Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/222

Rh 212 MEXICO licking their lips and gnawing their nails for the hunger that is in them, they look on one side and the other at the mouths of those who pass by, hoping perad venture that one may speak some word to them. compassionate God, the bed on which they lie is not a thing to rest upon, but to endure torment in ; they draw a rag over them at night and so sleep. ... our Lord, in whose power it is to give all content, consolation, sweetness, softness, prosperity, and riches, for thou alone art lord of all good, have mercy upon them, for they are thy servants. ... I supplicate thee that thou wilt lift up their heads with thy favour and aid, that thou wilt see good that they enjoy some days of prosperity and tranquillity, so that they may sleep and know repose, having prosperous and peaceable days of life. . . . Should this nation, for whom I pray and entreat thee to do them good, not understand what thou hast given, thou canst take away the good and pour out cursing, so that all evil may come upon them, and they become poor, in need, maimed, lame, blind, and deaf ; then indeed they shall waken and know the good that they had and have not, and they shall call upon thee and lean toward thee; but thou will not listen, for in the day of abundance they would not understand thy goodness towards them.&quot; These prayers seem essentially genuine ; indeed there was no European model from which they could have been imitated ; but at the same time it must be remembered that they come down in Spanish writ ing, and not untouched by Spanish influence, as in one passage where there is a mention of sheep, an animal of course unknown to the native Mexicans. As to sacrifice, maize and other vegetables were offered, and occasionally rabbits, quails, &c. ; but, in the absence of cattle, human sacrifice was the chief rite, and cannibalism prevailed at the feasts. Incense was constantly used, especially the cojxtlli (copal) well known to us for varnish; little terra-cotta censers are among the commonest of Mexican antiquities. Long and severe religious fasts were customary at special seasons, and drawing blood from, the arms, legs, and body, by thrusting in aloe thorns, and passing sharp sticks through the tongue, was an habitual act of devotion recalling the similar practices of devotees in India. The calendar of religious festivals for the whole course of the Mexican year has been preserved. Each 20-day period had one or more such celebrations. In the month of the &quot;diminishing of waters&quot; the rain-gods or Tlalocs were propitiate 1 by a procession of priests with music of flutes and trumpets carrying on plumed litters infants with painted faces, in gay clothing with coloured paper wings, to be sacrificed on the mountains or in a whirlpool in the lake. It is said that the people wept as they passed by; but if so this may have been a customary formality, for the religion of these nations must have quenched all human sympathy. In the next month the god Xipe-totec, already mentioned, had his festival called the &quot;flaying of men &quot; from the human victims being flayed, after their hearts were torn out, for young men to dress in their skins and perform dances and sham fights. The succeeding festival of Camaxtli was marked by a severe fast of the priests, after which stone knives were pre pared with which a hole was cut through the tongue of each, and numbers of sticks passed through. For the great festival of Tez- catlipoca, the handsomest and noblest of the captives of the year had been chosen as the incarnate representative of the god, and paraded the streets for public adoration dressed in an embroidered mantle with feathers and garlands on his head and a retinue like a king ; for the last month they married him to four girls representing four goddesses ; on the last day wives and pages escorted him to the little temple of Tlacochcalco, where he mounted the stairs, breaking an earthenware flute against each step; this was a symbolic fare well to the joys of the world, for as he reached the top he was seized by the priests, his heart torn out and held up to the sun, his head spitted on the tzompantli, and his body eaten as sacred food, the people drawing from his fate the moral lesson that riches
 * md pleasure may turn into poverty and sorrow. The manner of

the victim s death in these festivals afforded scope for variety; they dressed them and made them dance in character, threw them into the fire for the fire-god, or crushed them between two balanced stones at the harvest-festival. The ordinary pleasures of festivals were mingled with all this, such as dances in beast-masks, sham fights, and children s games, but the type of a religious function was a sickening butchery followed by a cannibal feast. Picture- The Mexican priesthood, being the educated class, were much writing, concerned with the art of picture-writing, which they had developed to a stage quite above the rude figures of the American hunting- tribes, and used systematically as a means of recording religious festivals and legends, as well as keeping calendars of years and recording the historical events which occurred in them. Facsimiles of several of these interesting documents, with their translations, may be seen in Kingsborough. On inspecting these it will be seen that their main principle is pictorial. Gods are represented with their appropriate attributes, the fire-god hurling his spear, the moon- goddess with a shell, &c. ; the scenes of human life are pictures of warriors fighting with club and spear, men paddling in canoes, women spinning and weaving, &c. An important step towards phonetic writing appears, however, in the picture-names of ulaces and