Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/196

176 sign, or an emblem of the four winds. That the cross was an object of cult amongst the Indians is certain, though there is much disagreement amongst authorities as to its origin, age, and significance. Bernal Diaz says that if it was of Christian origin and meaning, the natives had forgotten them, and Oviedo, who even regarded the existence of these crosses as a fable, maintained that if they did exist, and the Indians ever had known why they venerated them, they had long since lost, their knowledge. (Oviedo, lib. xvii., cap. viii.). Gomara described the cross seen at Cozumel as the rain-god, and said that quails were sacrificed before it (Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, cap. liv.).

The cross was an instrument of punishment among the Egyptians, Persians, Macedonians, Greeks, and Romans, as also among Buddhist peoples. Hardly an ancient religion is found in which some form of cross does not appear as a symbol. Among the Aryan races, two crossed sticks were the emblem of the sacred fire, produced by friction called pramatha, from which comes the name Prometheus, of Vedic origin. The Tau borne by Isis, symbolised the rainy season (hence fertility) in Abyssinia, and, in the Egyptian cult, was the emblem of fecundation, (phallus of Osiris). Among the Jews, the cross had no sacred character, but was on the contrary, the vilest instrument of capital punishment.