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the head and front of his offending, and for this he must pay the penalty.

Or

Does the German professor deem himself infallible? have the flatterers who ever dodge successful merit, and the splendour of his thirty titles or more-from that of privy councillor to his sovereign the King of Saxony, down to the more moderate distinction of Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London-so bewildered his imagination, that he resents the simple correction of his venial errors as an act of intolerable presumption? To take one example out of twenty which crowd upon us-when, in his edition of 1863, he tells us that the subscription of the Epistle to the Colossians in Codex Sinaiticus is ПIPOCKOAACCAEIC, while in that of 1865 he represents it as ПIPOCKОAOCCAEIC, would he have us receive both readings as true? We know not whether our pages are likely to fall under the notice of Professor Tischendorf, but surely he is not too great a person to have friends who will tell him what others think and speak, but may not always care to write. Equal he has none among living scholars in his own department of Biblical criticism. Those whose labours have in extent most nearly approached his own, are his truest as well as his most intelligent admirers. They best can appreciate his noble zeal, his iron industry, his obstinate perseverance, his almost miraculous quickness and sagacity. And they who most fully comprehend his strength, know and mourn for his weakness too. He spreads his energies over too wide a field to be always master where others are but learners; he publishes too much on too many topics, sometimes more in the spirit of a bookmaker than of a scholar. Again, all accuracy is comparative; the most careful collator, like the most experienced printer, will trip at times. Tischendorf's correctness is not up to the average attained by many who, in every other respect, are much below him. It is not every Greek Testament which, like his eighth edition now in course of publication, contains a gross blunder in the third line;1 the Prolegomena and notes to his great edition of Codex Sinaiticus itself, exhibit quite a forest of

errata.

Pity that those whose daily occupations lead them to search into the unfathomed depths of Scriptural learning should not be raised by that divine employment above the miserable pettiness of literary strife; that they should not discover that peace and happiness are not the rewards of fame or worldly success, but rather of that meek and quiet spirit which, in the Lord's sight, is of great price.

1 Ἰακὼβ δὲ ἐγέννησεν τὸν Φαρέσ, Matt. i. 2, Φαρσ for Ιούδαν.

430

ART. VIII-1. Popol Vuh: le Livre sacré et les Mythes de l'Antiquité américaine, avec les Livres héroïques des Quichés. Par L'ABBÉ BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG. Paris, 1861. 8vo. 2. Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale, durant les Siècles antérieurs à Christophe Colomb, écrite sur les Documents originaux. 4 vols. Paris, 1857-59. 8vo. 3. Mexicos oy Central Americas ældre historie, in Antiquarisk Tidsskrift af der Nordiske Oldskrift-selskab. Kjöbenhavn, 1858. 8vo.

4. Du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale. CHARENCY. Paris, 1859. 8vo.

5. Geschichte des Amerikanischen Urreligionen. MÜLLER. Basel, 1855. 12mo.

Par M. H. DE

Von J. O.

ONE of the highly-civilized nations of America discovered by the Spaniards was that of the Quiches, a race united by language and religion to the more widely-spread and better-known people of Mexico. The Quiches occupied the present Chiapas and Guatemala, and the tribe itself, or one closely related to it, was settled on the promontory of Yucatan.

The whole of this region, to the present day, is strewn with ruins. These have been examined by Mr. Stephens, and more recently by the celebrated French architect, M. Viollet le Duc, and exhibit a proficiency in the arts of a very high order. In the midst of dense forests, the traveller comes upon mighty images, with the heads boldly sculptured, and the bodies covered with inscriptions in peculiar hieroglyphic characters, which have as yet baffled antiquarians, High above the trees soar vast pyramids, surmounted by crumbling yet gorgeous ruins, and the explorer finds the inner cells bearing traces of painting, enriched with stucco ornaments, and stamped with the sacred and mysterious symbol, still fresh on the plaster, of the Bloody Hand. Great palaces, vast temples, far from present habitations, moulder in the jungle, the haunt of the bat, the jackal, and the serpent. The idols in the temples are fallen, the altars are broken, and the mysteries of the ancient faith of which these idols were the symbols, and which these altars commemorated, have passed from the remembrance of man.

At Palenque, shut in by dense forests, through which the explorer has to laboriously eut his way with an axe, on a lofty terrace, a magnificent palace, 228 feet long by 180 feet broad,

rising 40 feet from the platform, decays forgotten. It contains halls, shrines with altars to unknown gods, and ranges of elaborate sculpture. At Uxmal are the remains of a great and royal city, with temples, pyramids and palaces. The beautiful ruin of Mitlan is adorned with graceful pillars. Terraced palaces exist at Chichenitza. A very remarkable pyramid, hewn out of the living rock, and surmounted by a temple, is to be seen at Tehuantepec. The remains of the great seminary, wherein 6,000 youths were instructed by sixty teachers, exists at Utatlan. Santa Cruz del Quiche retains its old terraces and fortifications. At Copan are numerous mounds. On the west coast, between the rivers Nil and Veuz, are such numerous ruins of pyramids, that they have been supposed to be as many as four hundred. Other relics of a lost civilization are found at Bacalar, Iximche, Atitlan, &c.

Who were these people who have left such extensive traces of their advance in the arts? This is a question exceedingly difficult to answer.

In ancient Central America were many languages, but all, for the most part, radically united. Such were those of the Totonacs, Otomies, Huasteks, Macahuaks, and the race occupying Yucatan. These may be called the Maja family or group. The speech was soft and musical.

The Nahual group included Azteks, Tolteks, and Olmeks. The Nahual speech was guttural and harsh. But the Maja and the Nahual groups belonged to one primordial race.

