Part 17

Hence it was the last portion of the narrative--which we can analyse but very briefly--the abdication of Ra and his retreat, first, in heaven, next in the Ament, a symbol of death which is to be followed by resurrection as the setting of the sun by its rising--it is this which constituted its interest in the conception of the doctrine of a future life, illustrated in the decoration of the interior of the tomb of Seti I. For our present purpose, on the contrary, it is the beginning of the story which constitutes its importance, it is that destruction of primal humanity by the gods of which no mention has been hitherto found elsewhere. Although the means of destruction employed by Ra are quite dissimilar, although he does not proceed by submersion but by a massacre in which the lion-headed goddess Tefnut or Sekhet, the dreadful form of Hathor, is the agent, the other sides of the story bear a sufficiently striking analogy to that of the Mosaic or Chaldean Deluge to show that it is the special and very individual form assumed in Egypt by that tradition. In both we have human corruption exciting divine wrath, and punished by a divinely ordained annihilation of the race, from which there escapes but a very small number destined to give birth to a new humanity. Finally, after the event an expiatory sacrifice appeases the celestial anger, and a solemn covenant is made between men and the deity, who swears never so to destroy them again. To me, the agreement of these principal features outweighs the divergence in detail. And we have also to observe how singularly akin is the part ascribed by the Egyptian priest to Ra with that assigned in the epic poem of Uruk to the god Bel, in the deluge of Khasisatra. The Egyptians believed, as did other nations, in the destruction of mankind; but as inundation meant for them prosperity and life, they changed the primitive tradition; the human race, instead of perishing by water, was otherwise exterminated; and the inundation--that crowning benefit to the valley of the Nile--became in their eyes the sign that the wrath of Ra was appeased.

V.

_American Stories of the Flood._

"It is a very remarkable fact," says M. Alfred Maury, "that we find in America traditions of the Deluge coming infinitely nearer to that of the Bible and the Chaldean religion than among any people of the Old World. It is difficult to suppose that the emigration that certainly took place from Asia into North America by the Kourile and Aleutian islands, and still does so in our day, should have brought in these memories, since no trace is found of them among those Mongol or Siberian populations,[57] which were fused with the natives of the New World.... No doubt certain American nations, the Mexicans and Peruvians, had reached a very advanced social condition at the time of the Spanish conquest, but this civilization had a special character, and seems to have been developed on the soil where it flourished. Many very simple inventions, such as the use of weights, were unknown to these people, and this shows that their knowledge was not derived from India or Japan. The attempts that have been made to trace the origin of Mexican civilization to Asia have not as yet led to any sufficiently conclusive facts. Besides, had Buddhism, which we doubt, made its way into America, it could not have introduced a myth not found in its own Scriptures.[58] The cause of these similarities between the diluvian traditions of the nations of the New World and that of the Bible remains therefore unexplained."

I have particular pleasure in quoting these words by a man of immense erudition, because he does not belong to orthodox writers, and will not therefore be thought biassed by a preconceived opinion. Others also, no less rationalistic than he, have pointed out this likeness between American traditions of the Deluge and those of the Bible and the Chaldeans.

The most important among the former are the Mexican, for they appear to have been definitively fixed by symbolic and mnemonic paintings before any contact with Europeans. According to these documents, the Noah of the Mexican cataclysm was Coxcox, called by certain peoples Teocipactli or Tezpi. He had saved himself, together with his wife Xochiquetzal, in a bark, or, according to other traditions, on a raft, made of cypress wood (_Cupressus disticha_). Paintings retracing the deluge of Coxcox have been discovered among the Aztecs, Miztecs, Zapotecs, Tlascaltecs, and Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the latter is still more strikingly in conformity with the story as we have it in Genesis and in Chaldean sources. It tells how Tezpi embarked in a spacious vessel with his wife, his children, and several animals, and grain, whose preservation was essential to the subsistence of the human race. When the great god Tezcatlipoca decreed that the waters should retire, Tezpi sent a vulture from the bark. The bird, feeding on the carcases with which the earth was laden, did not return. Tezpi sent out other birds, of which the humming-bird only came back with a leafy branch in its beak. Then Tezpi, seeing that the country began to vegetate, left his bark on the mountain of Colhuacan.

