American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western ContinentBrinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Religion
American Hero-Myths: A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison)
Indian mythology; Indians -- Religion
Huitzilopochtli.
Huitznahua.
Itztlacoliuhqui.
Pantecatl.
Of these Dr. Schultz-Sellack advances plausible reasons for believing that
Itztlacoliuhqui, which was the name of a certain form of head-dress, was
another title of Quetzalcoatl; and that Pantecatl was one of the names of
Tezcatlipoca.[1] If this is the case we have here another version of the
same myth.
[Footnote 1: Dr. Schultz Sellack, _Die Amerikanischen Götter der Vier
Weltgegenden und ihre Tempel in Palenque_, in the _Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie_, Bd. xi, (1879).]
§3. _Quetzalcoatl, the Hero of Tula._
But it was not Quetzalcoatl the god, the mysterious creator of the visible
world, on whom the thoughts of the Aztec race delighted to dwell, but on
Quetzalcoatl, high priest in the glorious city of Tollan (Tula), the
teacher of the arts, the wise lawgiver, the virtuous prince, the master
builder and the merciful judge.
Here, again, though the scene is transferred from heaven to earth and from
the cycles of other worlds to a date not extremely remote, the story
continues to be of his contest with Tezcatlipoca, and of the wiles of this
enemy, now diminished to a potent magician and jealous rival, to
dispossess and drive him from famous Tollan.
No one versed in the metaphors of mythology can be deceived by the thin
veil of local color which surrounds the myth in this its terrestrial and
historic form. Apart from its being but a repetition or continuation of
the genuine ancient account of the conflict of day and night, light and
darkness, which I have already given, the name Tollan is enough to point
out the place and the powers with which the story deals. For this Tollan,
where Quetzalcoatl reigned, is not by any means, as some have supposed,
the little town of Tula, still alive, a dozen leagues or so northwest from
the city of Mexico; nor was it, as the legend usually stated, in some
undefined locality from six hundred to a thousand leagues northwest of
that city; nor yet in Asia, as some antiquaries have maintained; nor,
indeed, anywhere upon this weary world; but it was, as the name denotes,
and as the native historian Tezozomoc long since translated it, where the
bright sun lives, and where the god of light forever rules so long as that
orb is in the sky. Tollan is but a syncopated form of _Tonatlan_, the
Place of the Sun.[1]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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