Part 1 (2/2)
Various excursions along new lines of research increased my experience and, in crossing and re-crossing the field of ancient Mexico, I frequently had occasion to observe certain familiar landmarks, from a new point of view, and illuminated by rays of fresh light proceeding from recently acquired sources. It was remarkable how often facts, which had seemed so hopelessly complicated, finally appeared to be quite simple and comprehensible. This was noticeably the case with the Aztec deities which, for years, had seemed to me as numberless. After closely studying their respective symbols, attributes and names, during several consecutive months, and subjecting them to a final minute a.n.a.lysis, I found that their number dwindled in a remarkable way and also verified the truth of the statement made by the anonymous author of the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale ma.n.u.script which I was editing, that the Mexicans painted one and the same G.o.d under a different aspect ”with different colours,” according to the various names they gave him in each instance.
It was particularly interesting to find that, in a.s.suming that certain names designated different native deities, the early Spanish writers had committed a mistake as great as though someone, reading the litany of the Virgin in a Catholic prayer-book, for the first time, inferred that it was a series of invocations addressed to distinct divinities, amongst whom figured the ”morning star,” a ”mirror of justice,” and a ”mystical rose,”
etc. An examination of the texts of several native prayers preserved, established that the Mexicans addressed their prayers to a supreme Creator and ruler, whom they termed ”invisible, incomprehensible and impalpable,”
and revered as ”the father and mother of all.” Some of their so-called idols were, after all, either attempts to represent in objective form, the attributes of the divine power, the forces of nature, the elements, etc., or rebus figures. As these ”G.o.ds” or ”idols” are enumerated farther on and are exhaustively treated in my commentary of the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale ma.n.u.script, now in press, it suffices for my present purpose merely to mention here that the most mysterious figure of Mexican cosmogony, Tezcatlipoca, whose symbolical name literally means ”s.h.i.+ning mirror,”
proved to be identical with Mictlantecuhtli, the lord of the underworld, whose t.i.tle may also be interpreted as ”the ruler or regent of the North,”
since Mictlampa is the name of this cardinal point.
The Codex Fuenleal (a.n.a.les del Museo Nacional, Mexico, tomo II, p. 88) preserves an important myth relating how Tezcatlipoca, after having been the sun, was cast down from this supreme position by Huitzilopochtli, ”descended to the water,” but had arisen again in the shape of an ocelot, and transformed himself into the constellation of Ursa Major.
According to Sahagun the native name of this star-group was Citlal-Colotl or ”star scorpion.” Reference to Nahuatl dictionaries revealed that this insect had doubtlessly been named colotl on account of its habit of recurving its tail when enraged.
The Nahuatl verb coloa means, to bend over or twist something, the adjective coltic is applied to something bent over or recurved. The noun colotli, which is almost identical with colotl, means ”the cross-beams, the mounting, branch or handle of a cross” (”armadura de manga de cruz.”
See Molina's dictionary).
The above facts show that the idea underlying the name for Ursa Major is primarily that of ”something bent over or recurved.” It is obvious that the form of the constellation answers to this description. It is, moreover, extremely significant to find, in the Maya language also, a certain resemblance between the words for scorpion and for a cross. This, in Maya, is zin-che and that for a scorpion is zin-au. The above data justify the induction that the native conception of a cross was connected with the idea of its arms being bent over or recurved, as in the Mexican calendar-swastika.
It is important to find the scorpion figured as one of several symbols of Mictlantecuhtli, the lord of the North, in his sculptured effigy preserved at the National Museum of Mexico (fig. 19).
It is more significant that the verb coloa, besides meaning ”to bend over or twist something,” also expressed the action ”of describing or performing a circle by walking around something.” Now this is precisely what Tezcatlipoca (the Ursa Major) is represented as doing on page 77 of the B.N. ma.n.u.script, since he figures there, surrounded by a circle of footsteps. I could but note that this fact showed that the name of Colotl, applied to the constellation, was not incompatible with its identification with Tezcatlipoca. Once my attention had been drawn to the action of walking, performed by this G.o.d, I naturally considered, with fresh interest, the peculiar fact that he is usually represented with one foot only. The circ.u.mstances under which he had been deprived of this member are set forth in several of the Codices wherein we see that, after he ”descended to the water,” he had an encounter with an alligator, who had viciously bitten off his foot and carried it away. (See Fejervary Codex, pp. 3 and 74. Vatican, II, p. 74.) Pictures representing Tezcatlipoca, after this event, display the broken end of the tibia exposed and the transverse section of the bone forming a ring, usually painted either white or red. Special pains seem to have been taken to accentuate the hollowness of the bone ring, since its centre is usually painted blue, the symbolical color of air, and conventionalized puffs of breath or air are shown as issuing from it (fig. 1). In some cases, as on the sculptured monolith called ”the Stone of Tizoc,” these symbols of breath, issuing from the broken tibia, are figured in such a way that modern writers, ignoring what they were meant to represent, were led to identify them as some animal's tail attached to the foot of the deity. The hollow circle and puffs of air, constantly a.s.sociated with the G.o.d, frequently figure as his ear ornament when his broken tibia is concealed (fig. 2, no. 3).