The document, however, that gives the most valuable information as to the cosmogony of the Mexicans is one known as "Codex Vaticanus," from the library where it is preserved. It consists of four symbolic pictures, representing the four ages of the world preceding the actual one. They were copied at Chobula from a manuscript anterior to the conquest, and accompanied by the explanatory commentary of Pedro de los Rios, a Dominican monk, who in 1566, less than fifty years after the arrival of Cortez, devoted himself to the research of indigenous traditions as being necessary to his missionary work.

The first age is marked with the cipher 13×400+6, or 5206, which Alexander von Humboldt understands as giving the number of years of the period, and Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg as the date of its commencement, from a proleptic era going back from the period of the execution of the manuscript. This age is called _Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Earth." It is that of the giants, or Quinames, the earliest inhabitants of Anahuac, whose end was destruction by famine.

The number of the second age is 12×400+4, or 4804, and it is called _Tlatonatiuh_, "Sun of Fire." It closes with the descent on Earth of Xiuhteuchli, the god of fire. Mankind are all transformed into birds, and only thus escape the conflagration. Nevertheless, one human pair find refuge in a cave, and repeople the world.

As to the third age, _Ehecatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind," its number is 10×400+10, or 4010. Its final catastrophe is a terrible hurricane raised by Quetzalcoatl, the "god of the air." With few exceptions, men are metamorphosed into monkeys.

Then comes the fourth age, _Atonatiuh_, "Sun of Water," whose number is 10×400+8, or 4008. It ends by a great inundation, a veritable deluge. All mankind are changed into fish, with the exception of one man and his wife, who save themselves in a bark made of the trunk of a cypress-tree. The picture represents Matlalcueye, goddess of waters, and consort of Tlaloc, god of rain, as darting down towards earth. Coxcox and Xochiquetzal, the two human beings preserved, are seen seated on a tree-trunk and floating in the midst of the waters. This flood is represented as the last cataclysm that devastates the earth.

All this is most important, as a mind of the order of Humboldt's did not hesitate to acknowledge. However, M. Girard de Realle wrote quite recently:

"The myth of the deluge has been met with in several parts of America, and Christian writers have not failed to see in it a reminiscence of the Biblical tradition, nay, in connection with the pyramid of Chobula, they have found traces of the Tower of Babel. We shall not waste time in pointing out how out of a fish-god, Coxcox, among the Chichimecs, Teocipactli among the Aztecs, and a goddess of flowers, Xochiquetzal, it was easy to concoct the Mexican figures of Noah and his wife by joining on to them the story of the ark and the dove. It is enough to observe that all these legends have only been collected and published at a relatively recent period.[59] The first chroniclers, so cautious already despite their honest simplicity, such as Sahagun, Mendieta, Olmos, and the Hispano-indigenous authors, such as the Tezcucan Ixthilxochitl and the Tlascaltec Camargo, never breathe a word of stories they could not have failed to bring to light, had they existed in their days. Lastly, we find in Mr. Bancroft's[60] work a criticism of these legends, due to Don Jose Fernando Ramirez, keeper of the National Museum, which proves incontestably that all these stories spring from all too ready and tendency-fraught interpretations of old Mexican paintings, which according to him only represent episodes in the migration of Aztecs around the central lakes of the plateau of Anahuac."

