in other parts of America; the resemblance of the Mexican and ancient Egyptian flute, each having but four holes, and their use in sacred services; the similar methods of manufacturing paper, in one case from the papyrus, and in the other from the agave; the religious use of mirrors; the dramatic entertainments and buffooneries; the religious dances in the temples; the occasional employment of women in sacred offices; the existence of an Ophite worship; the practice of sculpture painting; the beads, necklaces, bracelets, anklets, the sandals, conical caps, headdresses of feathers, with which the human figures are represented; the nearly identical form of the Mexican and Egyptian granaries; and in the Cyclopean arches, the obelisks, planispheres and pyramids. In opposition to all these analogies, however, there are great and striking differences in the arts, customs, institutions, and in architecture, which forbid the conclusion that the American nations were of Egyptian origin.

India. Passing from Egypt into a country whose civilization was of a kindred character, India, we discover still closer affinities in religion and institutions to those of the cultivated nations of America. In the Hindoo religion may be traced the same vestiges of a purer and higher belief in ancient times; of its gradual modification under the doctrine of emanations, and under the personification of the productive and destroying powers of nature; and its ultimate debasement into the most horrid superstitions. The clear and definite language in which the faith of the Hindoos in the existence of the Supreme Being is expressed in their works of authority, has been shown.‡ The † Ibid., vol. i. p. 135.

* Wilkinson, vol. i. p. 364.

As in America the Creator was not worshipped. In all Hindoostan but one temple has been erected to the true God, and that contains no idol.

great and characterizing feature of Sabaism,—the worship of the Sun and moon and other heavenly bodies--next appears. At Benares there still remain several temples, upon the altars of which a perpetual fire is preserved like that maintained on the Mexican Teocalli, and in the temples of Vesta. The holiest text of the Vedas is addressed to the Sun : "Let us meditate on the adorable light of the Divine Ruler may it guide our intellects." The Brahmins still pray to. that luminary,* and it is often confounded, as an object of adoration, with the gods of the Trimurti, and even with the Supreme Soul. The worship of the stars, the moon, the signs of the zodiac, was and is equally prevalent; and as the study of astronomy was confined to the priests, a most extensive system of astrology arose, so that even to this day the Astrologer is one of the regular public officers in the Hindoo towns; and as in Mexico, not only are the fortunes of mortals decided by sidereal influences, but few important enterprises are undertaken, without first consulting the aspect of those bodies. The worship of evil spirits, though now discountenanced by the Brahmins, appears to have been one of the traits of the most ancient religion,† and even those priests, in cases of sickness, attempt to conciliate these malignant deities. In some portions of India the greater part of the inhabitants have no other worship, and, as with our aboriginal nations,

every house and each family has its own particular Bhuta, who stands for its tutelary god; and to whom daily prayers, and propitiatory sacrifices are offered, not only to incline him to withhold his own machinations, but to defend them from the evils which the Bhutas of their neighbors or enemies might in

* Asiatic Res., vol. v. p. 354. Mill's India, vol. ii. pp. 145, 334. † Ward, vol. i. p. 73.

In

flict. In those parts, the image of the demon is everywhere seen represented in a hideous form, and often by a shapeless stone." Thus we find in India and America the same prominent features in the prevalent religion, but on examining the Hindoo mythology, there are more decided traces of connection. Mexico, after the Supreme Being, the god Tezcatlipoca was the most venerated. His name signified "shining mirror," and his principal image was of a black shining stone-Teotletl-Divine stone. He was represented as black, and as sitting upon a bench covered with a red cloth, skulls, and the bones of the dead. As a general analogy has already been indicated between this deity and the Egyptian Typhon, so, on the other hand, he presents a not less striking resemblance to the Hindoo Siva, the representative of the destructive powers of the universe. Tezcatlipoca was always represented young, as being superior to the effects of time, and Siva when worshipped as Maha Kala, or "Time, the Great Destroyer," is represented as a smoke-colored youth, with three eyes, clothed in red garments, with a chaplet of human skulls about his neck,"* and Parvati or Kali his goddess is also figured with a black face, with a chaplet of skulls, and with a mirror in her hand. Black marble was also the symbol of Siva, and is found under the form of the Lingam, or otherwise, in most of the Pagodas dedicated to him. The former prevalence of human sacrifices in Hindoostan is beyond question, and probably to no deities were these made more frequently than to Siva and Kali. To the Mexican Tez