Besides certain fanciful interpretations which have been given to this symbol, it has been explained as being a hieroglyph conveying the name Tezcatlipoca, and consisting of an obsidian mirror=tezcatl, and smoke=poctli. A possible objection to this a.s.sertion might be that in Mexican pictography, the mirror is invariably represented as jet-black, in a white or red frame. In the Codex Telleriano Remensis, a combination of symbols (of water, fire and a serpent) are figured as issuing from the base of the bone (fig. 1, nos. 5, 6). Having taken particular pains to collect all representations of the footless G.o.d, I was specially interested in one (Fejervary, p. 1) in which he is figured as standing on the cross-shaped symbol ollin, the accepted meaning of which is Four Movements. The most remarkable and puzzling picture I found, however, is that (fig. 1, no. 2) in which the jaws of a tecpatl, the symbol of the North, are represented as holding one of Tezcatlipoca's ankles in a tight grip and practically fastening him thus to the centre of a diagonal cross.
In this and other pictures (Codex Fejervary, 41, 43 and 96) it is obvious that the artists had endeavored to convey the idea of a person permanently attached to one spot by one foot. The only form of locomotion possible to him would be to describe a circle by hobbling on one foot around the other, which would serve as an axis or pivot. The a.s.sociation of this peculiarity with the symbols of the North impressed me deeply and involuntarily caused me to think of a t.i.tle bestowed in the Codex Fuenleal upon the supreme divinity, namely, ”The Wheel of the Winds;” as well as of an expression employed by Tezozomoc (Cronica, p. 574). Referring to the constellations revered by the natives, he mentions ”the North and its wheel.”
[Ill.u.s.tration.]
Figure 1
Realizing that some definite and important meaning must underlie the remarkable representations of Tezcatlipoca, I resorted to all possible means to gain an understanding of them. Referring to Nahuatl dictionaries, I found a variety of synonymous names for a person who limped or was lame or maimed. Amongst them was Popoztequi from poztequi, the verb, ”to break a leg.” Other names were xopuztequi, xotemol and Icxipuztequi (icxitl=foot). The latter name happened to be familiar to me, for the commentator of the Vatican Codex, Padre Rios, gives it as the name of a G.o.d and translates it as ”the lame devil.” He records it immediately after Mictlantecuhtli, the lord of the North, and designates it as the name of one of the four princ.i.p.al and primitive G.o.ds of the Mexicans.
The commentator of the Telleriano-Remensis Codex, moreover, records that these four G.o.ds were ”said to have been stars and had fallen from the heavens. At the present time there are stars in the firmament named after them” (Kingsborough, vol. v, pp. 132 and 162).
Other synonymous terms for lame persons were icxinecuiltic and xonecuiltic. Tzimpuztequi, on the other hand, besides meaning lame, also signified something crooked, bent or incurvated. The second name furnished me with an important clue, for Sahagun distinctly records that the native name for the constellation Ursa Minor was Xonecuilli and that it was figured as an S (Historia, 1. VII, cap. 3). Besides, the Academia MS. of his monumental work contains the native drawing of this star-group reproduced as fig. 16, no. 1. He also states that S-shaped loaves of bread named xonecuilli were made at a certain festival in honor of this constellation, while the B.N. MS. records that a peculiar recurved weapon, figured in the hands of deities, was named xonequitl (fig. 16, nos. 2 and 3).
The above data furnished me with indisputable evidence of the existence, in ancient Mexico, of a species of star cult connected with the circ.u.mpolar constellations and with Tezcatlipoca, the lord of the North, the central figure of the native cosmogony. It was puzzling to find this G.o.d connected not only with the Ursa Major but also with Ursa Minor, but an indication suggesting a possible explanation or reconciliation of these apparent inconsistencies is furnished by the descriptions of the strange ritual performance, which was annually repeated at the festival Tlacaxipehualiztli and was evidently the dramatization of a sacred myth.