I much fear that the _tendency_ here is not on the side of writers who are looked on as ground to powder by the epithet Christian; which, indeed, be it said in passing, might well surprise a few among them. And this tendency, when resolved at any cost to attack the Bible, is as anti-scientific as when grasping at any uncritical argument in its defence. No doubt the identical character of Xochiquetzal or Maciulxochiquetzal, as goddess of the fertilizing rain and of vegetation, with that of Chalchihuitlicue or Mallalcueye, is a well-known fact, more certain even than the character of fish-god of Coxcox or Teocipactli. But the transformation of gods into heroes is a very common fact in all polytheisms, and most common in the kind of unconscious euhemerism from which infant peoples never free themselves. There is therefore nothing here to contradict the fact that these two divine personages, contemplated as heroes, may be taken as the two survivors of the Flood, and the ancestors of the new humanity. As to the theory of Don Jose Ramirez, about the symbolic pictures that have been interpreted as expressing the diluvian tradition, it is very ingenious and scientifically presented, but not so absolutely proved as M. Girard de Realle considers. But even granting its incontestability, it only removes part of the evidence which may have been unintentionally forced by those naturally disposed to see in it a parallel to Genesis; as for instance, with regard to the sending out the birds by Tezpi. Still the existence of the tradition among Mexican peoples would not be shaken, for it rests upon a whole of indubitable testimony, confirming in a striking manner the interpretation hitherto given of the "Codex Vaticanus."

The valuable work in the Aztec language, and in Latin letters, compiled by a native, subsequently to the Spanish conquest, called _Codex Chimalpopoca_ by Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, who gives an analysis and partial translation of it in the first volume of his "Histoire des Nations Civilisees du Mexique," contains in its third portion a history of the suns, or successive ages of the world. Each takes its name from the way in which humanity is destroyed at its close. The first is the age of jaguars, who devour the primordial giants;[61] the second, the age of wind; at its close men lost themselves, and were carried off by the hurricane, and transformed themselves into monkeys. Houses, woods, everything was swept away by the wind. Then comes the age of fire, whose sun is called Tlalocan-Teuctli, "Lord of the lower regions," the usual appellation of Mictlanteuctli, the Mexican Pluto, which seems to point to the idea of an age of special volcanic activity. At its close, mankind is destroyed by a rain of fire, and such as do not perish escape under the form of birds. Finally, the fourth age is that of water, which immediately precedes our present epoch, and closes with the Deluge.

Here is the narrative according to Abbe Brasseur's version, held correct by Americanists:--

"This is the sun called _Nahui-atl_, '4 water.'[62] Now the water was tranquil for forty years, plus twelve, and men lived for the third and fourth times. When the sun _Nahui-atl_ came there had passed away four hundred years, plus two ages, plus seventy-six years. Then all mankind was lost and drowned and found themselves changed into fish. The sky came nearer the water. In a single day all was lost and the day _Nahui-xochitl_ '4 flower,' destroyed all our flesh.

"And that year was that of _ce-calli_, '1 house,'[63] and the day _Nahui-atl_ all was lost. Even the mountains sank into the water, and the water remained tranquil for fifty-two springs.

"Now at the end of the year the god Titlacahuan had warned Nata and his spouse Nena, saying: 'Make no more wine of Agave, but begin to hollow out a great cypress, and you will enter into it when in the month Tozontli the water approaches the sky.'

"Then they entered in, and when the god had closed the door he said: 'Thou shalt eat but one ear of maize and thy wife one also.'

"But as soon as they had finished they went out, and the water remained calm, for the wood no longer moved, and on opening it they began to see fish.

"Then they lit a fire, by rubbing together pieces of wood, and they roasted fish.

"The gods Citlallinicue and Citlalatonac instantly looking down said: 'Divine Lord, what is that fire that is making there. Why do they thus smoke the sky?' At once Titlacahuan-Tezcatlipoca descended. He began to chide, saying, 'Who has made this fire here?' And seizing hold of the fish he shaped their loins and heads, and they were transformed into dogs (_chichime_)."

This last touch is a satire on the Chichimecs, or "barbarians of the North," founders of the kingdom of Tezcuco. It proves the decidedly indigenous character of the story, and removes any such suspicion of a Biblical imitation, as the date might have led to.

The manuscript, written in Spanish by Motolina, who belonged to the generation of the "conquistadores," has hitherto only been known by extracts given from it by Abbe Brasseur in his "Recherches sur les Ruines de Palenque," a work containing many useful documents, though already pervaded by the delusions which towards the end of his career so strangely misled this learned pioneer of Mexican antiquarianism. Here, too, we find the theory of the four suns, or four ages, given in the same order as by the author of the "Codex Chimalpopoca."

