of the human figure as an allegorical image of their Empire or State, the idea being that the four limbs represented its four governmental and territorial divisions and that these were governed by the head=the lord of the Above or heaven, and the heart=the lord of the Below or earth. A careful study of the native Codices has shown me that such was the native allegory which indeed can be further traced. The territory of a state reproduced the organization of the human body with its four limbs, each of these terminating in minor groups of five.

According to the same set of ideas the cursive image of a state could be conveyed by a main group of five dots, situated in the centre of four minor similar groups. Cross-lines expressing the part.i.tion into four quarters would complete such a graphic and cursive presentation of the scheme and not only signify its territorial but also its governmental features. It is noteworthy that, in Nahuatl as in the Quechua, the t.i.tle for minor chief is h.o.m.onymous with the word for fingers.

The Nahuatl pilli is a t.i.tle for a chieftain or lord and also signifies child and fingers or toes. A finger is ma-pilli, the prefix ma, from maitl=hand, designating the fingers as the children of the hand. The thumb is qualified by the prefix uei=great.

Having gained a recognition of the above facts it is not difficult to understand the meaning of certain sceptres in the form of an open hand which occur as symbols of authority borne by chieftains in the native Codices.(41) I know of one important instance, indeed, where an arm with an open hand is represented as standing upright in the centre of a circle divided into sections and zones (similar to fig. 28, nos. 1, 3, 5, and 6).

The above mentioned examples, which I shall ill.u.s.trate later, have led me to infer that whilst the arm symbolized one of the four divisions of the State, the hand symbolized its capital, the thumb its central ruler and the fingers his four officers or pilli, the rulers of the four quarters of the minor seat of government. In another publication I shall produce ill.u.s.trations showing that the foot was also employed as an emblem of rule and that Mexico, Yucatan and Central America furnish us with actual proofs that the hands and the feet respectively symbolized the upper and lower divisions of the State.

It is thus curious to compare the name for thumb=uei-ma-pilli and the name Uei-mac (literally, great hand) which Sahagun gives as that of the "temporal" coadjutor of the Mexican culture-hero Quetzalcoatl, as well as the term, our toe=totecxopilli with the well-known t.i.tle Totec=our chief or lord. In Yucatan the word for hand=kab is, as I shall demonstrate further on, actually incorporated in the t.i.tle of the lords of the four quarters=Bakab. I am almost inclined to find a trace of a similar a.s.sociation in the Quechua word for fingers=pallca and the t.i.tle palla bestowed upon n.o.ble women.

I have already mentioned in the preceding pages that the natural basis of the all-pervading native numerical division into 45=20 was the finger and toe count. The following table exhibits the general custom to designate 20 as one man or one count.(42)

Word for Man. Word for 20.

Nahuatl. tlacatl. cem-poualli=one count.

Quiche } and } uinay=one man. uinay= " "

Cakchiquel } Tzendal. hun-uinic=one man. hun-uinic= " "

Maya. uinic. hun-kal= " "

In the latter case the affix kal seems to be derived from the same source as the verb kal=to close up or fasten something, and to signify something complete or finished. At the same time the Maya uinal is the Maya name for the twenty calendar-signs, and the same a.s.sociation is demonstrated as existing in Mexico by the well-known picture in the Vatican Codex I (p.

75), which represents a man surrounded by the twenty Mexican calendar-signs.

As I shall treat of the same subject more fully in another publication, I shall but briefly touch upon the intimate connection there existed between these calendar-signs and the twenty cla.s.ses into which the population was strictly divided. It is known that an individual received the name of the day on which he was born and it is possible to prove that this determined his position in the commonwealth, his cla.s.s and his future occupation.

Each child was formally registered by the priestly statisticians at birth, and at about the age of six, when his name was sometimes changed, he entered one of the two educational establishments where he was brought up by the State, under the absolute control of the priesthood and rulers. It can be gleaned that one of the chief cares of the latter was to maintain the same average number of individuals in the distinct cla.s.ses, to which the various forms of labor were allotted and who became in time identified with these. In order to keep the machinery of state in perfect adjustment, individuals had sometimes to be transferred from the cla.s.s into which they were born, to another. In some cases this seems to have been arbitrarily ordered by the authorities, but the latter appear to have guided themselves by the position of the parents and to have established the custom that an individual might alternatively be transferred into the paternal or maternal cla.s.s, but not into any other. As each cla.s.s was, moreover, divided into an upper and lower one, it was possible for each person to elevate himself from the lower to the higher by individual merit or to incur abas.e.m.e.nt, for unworthy conduct, and being, as we have already seen, "reduced to the official rank of women."

