No single incident in the discussion of the origin of American civilization has given rise to greater consternation in the ranks of the “orthodox” ethnologists than Tylor’s statement (=102=):— “The conception of weighing in a spiritual balance in the judgment of the dead, which makes its earliest appearance in the Egyptian religion, was traced thence into a series of variants, serving to draw lines of intercourse through the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions, extending from Eastern Buddhism to Western Christendom. The associated doctrine of the Bridge of the Dead, which separates the good, who pass over, from the wicked, who fall into the abyss, appears first in ancient Persian religion, reaching in like manner to the extremities of Asia and Europe. By these mythical beliefs historical ties are practically constituted, connecting the great religions of the world, and serving as lines along which their interdependence is to be followed out. Evidence of the same kind was brought forward in support of the theory, not sufficiently recognised by writers on culture history, of the Asiatic influences under which the pre-Columbian culture of America took shape. In the religion of old Mexico four great scenes in the journey of the soul in the land of the dead are mentioned by early Spanish writers after the conquest, and are depicted in a group in the Aztec picture-writing known as the Vatican Codex. The four scenes are, first, the crossing of the river; second, the fearful passage of the soul between the two mountains which clash together; third, the soul’s climbing up the mountain set with sharp obsidian knives; fourth, the dangers of the wind carrying such knives on its blast. The Mexican pictures of these four scenes were compared with more or less closely corresponding pictures representing scenes from the Buddhist hells or purgatories as depicted on Japanese temple scrolls. Here, first, the river of death is shown, where the souls wade across; second, the souls have to pass between two huge iron mountains, which are pushed together by two demons; third, the guilty souls climb the mountain of knives, whose blades cut their hands and feet; fourth, fierce blasts of wind drive against their lacerated forms, the blades of knives flying through the air. It was argued that the appearance of analogues so close and complex of Buddhist ideas in Mexico constituted a correspondence of so high an order as to preclude any explanation except direct transmission from one religion to another. The writer, referring also to Humboldt’s argument from the calendars and mythic catastrophes in Mexico and Asia, and to the correspondence in Bronze Age work and in games in both regions, expressed the opinion that on these cumulative proofs anthropologists might well feel justified in treating the nations of America as having reached their level of culture under Asiatic influence.”