The first is called "age of Tezcatlipoca," because that god had then added on a half to the sun, which was only half luminous, or had "made himself sun in its place." This was the age of the Quinames, or giants, who were almost all exterminated by famine. After this, Quetzlcoatl, the god of the air, having armed himself with a great stick, struck Tezcatlipoca with it, threw him into the water, and "and made himself sun in his place." The fallen god, transforming himself into a jaguar, devoured such of the Quinames as had escaped from the famine. The statements of the "Codex Vaticanus" and the "Codex Chimalpopoca" as to the final catastrophe of the world's first age, are thus reconciled by this last narrative.

Motolina calls the two next ages those of wind and fire; they are closed in the way we have seen.

The fourth is the age of the "Sun of Water," placed under the patronage of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue. The Deluge terminates it, and after this last cataclysm, we enter upon our present era.

We come next to the "History of the Chichimecs," by Don Fernando d'Alva Ixtlilxochitl, descendant of the old pagan kings of Tezcuco, whose pretended silence on the subject we have seen appealed to as disproving the authenticity of these Mexican diluvian traditions. In the first chapter of his first book, Ixtlilxochitl relates the story of the cosmic ages according to the traditions of his native city. He only gives four in all, including the actual period. The first is the _Atonatiuh_, or "Sun of Waters," which begins with the creation, and ends with a universal deluge. Then comes the _Thlachitonatiuh_, or "Sun of Earth," when the giants called Quinametziu-Tzocuilhioxime lived, descendants of the survivors of the first epoch. A frightful earthquake, overthrowing the mountains, and destroying the greater part of the dwellers on earth, closes this age. It is in the third age, _Ehecatonatiuh_, "Sun of Wind," that Olmecs and Xicalanques came from the east to settle in the south of Mexico. At first they were conquered by the remnant of the Quinames, but ended by massacring these. Quetzalcoatl next appears as a religious reformer, but is not listened to by men, whose indocility is punished by the appalling hurricane during which such as escaped became monkeys. Then begins the present age, _Tlatonatiuh_, or "Sun of Fire," thus called because it is to end by a rain of fire. We see, therefore, that Ixtlilxochitl was perfectly acquainted with the diluvian tradition, and if he does not enter into its details, he assigns it an important place in his series of ages.

Therefore we must needs acknowledge the diluvian tradition to be really indigenous in Mexico and not an invention of missionaries. We may doubt as to some particulars in some of the versions, though this arises chiefly from a preconceived idea, because they too much resemble the story in Genesis; but as to the fundamental tradition it is unassailable, and intimately connected with a conception not drawn from the Bible--and universally admitted to have existed--that, namely, of the four ages of the world. Between this conception, and that of the four ages or Yugas of India, and of the _manvantaras_ where the destruction of the world and the renewals of humanity alternate, there is an analogy which appeared very significant to Humboldt, MacCulloch, and M. Maury. It is one that justifies us in asking whether the Mexicans devised it independently or borrowed it more or less directly from India. The system of the four ages, inseparable in Mexico from that of the diluvian tradition, confronts us with the problem--ever recurring with regard to American civilization--of how far these are spontaneous and how far derived from Asia through Buddhist or other missionaries. In the present state of our knowledge we can as little solve this problem negatively as affirmatively, and all attempts made to come to a positive conclusion are premature and unproductive. Before discovering whence American civilizations came, we must thoroughly know what they were, nor attempt the arduous and obscure question of their origin till we frame a real American archaeology on the same scientific basis and by the same methods as other archaeologies. And in this respect Messrs. T. G. Muller and Herbert Bancroft appear to me greatly in advance of their precursors in this field of inquiry.

