Part 3

When, on January 28, 1873, I had the honor of reading a paper before the New York American Geographical Society--on the coincidences that exist between the monuments, customs, religious rites, etc. of the prehistoric inhabitants of America and those of Asia and Egypt--I pointed to the fact that sun circles, dolmen and tumuli, similar to the megalithic monuments of America, had been found to exist scattered through the islands of the Pacific to Hindostan; over the plains of the peninsulas at the south of Asia, through the deserts of Arabia, to the northern parts of Africa; and that not only these rough monuments of a primitive age, but those of a far more advanced civilization were also to be seen in these same countries. Allow me to repeat now what I then said regarding these strange facts: If we start from the American continent and travel towards the setting sun we may be able to trace the route followed by the mound builders to the plains of Asia and the valley of the Nile. The mounds scattered through the valley of the Mississippi seem to be the rude specimens of that kind of architecture. Then come the more highly finished teocalis of Yucatan and Mexico and Peru; the pyramidal mounds of _Maui_, one of the Sandwich Islands; those existing in the Fejee and other islands of the Pacific; which, in China, we find converted into the high, porcelain, gradated towers; and these again converted into the more imposing temples of Cochin-China, Hindostan, Ceylon--so grand, so stupendous in their wealth of ornamentation that those of Chichen-Itza Uxmal, Palenque, admirable as they are, well nigh dwindle into insignificance, as far as labor and imagination are concerned, when compared with them. That they present the same fundamental conception in their architecture is evident--a platform rising over another platform, the one above being of lesser size than the one below; the American monuments serving, as it were, as models for the more elaborate and perfect, showing the advance of art and knowledge.

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 B[=a]li, 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."

MAYA is also, according to the Rig-Veda, the goddess, by whom all things are created by her union with Brahma. She is the cosmic egg, the golden uterus, the _Hiramyagarbha_. We see an image of it, represented floating amidst the water, in the sculptures that adorn the panel over the door of the east facade of the monument, called by me palace and museum at Chichen-Itza. Emile Burnouf, in his Sanscrit Dictionary, at the word Maya, says: Maya, an architect of the _Datyas_; Maya (_mas._), magician, prestidigitator; (_fem._) illusion, prestige; Maya, the magic virtue of the gods, their power for producing all things; also the feminine or producing energy of Brahma.

I will complete the list of these remarkable coincidences with a few others regarding customs exactly similar in both countries. One of these consists in carrying children astride on the hip in Yucatan as in India. In Yucatan this custom is accompanied by a very interesting ceremony called _hetzmec_. It is as follows: When a child reaches the age of four months an invitation is sent to the friends and members of the family of the parents to assemble at their house. Then in presence of all assembled the legs of the child are opened, and he is placed astride the hip of the _nailah_ or _hetzmec_ godmother; she in turn encircling the little one with her arm, supports him in that position whilst she walks five times round the house. During the time she is occupied in that walk five eggs are placed in hot ashes, so that they may burst and the five senses of the child be opened. By the manner in which they burst and the time they require for bursting, they pretend to know if he will be intelligent or not. During the ceremony they place in his tiny hands the implement pertaining to the industry he is expected to practice. The _nailah_ is henceforth considered as a second mother to the child; who, when able to understand, is made to respect her: and she is expected, in case of the mother's death, to adopt and take care of the child as if he were her own.