The Maja people was subdivided into two portions—the northern occupying Mexico proper, which was subjugated by the Azteks, and the southern occupying Guatemala and Yucatan, which was not altogether conquered, but only partially brought under the sway of the Tolteks. It is difficult to decide whether civilization originated among the Majas or among the Azteks and Tolteks, but the greatest amount of evidence is in favour of the Majas. The conquerors adopted the civilization they found, and blended their religion with that of the conquered, with which it. was radically identical.

Into the history of these races before the arrival of the Spaniards we shall not enter, although M. Brasseur de Bourbourg has written on the subject four huge tomes of some 800 pages each, for reasons which shall be given after we have reviewed the mythology and sacred book of the Quiches. Attempts have been made to trace the language of the civilized family of ancient America to Aryan and Semitic roots, but though curious coincidences have been detected, such attempts have invariably failed. It is curious, but nothing more, that vuh should be the Quiche word for book; that alah should signify to engender, whilst ala has the same signification in old Norse; bei, a road, resembles

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our way and the Danish vei; bol is a bowl; eck, a possession, like the Norse eiga; hul is a hole; hach is to split-from a similar root comes our hatchet; much is moss; nut has the same signification in Nahual as in English; ruc is to rock; a thah is a thane; and tziban is like the German schreiben; a vach is a night watch; and zanay is sand. But these resemblances are accidental. The construction and grammatical forms of the language are so entirely remote from that of the Indo-Germanic languages, that we should be led into grievous error if we allowed ourselves to suppose a radical identity where there is an occasional similarity of terminology.

Among this ancient, highly-civilized people, a designation of the Godhead was Teotl, or rather, if we omit the Nahual 7, Teot -a name singularly resembling the Indo-Germanic Theos, Deus, Deva, and Dew. This name entered into numerous combinations -Teocalli, a God's-house; Teoquixqui, a priest; Teonenemi, a sacred procession. Teot was supposed by Acosta to be the supreme, unseen God, because to Him were given the attributes of Ipalnemoan, Him by whom we exist, and Tloquenahuaque, the Self-containing: but there can be little question that Acosta was wrong in supposing the ancient Maja race to have been monotheists. Teot had no individual existence; all the gods were Teoti, though among the Mexicans this title was specially given to the ancient solar deity Tonatriki-the Tona of the Antilles, and the Aztek Tonatiuh.

Among the Quiches, there seems to have been a trinity of superior gods, but not one strongly emphasized; and it is not always clear which name belongs to a separate god and which is a mere title. The three most prominent deities are Gucumatz, the great serpent; Tepeu, the lord; and Cux-cah, the heart of of the sky, otherwise called Hurakan, whose manifestations were the rushing blast, the lightning flash, and the thunderclaps.

Gucumatz was the Aztek Quetzalcoatl, and resembled the Latin Saturn. His reign was an age of plenty and peace, but when he left earth to wander into unknown regions, trouble and sorrow arose. He was a winged and feathered serpent of azure and green, and was in all probability the god of the firmament. He was represented with the head of a sparrow and the body of a serpent. In his hand was a shield-symbol of cloud, and a sickle-in token of his being god of harvests; as being also a rain-god, his mantle was adorned with crosses. He suffered anthropomorphosis, and, under the name of Votan, acquired immense popularity. When Cortez appeared, the natives took him for the returning Quetzalcoatl, and sacrificed a human being to him, and sprinkled him with the blood.

The earth goddess, the Demeter of the Maja race, was Centeotl. Her festival was held in spring. Priests, nobles, and people pre

pared themselves for it by long fasting and blood-letting. The doorposts of her temple were adorned with leaves dipped in blood, and maidens offered upon her altar ears of maize. Alas! it reeked as well with the gore of human sacrifices. She does not appear under this Nahual name among the Quiches, but as Xcacon-the giver of crops.

The Mexican huntress, or Artemis, was Mixcoatl, a serpentgoddess, not apparently represented in the Quiche Pantheon. The water-god, whose symbol was the cross, was named Quiateot.

The Spanish invaders, when they beheld stone and wooden crosses in Yucatan and Guatemala, concluded that S. Thomas had preached the Gospel in America, and had taught the people to venerate the sacred sign, to which they had clung, whilst entirely forgetting the spirit of his teaching. A cross stands above an altar in the old temple at Palenque with figures on either side extending their hands toward it. Siquenza mentions Indian crosses discovered in the caves of Mixteca Baja, and in the ruins on the island of Zaphtero, in the Lake Nicaragua, were found the same symbols. Wooden crosses were adored by the natives at Oaxaca and in Guatulco. The Tolteks identified the worship of the cross with that of rain, and, in order to obtain abundant showers, they sacrificed before it little boys and girls.

The god Tlaloc belonged also to the waters; but, whereas the cross-god reigned over those above the firmament, he ruled those gathered into seas and floods.

Lastly, the Quiches worshipped a fire-giving god, Tohil, and endeavoured to force his worship, with human sacrifices, on the reluctant primæval inhabitants of the lands they conquered.

Such is a brief outline of the mythogeny of the Mexican people. Of the legends connected with these gods, little was known, except from a few scattered allusions in the early Spanish writers on Mexico and Yucatan.

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The sacred myths of the Toltec race were contained in a sacred book called the Teo-Amoxtli, to which references are continually made in Mexican traditions. Las Casas says that among these people were chroniclers Who kept count of the days, months, and years; and although they did not use characters like ours, 'they had, nevertheless, their own figures and symbols, by means 'of which they expressed what they wished, and by this means they composed great books, with such skill and ingenuity, that we may say that our letters will be of no great advantage to 'them.' Of these MSS. there are remains in the different libraries of Europe, but they are unintelligible, as the key to the characters is lost. One work of great interest was, however, written after the Spanish conquest, in Latin characters. This was a copy of the sacred book of the Quiches, the 'Popol Vuh,' con

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