For the present, all that can be done is, as I have attempted with Flood stories, to determine facts without pretending to draw inferences. Hence I should no longer boldly write, as I did eight years ago: "The Flood stories of Mexico positively prove the tradition of the Deluge to be one of the oldest held by humanity--a tradition so primitive as to be anterior to the dispersion of human families and the final developments of material civilization; which the Red race peopling America brought from the common cradle of our species into their new home, at the same time that the Semites, Chaldeans, and Aryans respectively carried it into theirs."[64] The fact is that among American peoples this tradition may not be primitive. We may indeed affirm that it was not borrowed from the Bible after the arrival of the Spaniards, but we cannot be equally confident that it was not the result of some previous foreign importation, the precise date of which we have no means of fixing.

Be that as it may, the doctrines of successive ages, and of the destruction of the men of the first age by a Deluge, is also found in the curious book of _Popol-vuh_ that collection of the mythological traditions of Guatemala, written after the conquest in the native tongue, by a secret adept of the old religion; discovered, copied, and translated into Spanish in the beginning of the last century by the Dominican Francisco Ximenez, cure of St. Thomas of Chiula. His Spanish version has been published by M. Schelzer, the original text with a French translation by Abbe Brasseur. Here we read that the gods, seeing that animals were neither capable of speaking nor of adoring them, determined to make men in their own image. They fashioned them at first in clay. But those men had no consistency, could not turn their heads; spoke, indeed, but understood nothing. The gods then destroyed their imperfect work by a Deluge. Setting about it for the second time, they made a man of wood and a woman of resin. These creatures were far superior to the former; they moved and lived, but only like other animals; they spoke, but unintelligibly; and gave no thought to the gods. Then Hurakan, "the heart of heaven," the god of storm, caused a rain of burning resin to fall, while the ground was shaken by a fearful earthquake. All the descendants of the wood-and-resin pair perished, with a few exceptions, who became monkeys of the forest. Finally, out of white and yellow maize, the gods produced four perfect men: Balam-Quitze, "the smiling jaguar;" Balam-agab, "the jaguar of the night;" Mahuentah, "the distinguished name;" and Igi-Balam, "the jaguar of the moon." They were tall and strong; saw and knew everything, and rendered thanks to the gods. But the latter were alarmed at this their final success, and feared for their supremacy: accordingly, they threw a light veil, like a mist, over the vision of the four men, which became like that of the men of to-day. While they slept the gods created for them four wives of great beauty, and from three of these pairs the Quiches were born--Igi-Balam and his wife Cakixaha having no children. This series of awkward attempts at creation is sufficiently removed from the Biblical narrative to do away with any suspicion of Christian missionary influence over this indigenous quadrennial legend, where, as usual, we find the belief in the destruction of primal mankind by a great flood.

We meet with it in Nicaragua as well. Oviedo relates that Pedsarias Davila, governor of the province in 1538, charged F. Bobadilla, of the Order of St. Dominic, to inquire into the spiritual condition of those Indians whom his predecessors boasted of having converted in great numbers to Catholicism, which he, Davila, with good reason, doubted. The monk accordingly examined the natives, and Oviedo has transmitted several dialogues which show us the creed of the Nicaraguans a few years after the Spanish conquest. The following bears directly on our subject:--

"_Question by Bobadilla._ Who has created heaven and earth, the stars and moon, man and all else?

"_Answer (by the Cacique Avogoaltegoan)._ Tamagastad and Cippatoval, the one is a man, the other a woman.

"_Q._ Who created that man and woman?

"_A._ No one. On the contrary, all men and women descend from them.

"_Q._ Did they create Christians?

"_A._ I do not know, but the Indians descend from Tamagastad and Cippatoval.

"_Q._ Are there any gods greater than they?

"_A._ No; we believe them to be the greatest.

* * * * *

"_Q._ Are they gods of flesh or wood, or any other substance?

"_A._ They are of flesh; they are man and woman, brown in colour like us Indians. They walked on earth dressed like us, and ate what Indians eat.

"_Q._ Who gave them to eat?

"_A._ Everything belongs to them.

"_Q._ Where are they now?

"_A._ In heaven, according to what our ancestors have told us.