The direct outcome of such a form of organization was stringent laws governing marriage, it being expedient that certain cla.s.ses only should intermarry, not only to avoid complications but also to ensure a certain degree of cooperation conducive to the prosperity of the State. In the tribal laws still existing amongst the native tribes of North America, I see the logical survivals of an ancient scheme of organization.

After gaining the above recognition of some of the actual duties of the priest-rulers of ancient Mexico, it is possible to understand the meaning of the native sentence, noted by Sahagun, that the native games of patolli and tlachtli const.i.tuted a practice in "the art of government." From this it is clear that the former, played by two individuals with dice and markers upon a mat in the shape of a cross, and symbolical of the Four Quarters, was originally invented by the priest-rulers for an eminently practical purpose. The mat being an image of the quadruple state and its subdivisions, it was possible to make it serve as a register-board exhibiting the distribution of the population, the number of individuals in each cla.s.s and its death and birth rates. We are informed that when parents, according to the inflexible law, carried their newborn child to the priest, he consulted his books full of day-signs and foretold what its future was to be.

A proof that it was the positions of the stars which determined the season and furnished the means of fixing a date, is furnished by the fact that the stars were also "consulted" and believed to exert an influence upon the destiny of the child.

The implicit faith in the predictions of the priests and in the absolute influence of the position of the heavenly bodies and the date of its birth upon the individual indicates that the parents were kept in ignorance as to the workings of the machinery of state and that the priesthood were reverenced for their power of prophecy. The belief that they could personally exercise a favorable influence over the destiny of the child seems also to have been encouraged in the parents, since an offering of gifts at the period of registration was customary. After the Conquest, when the native government had been completely broken up, and the enforced registration of birth and the prediction of the priest had utterly lost their original significance, native parents still consulted the surviving members of the priest-rulers; and these ancient statisticians, in order to gain a livelihood, continued to consult their books and uttered predictions as of yore, although their power to control their fulfilment had vanished forever. Ancient Mexico thus furnishes us with an interesting and instructive explanation of the origin of divinatory practices, prognostication at birth, etc. It shows us that, under the ancient form of established government, the sign of the date of a child's birth actually did control his future destiny, while it was unquestionably in the power of the priesthood, not only to predict his future, but also to exert a favorable or unfavorable influence upon it.

The above facts help us to understand the origin not only of divination, propitiation and the belief in the influence of day-signs, but also of the native games which became popular after the Conquest, when their original use and meaning had become obsolete.

Deferring further discussion of this interesting matter I will but draw attention to Mr. Stewart Culin's important study of "American Indian Games,"(43) which clearly establishes their "interrelation" and at the same time proves that they were based, as first distinctly insisted upon by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, on the central idea and that of the four quarters of the world. Mr. Culin has gone so far as to fix the place of origin of the "platter or dice cla.s.s of games which he has found recorded as existing among some 61 American tribes, in the arid region of the southwestern United States and Northern or Central Mexico," and to conceive that "in ancient Mexico we find traces of its highest development."

I place the utmost value upon Mr. Culin's painstaking and conscientious researches and regard them as strongly corroborating my views exposed in the preceding pages. His identification of the pictured diagram in the Fejervary Codex, as the counting circuit of the Four Quarters, with a presiding G.o.d in the middle, as in Zuni, does credit to his perspicacity.

I agree with him in considering that this chart could have been employed after the Conquest for a game or for divination, but trust that, upon perusal of this paper, he will admit that primarily the Fejervary diagram expressed the native scheme of government and the calendar, which was no other than a means of ruling the cla.s.ses by binding each of these to a special day and totemic sign. Each of the twenty cla.s.ses or clans had its day, known by a particular sign which was also its totemic mark. As the day-signs recurred periodically, the chief or head of each clan became its living representative, a.s.sumed a totemistic costume and became the "living image of the ancestral teotl," or G.o.d of his people, of whose activity he rendered account to the central government. It is significant that the common native t.i.tle for lords or chieftains was "tlatoque," literally, "the speakers," and that they were closely designated as the spokesmen of his people, who habitually kept silence in his presence.