Now, I will call your attention to another strange and most remarkable custom that was common to the inhabitants of _Mayab_, some tribes of the aborigines of North America, and several of those that dwell in Hindostan, and practice it even to-day. I refer to the printing of the human hand, dipped in a red colored liquid, on the walls of certain sacred edifices. Could not this custom, existing amongst nations so far apart, unknown to each other, and for apparently the same purposes, be considered as a link in the chain of evidence tending to prove that very intimate relations and communications have existed anciently between their ancestors? Might it not help the ethnologists to follow the migrations of the human race from this western continent to the eastern and southern shores of Asia, across the wastes of the Pacific Ocean? I am told by unimpeachable witnesses that they have seen the red or bloody hand in more than one of the temples of the South Sea islanders; and his Excellency Fred. P. Barlee, Esq., the actual governor of British Honduras, has assured me that he has examined this seemingly indelible imprint of the red hand on some rocks in caves in Australia. There is scarcely a monument in Yucatan that does not preserve the imprint of the open upraised hand, dipped in red paint of some sort, perfectly visible on its walls. I lately took tracings of two of these imprints that exist in the back saloon of the main hall, in the governor's house at Uxmal, in order to calculate the height of the personage who thus attested to those of his race, as I learned from one of my Indian friends, who passes for a wizard, that the building was _in naá_, my house. I may well say that the archway of the palace of the priests, toward the court, was nearly covered with them. Yet I am not aware that such symbol was ever used by the inhabitants of the countries bordering on the shores of the Mediterranean or by the Assyrians, or that it ever was discovered among the ruined temples or palaces of Egypt.

The meaning of the red hand used by the aborigines of some parts of America has been, it is well known, a subject of discussion for learned men and scientific societies. Its uses as a symbol remained for a long time a matter of conjecture. It seems that Mr. Schoolcraft had truly arrived at the knowledge of its veritable meaning. Effectively, in the 2d column of the 5th page of the _New York Herald_ for April 12, 1879, in the account of the visit paid by Gen. Grant to Ram Singh, Maharajah of Jeypoor, we read the description of an excursion to the town of Amber. Speaking of the journey to the _home of an Indian king_, among other things the writer says:--"We passed small temples, some of them ruined, some others with offerings of grains, or fruits, or flowers, some with priests and people at worship. On the walls of some of the temples we saw the marks of the human hand as though it had been steeped in blood and pressed against the white wall. We were told that it was the custom, when seeking from the gods some benison to note the vow by putting the hand into a liquid and printing it on the wall. This was to remind the gods of the vow and prayer. And if it came to pass in the shape of rain, or food, or health, or children, the joyous devotee returned to the temple and made other offerings." In Yucatan it seems to have had the same meaning. That is to say: that the owners of the house if private, or the priests, in the temples and public buildings, called upon the edifices at the time of taking possession and using them for the first time, the blessing of the Deity; and placed the hand's imprints on the walls to recall the vows and prayer: and also, as the interpretation communicated to me by the Indians seems to suggest, as a signet or mark of property--_in naá_, my house.

I need not speak of the similarity of many religious rites and beliefs existing in Hindostan and among the inhabitants of _Mayab_. The worship of the fire, of the phallus, of Deity under the symbol of the mastodon's head, recalling that of Ganeza, the god with an elephant's head, hence that of the elephant in Siam, Birmah[TN-13] and other places of the Asiatic peninsula even in our day; and various other coincidences so numerous and remarkable that many would not regard them as simple coincidences. What to think, effectively, of the types of the personages whose portraits are carved on the obelisks of Copan? Were they in Siam instead of Honduras, who would doubt but they are Siameeses.[TN-14] What to say of the figures of men and women sculptured on the walls of the stupendous temples hewn, from the live rock, at Elephanta, so American is their appearance and features? Who would not take them to be pure aborigines if they were seen in Yucatan instead of Madras, Elephanta and other places of India.

If now we abandon that country and, crossing the Himalaya's range enter Afghanistan, there again we find ourselves in a country inhabited by Maya tribes; whose names, as those of many of their cities, are of pure American-Maya origin. In the fourth column of the sixth page of the London _Times_, weekly edition, of March 4, 1879, we read: "4,000 or 5,000 assembled on the opposite bank of the river _Kabul_, and it appears that in that day or evening they attacked the Maya villages situated on the north side of the river."

He, the correspondent of the _Times_, tells us that Maya tribes form still part of the population of Afghanistan. He also tells us that _Kabul_ is the name of the river, on the banks of which their villages are situated. But _Kabul_ is the name of an antique shrine in the city of Izamal. Cogolludo, in the lib. IV., cap. VIII. of his History of Yucatan, says: "They had another temple on another mound, on the west side of the square, also dedicated to the same idol. They had there the symbol of a hand, as souvenir. To that temple they carried their dead and the sick. They called it _Kabul_, the working hand, and made there great offerings." Father Lizana says the same: so we have two witnesses to the fact. _Kab_, in Maya means hand; and _Bul_ is to play at hazard.