persons. u - sin:pest forms of these depict the objects-- signified by the name, TlK as where Chapultcpcc or &quot;grasshopper-hill &quot; is represented by a grass hopper on a hill, or a stone with a cactus on it stands for Tenoch or &quot; stone-cactus,&quot; the founder of Tcnoclititlan. The system had, however, risen a stage beyond this when objects were drawn to represent, not themselves, but the syllables forming their names, as where a trap, an eagle, a pricker, and a hand are put to gether not to represent these objects, but in order that the syllables of their names mo-quauh-zo-ma should spell the word Moquauh- zoma (see Aubin s introduction to Brasseur, Hist, du Mexique, vol. i. p. Ixviii.). The analogy of this to the manner in which the Egyptian hieroglyphs passed into phonetic signs is remarkable, and writing might have been invented anew in Mexico had it not been for the Spanish conquest. The Aztec numerals, which were vigesimal or reckoned by scores, were depicted by dots or circles up to 20, which was represented by a flag, 400 (a score of scores) by a feather, and 8000 (a score of scores of scores) by a purse ; but for convenience these symbols might be halved and quartered, so that 534 might be shown by one feather, one quarter of a feather, one flag, one-half of a flag, and four dots. The Mexican calendar depended on the combination of numbers with picture-signs, of which the four principal were the rabbit, reed, flint, house tochtli, acatl, tccpatf, calli. The cycle of 52 years was reckoned by combining these signs in rotation with numbers up to 13, thus: 1 rabbit, 2 reed, 3 flint, 4 house, 5 rabbit, 6 reed, &c. By accident this calendar may be exactly illustrated with a modern pack of cards laid out in rotation of the four suits, as, ace of hearts, 2 of spades, 3 of diamonds, 4 of clubs, 5 of hearts, 6 of spades, &c. In the Mexican ritual calendar of the days of the year, the same method is carried further, the series of twenty day-signs being combined in rotation with numbers up to 13 ; as this cycle of days only reaches 260, a series of nine other signs are affixed in addition, to make up the 365-day year. It is plain that this rotation of signs served no useful purpose whatever, being less convenient than ordinary counting such as the Mexicans employed in their other calendar already mentioned, where the 20-day periods had each a name like our months, and their days had signs in regular order. Its historical interest depends on its resemblance to the calendar-system of central and eastern Asia, where among Mongols, Tibetans, Chinese, &c., series of signs are thus combined to reckon years, months, and days ; for instance, the Mongol cycle of 60 years is recorded by the zodiac or series of 12 signs mouse, bull, tiger, &c. , combined in rotation with the five male and female elements fire, earth, iron, water, wood; as &quot;male-fire-bull&quot; year, &c. This comparison is worked out in Humboldt s Vucs des CordilUrcs, as evidence of Mexican civilization being borrowed from Asia. Naturally the Mexican calendar-system lent itself to magic in the same way as the similar zodiac-signs of the Old World, each person s fate being affected &amp;gt;y the qualities of the signs he was born under, and the astrologer-priests being called in to advise on every event of life. Of all Mexican festivals the most solemn was that of the xiuhmolpilli, or &quot;year-binding,&quot; when the 52- year cycle or bundle of years came to an end. It was believed that the destruction of the world, which after the Hindu manner the Mexicans held to have already taken place three or four times, would happen again at the end of a cycle. As the time drew near, the anxious population cleansed their houses and put out all fire, and on the last day after sunset the priests, dressed in the garb of gods, set out in procession for the hill of Huixachtla, there to watch for the approach of the Pleiades to the zenith, which gave the auspicious signal for the lighting of the new fire. The finest of the captives was thrown down and fire kindled on his breast by the wooden drill of the priest ; then the victim s heart was torn out, and his body flung on the pile kindled with the new flame. The people watching from their flat housetops all the country round saw with joy the flame on the sacred hill, and hailed it with a thank-offering of drops of blood drawn from their ears with sharp stone-flakes. Swift runners carried burning brands to rekindle the fires of the land, the sacred fire on the teocalli of the war-god blazed up again, and the people began with feasting and rejoicing the new cycle. Mexican education, at any rate that of the upper class, was a Educa- systematio discipline much under the control of religion, which tioii. here presents itself under a more favourable light. After the birth of a child, the tonalpoiLhqni or &quot;sun-calculator&quot; drew its horoscope from the signs it was born under, and fixed the time for its solemn lustration or baptism, performed by the nurse with appropriate prayers to the gods, when a toy shield and bow were provided if it was a boy, or a toy spindle and distaff if it was a girl, and the child received its name. An interesting picture-writing, to be seen in Kingsborough, shows the details of the boy s and girl s education, from the early time when three small circles over the child show it to be three years old, and a drawing of half a tortilla or corn-cake shows its allowance for each meal ; as they grow older the lads are seen beginning to carry burdens, paddle the canoe, and fish, while the girls learn to spin and weave, grind maize, and cook, good conduct being enforced by punishments of increasing severity, up to pricking their bodies with aloe- thorns and holding