The fact that the names and signs of the days are identical with the totemic tribal distinctions imposed for governmental reasons, is one which I shall proceed to demonstrate more fully. Meanwhile attention is now drawn to the chapter on the 7-day period in Dr. Daniel G. Brinton's "Native Calendar of Central America and Mexico," in which he surmises that the tribal divisions of the Cakchiquels "were drawn from the numbers of the Calendar."

According to the native records the inst.i.tution of the Calendar was simultaneous with that of tribal organization and a minute study of both features reveals that it could not have been otherwise.

From the dawn of their history the Cakchiquels, as I have already shown, were divided into thirteen divisions of warriors (Khob, const.i.tuting the upper cla.s.s) and seven tribes (Amag, const.i.tuting the lower cla.s.s). A totem and a day being a.s.signed to each division and tribe, they were, once and for all time, placed in a definite position towards each other and towards the state, and the order in which their chieftains were to sit in general council, and to a.s.sume or perform certain duties, was thus inst.i.tuted. The 20-day period thus const.i.tuted a "complete count" and synopsis of the "thirteen divisions of warriors and seven tribes," but it also fulfilled other not less important purposes.

The day-signs were so ordered that the first, eleventh and sixteenth were major signs employed to designate the years, and identified with the four quarters, elements and their respective colors. The 20-day period, consisting as it also did of 4 major signs and of 44=16 minor signs, was as closely linked to the idea of the Four Quarters as it was to the Above and Below, represented by the 13+7 division. It is therefore evident that a simultaneous reckoning of periods consisting of 5, 7, 13, and 20 days was ingeniously combined. I shall show in my special treatise how "the lords of the Night" employed in their astronomical calendar, 9-night and 9-moon periods for purposes of their own and how these also served to carry out certain ideas of organization, controlling persons. Although it embodied the results of long-standing primitive astronomical observation and accorded with the seasons and movements of the celestial bodies, the native Calendar was primarily a governmental inst.i.tution, designed to control the actions of human beings and bring their communal life in accord with the periodical movements of the heavenly bodies.

In my Note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System, communicated to the International Congress of Americanists at Stockholm, in 1894, I stated certain historical and astronomical facts which showed that the New Cycle, which began in 1507 with the year Acatl, had commenced on March 14th three days after the vernal equinox and that this delay had obviously been intentional, in order to wait for the new moon, which fell on March 13th at 11.40 A. M., and the planet Venus, "which was possibly visible both as morning and evening star between March 14th and 18th." The above facts, which have remained unchallenged since their publication, afford an insight into the astronomical attainments of the sun-priests and moon and star-priests and show an evident desire to begin a new era at a favorable time, when there was a conjunction of the heavenly bodies. Thus the terms of office of the lords of the Above and Below were entered upon and the machinery of state set into motion, in unison with striking celestial phenomena. It is impossible not to realize how great must be the antiquity of a system which, evolving from the rudimentary, ceremonial division of a tribe into seven parts, as a consequence of its primitive observation of the Septentriones, developed into a great and complex government dominated and pervaded by the abstract conceptions of the seven-fold divisions of the Above, Below, Middle and Four Quarters.

Deferring further comment I will proceed to demonstrate the practical value, for governmental purposes, of the cla.s.sification of a community into twenty divisions with as many representative heads, their localizations at given points of the compa.s.s, and a.s.sociation with a calendar-sign and day, and will only refer to what I have already published in my Note on the Calendar, namely, how, by means of the combination of 13 numerals with the 20 signs, a unit of 260 days was obtained, and how each sign was combined but once with the same number, and a perfect system of rotation of periods, regulating office, labor, etc., was inst.i.tuted. It is not possible for me to enlarge here upon the features and merits of the system which I do not hesitate to term one of the most admirable and perfect achievements of the human intellect. My present purpose is to lay stress upon the fact that, in Mexico, the major calendar-signs were borne as t.i.tles by the rulers of the four quarters who presided in rotation over a year-the name of this and of their t.i.tle being always in correspondence.