Many of the names of places and towns of Afghanistan have not only a meaning in the American-Maya language, but are actually the same as those of places and villages in Yucatan to-day, for example:

The Valley of _Chenar_ would be the valley of the _well of the woman's children_--_chen_, well, and _al_, the woman's children. The fertile valley of _Kunar_ would be the valley of the _god of the ears of corn_; or, more probably, the _nest of the ears of corn_: as KÚ, pronounced short, means _God_, and _Kuu_, pronounced long, is nest. NAL, is the _ears of corn_.

The correspondent of the London _Times_, in his letters, mentions the names of some of the principal tribes, such as the _Kuki-Khel_, the _Akakhel_, the _Khambhur Khel_, etc. The suffix Khel simply signifies tribe, or clan. So similar to the Maya vocable _Kaan_, a tie, a rope; hence a clan: a number of people held together by the tie of parentage. Now, Kuki would be Kukil, or Kukum maya[TN-15] for feather, hence the KUKI-KHEL would be the tribe of the feather.

AKA-KHEL in the same manner would be the tribe of the reservoir, or pond. AKAL is the Maya name for the artificial reservoirs, or ponds in which the ancient inhabitants of Mayab collected rain water for the time of drought.

Similarly the KHAMBHUR KHEL is the tribe of the _pleasant_: _Kambul_ in Maya. It is the name of several villages of Yucatan, as you may satisfy yourself by examining the map.

We have also the ZAKA-KHEL, the tribe of the locust, ZAK. It is useless to quote more for the present: enough to say that if you read the names of the cities, valleys[TN-16] clans, roads even of Afghanistan to any of the aborigines of Yucatan, they will immediately give you their meaning in their own language. Before leaving the country of the Afghans, by the KHIBER Pass--that is to say, the _road of the hawk_; HI, _hawk_, and BEL, road--allow me to inform you that in examining their types, as published in the London illustrated papers, and in _Harper's Weekly_, I easily recognized the same cast of features as those of the bearded men, whose portraits we discovered in the bas-reliefs which adorn the antæ and pillars of the castle, and queen's box in the Tennis Court at Chichen-Itza.

On our way to the coast of Asia Minor, and hence to Egypt, we may, in following the Mayas' footsteps, notice that a tribe of them, the learned MAGI, with their Rabmag at their head, established themselves in Babylon, where they became, indeed, a powerful and influential body. Their chief they called _Rab-mag_--or LAB-MAC--the old person--LAB, _old_--MAC, person; and their name Magi, meant learned men, magicians, as that of Maya in India. I will directly speak more at length of vestiges of the Mayas in Babylon, when explaining by means of the _American Maya_, the meaning and probable etymology of the names of the Chaldaic divinities. At present I am trying to follow the footprints of the Mayas.

On the coast of Asia Minor we find a people of a roving and piratical disposition, whose name was, from the remotest antiquity and for many centuries, the terror of the populations dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean; whose origin was, and is yet unknown; who must have spoken Maya, or some Maya dialect, since we find words of that language, and with the same meaning inserted in that of the Greeks, who, Herodotus tells us, used to laugh at the manner the _Carians_, or _Caras_, or _Caribs_, spoke their tongue; whose women wore a white linen dress that required no fastening, just as the Indian and Mestiza women of Yucatan even to-day[TN-17]

To tell you that the name of the CARAS is found over a vast extension of country in America, would be to repeat what the late and lamented Brasseur de Bourbourg has shown in his most learned introduction to the work of Landa, "Relacion de las cosas de Yucatan;" but this I may say, that the description of the customs and mode of life of the people of Yucatan, even at the time of the conquest, as written by Landa, seems to be a mere verbatim plagiarism of the description of the customs and mode of life of the Carians of Asia Minor by Herodotus.

