64 NAMES AND ATTRIBUTES OF THE CREATOR.

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"HUITZILOPOCTLI was called YA-0. It is singular that he should have been called the ineffable."-p. 145. "Huitzilopoctli is a compound name. Boturini derives it from Houitziton, the Lord of the tribes during their grination, and supposes that their Leader represented the Creator whom they have worshipped time immemorial before they commenced their wandering life under Honitziton. Some say this divinity is a pure Spirit: others represent Him embodied as a man: this God, having been the Protector of the tribes led them (according to their account) during many years of their wandering life, and at last settled them in the place where they built the city of Mexico."

'On his head was a beautiful plumage shaped like a bird; on his neck a breast-plate composed of ten figures of human hearts: in his right hand a rod1 in the form of a serpent, &c. This description, the human hearts, the compound name, the Divine leader, &c. and the story of His incarnation, compared with the medal which represents a Tree with the seven tribes, or houses springing from its root, are in the main, however, obscure and blended, just such fragments of tradition as might have been expected from the descendants of the Ten Tribes, without letters, for so many ages.'

1 Torquemeda observes in the forty-eighth chap. of the thirteenth book of his Ind. Mon." that a wand was placed in their hands, which they believed would sprout on their arrival in Paradise."

Doctor Boudinot, in his Star in the West,' observes of the same traditionary rod or branch :-" The Indians have an old tradition, that when they left their own native land, they brought with them a sanctified rod, by order of an oracle, which they fixed every evening in the ground, and were to remove from place to place on the continent, till it blossomed in one night's time."-See Clavegero.

65

QUETZALCOATL.

'WHILST,' observes Humboldt, the Mexicans offer analogies sufficiently remarkable in their ecclesiastical hierarchy, in the number of the religious assemblies, in the severe austerity of their penitentiary rites, and in the order of their processions; it is impossible not to be struck with this resemblance, in reading with attention the recital which Cortez made to the Emperor, Charles V. of his solemn entrance into Cholula, which he1 calls the holy city of the Mexicans.' * * A people who regulated its festivals according to the order of the stars, and who engraved its festivals on its public monuments, had no doubt reached a degree of civilization superior to that which has been allowed by De Pauw, Raynal, or Robertson. These writers considered every state of society barbarous that did not bear the type of civilization, which they, according to their systematic ideas had formed; these abrupt distinctions into barbarous and civilized, cannot be with truth admitted.'-Vol. i. pp. 408-9.

Men with beards and with clearer complexions than the nations of Anahuac, make their appearance without any

"The motto taken by Cortez," observes the Commentator of the Mex. Antiq. "Judicium Domini apprehendit eos," seems obliquely to refer to the Mex. ican tradition of the destruction of Tulan, &c. In referring the motto of Cortez to the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened so many centuries before his day, we must suppose, entering into the feeling of the Spanish General, that he recognized in Mexico a second Jerusalem, and in his own conquests a triumph over the Hebrews of the New World, as Titus had before vanquished those of the old."

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indication of the place of their birth; and bearing the title of priests and legislators, of the friends of peace and the arts which flourished under its auspices, operate a sudden change in the policy of the nations who hail their arrival with veneration. Quetzalcoatl, Bachica, and Manco Capac, are the sacred names of these mysterious beings. Quetzalcoatl, clothed in a dark sacerdotal robe, comes from Pannes, from the shores of the Gulph of Mexico. Bachica presents himself on the high places of Botoga, where he arrives from the Savannahs, which stretch along the east of the Cordilleras. The history of these legislators is intermixed with miracles, religious functions, and with those characters which imply an allegorical meaning. A slight reflection on the period of Toltec migration, the monastic institutions, the symbols of worship, the calendars, and the form of the monuments of Cholula and Sogomazo, and of Cuzco, leads us to conclude that it was not in the north of Europe that Quetzalcoatl, Bachica, and Manco Capac, framed their code of laws; every consideration leads us rather toward Eastern Asia,' &c.-p. 30.

Extracts from the Antiq. of Mex. vol. vi.

"The Mexican Deity, Quetzalcoatl, was, to their belief, born of a virgin, a native of the city of Tulan, who, being a devout person, and engaged in sweeping the altar in the Temple, perceived a ball of feathers falling through the air, which having taken up and placed in her girdle, she became pregnant. Quetzalcoatl was called on earth1 * and in heaven, Chalchiluclyth, (the Precious Stone of

In the original Spanish Ms., this appellative was obliterated.

*

suffering and of sacrifice,") &c. "The destruction of Tulan, constitutes an epoch in the Mexican chronology, and is the fourth in order, of the catastrophes which had befallen the world. They kept every four years another fast of eight days, in memory of three destructions which the world had undergone; and accordingly when this period had arrived, they exclaimed four times, "Lord, how is it, that the world having been so often destroyed, has never been destroyed?" They named it the festival of Renovation to represent the festival of renovation, they led children by the hands through the dance.'-p. 103.

"The sign of Nahui Ollin, or four earthquakes, was dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, whose second advent, together with the end of the world, the Mexicans expected would be on the same sign."—p. 107.

"His feast is called the feast of the Lords, viz. ancientsit lasted four days from the first of Ocelotl, (the sign of the earth) to the fourth earthquakes, or destructions. In the seventy-second plate of the Borgian MS., Yztapal Nanazcaya, or the fourth age of the Mexicans, that of flints and canes, memorable for the birth of Quetzalcoatl, and the destruction of the province of Tulan, seems to be represented. Quetzalcoatl is there painted in the attitude of a person crucified, with the impression of nails in his hands and feet, but not actually upon a cross, and with the image of death beneath his feet, which an angry serpent seems threatening to devour. The skulls above signify that the place is Tzonpantli, a word which exactly corresponds with the Hebrew name, Golgotha. The body of Quetzalcoatl seems to be formed out of a resplendent sun, and two female figures with children on their backs, are very copiously presenting an offering at his feet. The Mexicans sometimes added the epithet of Tlatzatli to Tzonpantli, when the signification of both

names became the place of precious death, or martyrdom ;' Tlatzatli in the Mexican language, meaning precious, or desired. "The seventy-third plate of the Borgian Ms. is the most remarkable of all, for Quetzalcoatl is not only represented there as crucified upon a cross of Greek form, but his burial and descent into hell are also depicted in a very curious manner. His grave, &c. is strewed with bones and skulls, symbolical of death; the head of the devouring monster on the left signifies the descent into hell, and that he had been swallowed up in death, which could only dismember, but could not cause his body to corrupt or decay, since he resumes his perfect form in hell, and seems to compel1 Metlantecutli the lord of the dead to do him homage. Metlantecutli was a different personage from Tontemoque, the former presiding over hell, the region of the dead, and the latter over hell the place of punishment." p. 167.

"The Mexicans expect that Quetzalcoatl shall prepare the way for Tlaloc, as of an adamant that shall fall from heaven, and produce a new race of heroes." "The Mexican paintings afford some representation of this flint called by Acosta "Thunderbolt," giving as it were birth to children. The Mexicans, says Boturini, believe that Tlaloc was secretary of God, who in His name wrote His laws amid lightnings, and published them in thunders. Quetzalcoatl was also represented by the figure of Halocatcoatl, which signifies the Lion of the human kind: other analogies extending to all the symbols mentioned above might be pointed out between the types referring in the Old Testament to Christ, and the epithets bestowed by the Mexicans on Quetzalcoatl. From the little that has been preserved of the life of Quetzalcoatl

1 Hosea xiii. 14. Isaiah xxvi. 19.

2 They addressed God in these words-" Lord whose servants we are, grant this."