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
Señor Sanchez cites Torquemada (Monarquia Indiana, vol. II, p. 52) as the
only authority who mentions a recumbent image or idol and relates that,
“in the city of Tula, there was preserved in the great temple, an image of
Quetzalcoatl ... he was figured as lying down, as though going to
sleep.... Out of reverence the image was covered with mantles or
cloths.... They said that when sterile women made offerings or sacrifices
to the god Quetzalcoatl, he immediately caused them to become
pregnant....” He was the god of the Winds which he sent to sweep or clear
the way for the tlaloques=“the earth-wine” gods.
Señor Sanchez also quotes Gama, who, basing himself upon Torquemada’s
authority, maintains that Tezcatzon-catl, the principal rain or octli-god,
was figured as lying in an intoxicated condition, holding a vase of pulque
in his hands. To the above data I add the description by Bernal Diaz, of a
“figure in sculpture” he saw on the summit of the great temple of Mexico:
“It was half man and half lizard (lagarto), was encrusted with precious
stones and one-half of it was covered with cloths. They said that half of
it was full of all the kinds of seeds that were produced in the entire
land, and told [me] that it was the god of sown land, of seeds and fruits.
I do not remember his name....” (Historia Verdadera, p. 71). It may be as
well to note, that the Nahuatl names for lizard, cuetz-palin and topitzin,
approximately convey the sound of the first syllables of the name of the
culture-hero Quetzalcoatl, and of the title “topiltzin” bestowed upon him.
It must, of course, remain a matter of conjecture whether the lizard was
possibly employed in the above case as a pictograph, to express the sound
of its name. One thing seems certain, that the Tula image of Quetzalcoatl,
to which divinity barren women directed their invocations, and the statue
described by Bernal Diaz as that “of the god of seeds, fruits and
cultivated land,” were undoubtedly analogous to the sculptured recumbent
figure found in Mexico, and exhibiting the symbols of Tlaloc, or
earth-wine, of maize, and of parturition. Bernal Diaz further relates that
the said image was kept on the uppermost terrace of the Great Temple, in
one of five “concavities surrounded by barbacans or low walls the
wood-work of which was very richly carved” (_op. et loc. cit._).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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