* Lib. Ent. Know., Hindoos, vol. i. p. 168. Mod. Trav. India, vol. viii. pp. 265, 266; vol. vi. p. 167. Mill's India, vol. i. p. 337.

† Bombay Trans., vol. iii. pp. 86, 89. Heber, vol. ii. pp. 415, 420; vol. iii. pp. 261, 264.

catlipoca also, the same revolting sacrifices were offered, particularly at the great festival in the month of May, when the head of the victim was strung up on the Tzompantli, with the rest of the skulls of victims. The Hindoos appear to have been divided for many ages into sects, each of which exhibited a preference for one of the Trimurti, Brahma, Vishnoo or Siva.* "This contention for pre-eminence ended in the (nearly) total suppression of the worship of Brahma, and the temporary submission of Vishnoo to the superiority of Siva." The controversy was not merely a contest for an arbitrary preference, but involved a principle. Siva representing the destroying, and Vishnoo the preserving power of nature, the sacrifices to each were appropriate; the one was conciliated only by blood, the other by offerings of fruits and flowers. Accordingly, in the ninth avatar or incarnation of Vishnoo, he came as the Reformer, Buddha, proscribing the sacrifice of animals; and a fierce contest ensued between the two sects, which finally ended in the triumph of that of Siva. A parallel is afforded in that part of the Mexican mythology under consideration. Quetzalcoatl was a benevolent being, averse to cruelty, and to any other sacred offerings than the vegetable productions of the earth. The rites attending the worship of Tezcatlipoca were inhuman and bloody, and a further proof of his attributes is afforded in his intimate connection with Mexitli, the Mexican god of war, to whom were offered more human victims than to any other of the gods indeed the great Teocalli of Mexico was dedicated to Tezcatlipoca and Mexitli in conjunction. This explains the

**Asiatic Res., vol. viii. p. 45, 46. Mod. Trav. India, vol. viii. p.

ceremony usual at the third and principal festival of Mexitli. At its conclusion his statue, formed of seeds pasted together with the blood of children, was carried to a hall in the temple, where in the presence only of a few persons of rank, the priest called Quetzalcoatl threw a dart at the statue, which pierced it, and they then exclaimed, the god was dead. The opposition between the two deities could not be more clearly expressed; and this ceremony was probably commemorative of a period when the mild and peaceful triumphed over the sanguinary worship. A subsequent revolution seems to have occurred, at least among the Aztecs, and accordingly, Tezcatlipoca, the Destroyer, procures by a stratagem the absence of the benign Quetzalcoatl. It is to be observed that in Peru, also, the human sacrifices which were customary in the first ages, were forbidden by the Incas. The Muyscas represented Bochica with three heads; Del Rio found in the corridor of a building at Palenque three crowned human heads cut in stone, connected together behind; the Triune vessel discovered in one of the mounds in the United States, represents three human heads joined together in the same manner. These facts tend to support the authority of those Spanish historians, so flatly contradicted by Vega and Blas Valera, who maintained that the Peruvians and the nations of New Spain worshipped a Triune deity. They may be considered as establishing another link of connection with Hindoostan, where Brahma, Vishnoo and Siva, forming what is called the Trimurti, or the three powers, the Creative, Preserving and Destroying, are sometimes represented as of one body with three heads.

The Mexican Tlaloc was the god of water, and it has

* Del Rio, p. 56.