If identical customs and manners, and the worship of the same divinities under the same name, besides the traditions of a people pointing towards a certain point of the globe as being the birth-place of their ancestors, prove anything, then I must say that in Egypt also we meet with the tracks of the Mayas, of whose name we again have a reminiscence in that of the goddess Maia, the daughter of Atlantis, worshiped in Greece. Here, at this end of the voyage, we seem to find an intimation as to the place where the Mayas originated. We are told that Maya is born from Atlantis; in other words, that the Mayas came from beyond the Atlantic waters. Here, also, we find that Maia is called the mother of the gods _Kubeles_. _Kú_, Maya _God_, _Bel_ the road, the way. Ku-bel, the road, the origin of the gods as among the Hindostanees. These, we have seen in the Rig Veda, called Mâyâ, the feminine energy--the productive virtue of Brahma.

I do not pretend to present here anything but facts, resulting from my study of the ancient monuments of Yucatan, and a comparative study of the Maya language, in which the ancient inscriptions, I have been able to decipher, are written. Let us see if those _facts_ are sustained by others of a different character.

I will make a brief parallel between the architectural monuments of the primitive Chaldeans, their mode of writing, their burial places, and give you the etymology of the names of their divinities in the American Maya language.

The origin of the primitive Chaldees is yet an unsettled matter among learned men. Some professing one opinion, others another. All agree, however, that they were strangers to the lower Mesopotamian valleys, where they settled in very remote ages, their capital being, in the time of Abraham, as we learn from Scriptures, _Ur_ or _Hur_. So named either because its inhabitants were worshipers of the moon, or from the moon itself--U in the Maya language--or perhaps also because the founders being strangers and guests, as it were, in the country, it was called the city of guests, HULA (Maya), _guest just arrived_.

Recent researches in the plains of lower Mesopotamia have revealed to us their mode of building their sacred edifices, which is precisely identical to that of the Mayas.

It consisted of mounds composed of superposed platforms, either square or oblong, forming cones or pyramids, their angles at times, their faces at others, facing exactly the cardinal points.

Their manner of construction was also the same, with the exception of the materials employed--each people using those most at hand in their respective countries--clay and bricks in Chaldea, stones in Yucatan. The filling in of the buildings being of inferior materials, crude or sun-dried bricks at Warka and Mugheir; of unhewn stones of all shapes and sizes, in Uxmal and Chichen, faced with walls of hewn stones, many feet in thickness throughout. Grand exterior staircases lead to the summit, where was the shrine of the god, and temple.

In Yucatan these mounds are generally composed of seven superposed platforms, the one above being smaller than that immediately below; the temple or sanctuary containing invariably two chambers, the inner one, the Sanctum Sanctorum, being the smallest.

In Babylon, the supposed tower of Babel--the _Birs-i-nimrud_--the temple of the seven lights, was made of seven stages or platforms.

The roofs of these buildings in both countries were flat; the walls of vast thickness; the chambers long and narrow, with outer doors opening into them directly; the rooms ordinarily let into one another: squared recesses were common in the rooms. Mr. Loftus is of opinion that the chambers of the Chaldean buildings were usually arched with bricks, in which opinion Mr. Taylor concurs. We know that the ceilings of the chambers in all the monuments of Yucatan, without exception, form triangular arches. To describe their construction I will quote from the description by Herodotus, of some ceilings in Egyptian buildings and Scythian tombs, that resemble that of the brick vaults found at Mugheir. "The side walls slope outward as they ascend, the arch is formed by each successive layer of brick from the point where the arch begins, a little overlapping the last, till the two sides of the roof are brought so near together, that the aperture may be closed by a single brick."

Some of the sepulchers found in Yucatan are very similar to the jar tombs common at Mugheir. These consist of two large open-mouthed jars, united with bitumen after the body has been deposited in them, with the usual accompaniments of dishes, vases and ornaments, having an air hole bored at one extremity. Those found at Progreso were stone urns about three feet square, cemented in pairs, mouth to mouth, and having also an air hole bored in the bottom. Extensive mounds, made artificially of a vast number of coffins, arranged side by side, divided by thin walls of masonry crossing each other at right angles, to separate the coffins, have been found in the lower plains of Chaldea--such as exist along the coast of Peru, and in Yucatan. At Izamal many human remains, contained in urns, have been found in the mounds.