As an ill.u.s.tration and a description of this rite are contained in the B.N. MS. and the subject is fully treated in my commentary, I shall but allude here to its salient features. It represented a mortal combat between a prisoner, attached by a short piece of cord to the centre of a large circular stone, and five warriors, who fought him singly. The fifth, who was masked as an ocelot and always obtained victory in the unequal contest, fought with his left hand, being ”left-handed,” a peculiarity ascribed to Huitzilopochtli. It was he who subsequently wore the skin of the flayed victim, an action which obviously symbolized a metamorphosis.
One point is obvious: this drama exhibits the victor as a warrior who was able to circ.u.mscribe the stone freely and was masked as an ocelot-Tezcatlipoca-the Ursa Major, but was endowed, at the same time, with the left-handedness identified with Huitzilopochtli. This mythical personage vanquishes and actually wears the skin of the man attached to the stone; becomes his embodiment, in point of fact, and obtains the supremacy for which he had fought so desperately. In the light shed by the Codex Fuenleal, before cited, it was easy to see that the entire performance dramatized the mythical combat between Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli for the position of the ruling power, in the heavens-the sun. At the same time it was decidedly puzzling to find celestial supremacy personified by a man, firmly fastened to one spot, the centre of a stone circle. It was impossible not to perceive the ident.i.ty of thought underlying the representation of this prisoner and the pictures of Tezcatlipoca, the one-footed or lame G.o.d-Xonecuilli the Ursa Minor. It was moreover of extreme interest to note the existence of traditional records, preserved in the native myths, of changes in the relative positions of celestial bodies and of the Ursa Major in particular.
Whilst dwelling upon the striking a.n.a.logy existing between the representations of Tezcatlipoca held fast by the symbol of the North and the prisoner attached to what is described either as ”a temalacatl, stone whorl” or ”an image of the sun,” my gaze fell on a small model of the calendar-stone of Mexico, hanging above my desk, and rested on the symbol Ollin in its centre. The learned director of the National Museum of Mexico, Senor Troncoso (a.n.a.les del Museo Nacional, vol. II), had expressed his view that this symbol was an actual figurative representation of the annual apparent movements of the sun, and recorded its positions at the solst.i.tial and equinoctial periods. I had, moreover, submitted a drawing of this same figure to the eminent English astronomer, Prof. Norman Lockyer, and he had corroborated this view and established its correctness. On the other hand, I had long noted that the _Ollin_ was usually figured with an eye, the symbol for star, in its centre (fig. 2, nos. 1, 3), and had also paid particular attention to the fact that the Mexicans had conceived the ideas of two suns, a young day sun and an ancient night or black sun. In the B. N. MS., on the mantas worn at their respective festivals, the day sun is depicted in a somewhat fanciful manner, in blue and red on a white field. The black sun is, however, represented in cla.s.sical style, so to speak, as on the sculptured calendar-stone, with four larger and four smaller V-shaped rays issuing from it. In this connection it is well to recall here that the Mexicans had no specific name for the sun, beyond _Tonatiuh_, which merely means ”that which sheds light” and could equally apply to the stars. In the picture-writings the image of the sun was employed to convey the word _Teotl_. But we find that this word, a.s.sumed to be equivalent to their ”Dios” by the Spaniards, was also a reverential t.i.tle bestowed upon chieftains and superiors and was constantly employed in the composition of words to signify something divine, supremely beautiful, etc. Whilst I was pondering on the possibility that the symbol _Ollin_ might have represented the movements of the luminaries of night as well as the orb of day, my attention became fixed upon the four numerals in each of the ends of the symbol and I was struck by a certain resemblance between their positions and those of the four stars which form the body of the bear in the constellation of Ursa Major. It was then that it occurred to me, as mentioned in the opening sentence of this introduction, to look at the familiar constellations, with a view to verifying the resemblance noted above. As my gaze sought ”the pointers” in Ursa Major, and then mechanically turned to Polaris, I thought of some pa.s.sages I had recently re-read, in Professor Lockyer's Dawn of Astronomy, realizing that his observations, dealing with the lat.i.tude 26 (taking Thebes as representing Egypt), could equally apply to Mexico as this country stretches from lat.i.tude 15 to 31.
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