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
To sum up: in ancient America the human form was employed to represent
quadripartite division and the complete finger-and-toe count=20, and as
such became emblematic of the quadriform plan of universal application.
Owing to a variety of circumstances and suggestions arising from language,
the figure of a quadruped=ocelot was adopted as a symbol of the State by
some tribes and the form of an eagle by others, the inference being that
the ocelot was identified with the cult of the earth and night and the
eagle with the cult of heaven and day. While the ocelot and eagle occur in
the codices as representative of two distinct classes or divisions of the
State, there are some interesting and suggestive representations, to which
I shall revert, of figures combining the form and claws of an ocelot with
the wings and head of a bird, evidently symbolical of a union of the Above
and Below, or Heaven and Earth.
Having furnished the explanation that ancient America affords of the
origin of the primitive employment of the human body, the quadruped and
bird in allegory and the assignment of their various parts to points in
space, it is to Chinese scholars that I appeal for enlightenment as to the
origin and development of the same idea in China. To me one point of
difference between the Chinese and American list is very striking. In
America although the navel was also regarded as a symbol, the heart,
associated with the Middle, had obviously been recognized as the centre or
seat of life, and the tearing out of the heart had become the salient
feature in human sacrifices. In China the stomach is assigned to the
Middle, and death by disembowelling was customary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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