The name Maya seems to have existed from the remotest times in the meridional parts of Hindostan. Valmiki, in his epic poem, the Ramayana, said to be written 1500 before the Christian era, in which he recounts the wars and prowesses of RAMA in the recovery of his lost wife, the beautiful SITA, speaking of the country inhabited by the Mayas, describes it as abounding in mines of silver and gold, with precious stones and lapiz lazuri:[TN-9] and bounded by the _Vindhya_ mountains on one side, the _Prastravana_ range on the other and the sea on the third. The emissaries of RAMA having entered by mistake within the Mayas territories, learned that all foreigners were forbidden to penetrate into them; and that those who were so imprudent as to violate this prohibition, even through ignorance, seldom escaped being put to death. (Strange[TN-10] to say, the same thing happens to-day to those who try to penetrate into the territories of the _Santa Cruz_ Indians, or in the valleys occupied by the _Lacandones_, _Itzaes_ and other tribes that inhabit _La Tierra de Guerra_. The Yucatecans themselves do not like foreigners to go, and less to settle, in their country--are consequently opposed to immigration. The emissaries of Rama, says the poet, met in the forest a woman who told them: That in very remote ages a prince of the Davanas, a learned magician, possessed of great power, whose name was _Maya_, established himself in the country, and that he was the architect of the principal of the Davanas: but having fallen in love with the nymph _Hemâ_, married her; whereby he roused the jealousy of the god _Pourandura_, who attacked and killed him with a thunderbolt. Now, it is worthy of notice, that the word _Hem_ signifies in the Maya language to _cross with ropes_; or according to Brasseur, _hidden mysteries_. By a most rare coincidence we have the same identical story recorded in the mural paintings of Chaacmol’s funeral chamber, and in the sculptures of Chichsen[TN-11] and Uxmal. There we find that Chaacmol, the husband of Moó[TN-12] is killed by his brother Aac, who stabbed him three times in the back with his spear for jealousy. Aac was in love with his sister Moó, but she married his brother Chaacmol from choice, and because the law of the country prescribed that the younger brother should marry his sister, making it a crime for the older brothers to marry her. In another part of the _Ramayana_, MAYA is described as a powerful _Asoura_, always thirsting for battles and full of arrogance and pride--an enemy to Bāli, chief of one of the monkey tribes, by whom he was finally vanquished. The celebrated Indianist, Mr. H. T. Colebrooke, in a memoir on the sacred books of the Hindoos, published in Vol. VIII of the “Asiatic Researches,” says: “The _Soûryasiddkântu_ (the most ancient Indian treatise on astronomy), is not considered as written by MAYA; but this personage is represented as receiving his science from a partial incarnation of the sun.”