The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations: A Comparative Research Based on a Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious, Sociological, and Calendrical SystemsNuttall, Zelia
Religion
The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations: A Comparative Research Based on a Study of the Ancient Mexican Religious, Sociological, and Calendrical Systems
Mr. Maudslay has pointed out that on stelæ from Copan and Quirigua a
profusion of analogous curved signs occurs also in connection with
serpents’ heads. A special feature of the curved puffs of breath on the
Copan “swastika,” as it has been named, are small seed-like balls which
are distributed in detached groups of threes along their inner and outer
edges, and are usually accompanied by what resembles the small calyx of a
flower, making four small objects in all. These balls, which also recur in
the Palenque symbol, forcibly recall a passage of the Zuñi creation myth
recounted by Mr. Cushing.
It relates that, at a certain stage of the creation, “the most perfect of
all priests and fathers named Yanáuluha ... brought up from the
underworld, the water of the inner ocean and the seeds of life production”
... Subsequently, on a feathered staff he carried, “appeared 4 round
things, seeds of moving beings, mere eggs they were; two blue like the sky
and two red like the flesh of the earth-mother.”...
I cannot but think that these words from a purely native source explain
the Copan sculpture more correctly than any inference that could be made,
and authorize the explanation that the central figure represents the “four
times lord,” or “lord of the four winds,” titles which were applied in
Mexico to Quetzalcoatl and Xiuhtecuhtli. At the same time the bas-relief
teaches us that “the four winds” had a deeper meaning than has been
realized, for it represents life-giving breath carrying with it the seeds
of the four vital elements, emanating from the central lord of life,
spreading to the four quarters and dividing itself so as to disseminate
vitality throughout the universe. The title Kukulcan=the Divine Four, also
serpent, proves to be even more expressive of this conception of a central
divinity than the Mexican Divine Twin, or serpent. I am therefore inclined
to consider that it originated with a Maya-speaking people, to whom, more
graphically than to any one else, this bas-relief would have served, as a
joint image of the star-god, the heart of heaven, named Hura-kan; of the
terrestrial lord Ah-cuch-cab, the heart or life of the State; of the
State, with its hun-kaal or one count of twenty subdivisions of people and
its quadruple head and body and, finally, of the native cosmology.
The Copan swastika enables us to come to another interesting conclusion.
It is a refined representation of the set of thoughts suggested by
Polaris, the idea of a stable centre being graphically rendered. Movement
in four directions is also symbolized. As, in the latitude of Copan, Ursa
Minor is the only circumpolar constellation which could have been observed
in four opposite positions, it is obvious that Ursa Minor with Polaris
must have constituted the Maya Celestial Heart or Life=cuxabal. The
following points remain to be discussed in connection with the Copan
swastika.
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