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RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN
THE MYTHOLOGIES OF
ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU
RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN.
ANIMISM.
By EDWARD CLODD, Author of _The Story of Creation_.
PANTHEISM.
By JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, Author of _The Religion of the Universe_.
THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA.
By Professor GILES, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the University
of Cambridge.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE.
By JANE HARRISON, Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge, Author
of _Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion_.
ISLAM.
By SYED AMEER ALI, M.A., C.I.E., late of H.M.'s High Court of
Judicature in Bengal, Author of _The Spirit of Islam_ and _The
Ethics of Islam_.
MAGIC AND FETISHISM.
By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cambridge
University.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.
By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S.
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.
By THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, late of the British Museum.
BUDDHISM. 2 vols.
By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The Royal
Asiatic Society.
HINDUISM.
By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed Books
and MSS., British Museum.
SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION.
By WILLIAM A. CRAIGIE, Joint Editor of the _Oxford English
Dictionary_.
CELTIC RELIGION.
By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University College,
Aberystwyth.
THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
By CHARLES SQUIRE, Author of _The Mythology of the British
Islands_.
JUDAISM.
By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cambridge
University, Author of _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_.
SHINTO. By W. G. ASTON, C.M.G.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU.
By LEWIS SPENCE, M.A.
THE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS.
By Professor YASTROW.
THE MYTHOLOGIES
OF ANCIENT MEXICO
AND PERU
By
LEWIS SPENCE
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
1907
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
FOREWORD
It is difficult to understand the neglect into which the study of the
Mexican and Peruvian mythologies has fallen. A zealous host of
interpreters are engaged in the elucidation of the mythologies of Egypt
and Assyria, but, if a few enthusiasts in the United States of America
be excepted, the mythologies of the ancient West have no following
whatsoever. That this little book may lead many to a fuller examination
of those profoundly interesting faiths is the earnest hope of one in
whose judgment they are second in importance to no other mythological
system. By a comparative study of the American mythologies the student
of other systems will reap his reward in the shape of many a parallel
and many an elucidation which otherwise would escape his notice; whilst
the general reader will introduce himself into a sphere of the most
fascinating interest--the interest in the attitude towards the eternal
verities of the peoples of a new and isolated world. L. S.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN RELIGIONS, 1
II. MEXICAN MYTHOLOGY, 9
III. THE PRIESTHOOD AND RITUAL OF THE
ANCIENT MEXICANS, 27
IV. THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT PERUVIANS, 44
V. PERUVIAN RITUAL AND WORSHIP, 58
VI. THE QUESTION OF FOREIGN INFLUENCE
UPON THE RELIGIONS OF AMERICA, 71
A LIST OF SELECT BOOKS BEARING ON THE
SUBJECT, 79
THE MYTHOLOGIES OF
ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN RELIGIONS
The question of the origin of the religions of ancient Mexico and Peru
is unalterably associated with that of the origin of the native races of
America themselves--not that the two questions admit of simultaneous
settlement, but that in order to prove the indigenous nature of the
American mythologies it is necessary to show the extreme improbability
of Asiatic or European influence upon them, and therefore of relatively
late foreign immigration into the Western Hemisphere. As regards the
vexed question of the origin of the American races it has been thought
best to relegate all proof of a purely speculative or legendary
character to a chapter at the end of the book, and for the present to
deal with data concerning the trustworthiness of which there is little
division of opinion.
The controversy as to the manner in which the American continent was
first peopled is as old as its discovery. For four hundred years
historians and antiquarians have disputed as to what race should have
the honour of first colonising the New World. To nearly every nation
ancient and modern has been credited the glory of peopling the two
Americas; and it is only within comparatively recent years that any
reasonable theory has been advanced in connection with the subject. It
is now generally admitted that the peopling of the American continent
must have taken place at a period little distant to the original
settlement of man in Europe. The geological epoch generally assumed for
the human settlement of America is the Pleistocene (Quaternary) in some
of its interglacial conditions; that is, in some of the recurrent
periods of mildness during the Great Ice Age. There is, however, a
possibility that the continent may have been peopled in Tertiary times.
The first inhabitants were, however, not of the Red Man type.
Difficult as is this question, an even more difficult one has to be
faced when we come to consider the affinities of the races from whom the
Red Man is descended. It must be remembered that at this early epoch in
the history of mankind in all likelihood the four great types of
humanity were not yet fully specialised, but were only differentiated
from one another by more or less fundamental physiological
characteristics. That the Indians of America are descended from more
than one human type is proved by the variety of shapes exhibited in
their crania, and it is safe to assume that both Europe and Asia were
responsible for these early progenitors of the Red Man. At the period in
question the American continent was united to Europe by a land-bridge
which stretched by way of Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroee Islands to
Northern Europe, and from the latter area there probably migrated to the
western continent a portion of that human type which has been designated
the Proto-European--precursors of that race from which was finally
evolved the peoples of modern Europe.
When we come to the question of the settlement of America from the
Asiatic side we can say with more certainty that immigration proceeded
from that continent by way of Behring Strait, and was of a
Proto-Mongolian character, though the fact should not be lost sight of
that within a few hundred miles of the point of emigration there still
exists the remains of an almost purely Caucasian type in the Ainu of
Saghalien and the Kurile Islands. However, immigration on any extensive
scale must have been discontinued at a very early period, as on the
discovery of America the natives presented a highly specialised and
distinctive type, and bear such a resemblance one nation to another, as
to draw from all authorities the conclusion that they are of common
origin.
According to all known anthropological standards the Amerind (as it has
been agreed to designate the American Indian) bears a close affinity to
the Mongolian races of Asia, and it must be admitted that the most
likely origin that can be assigned to him is one in which Asiatic, or to
be more exact, Mongolian blood preponderates. The period of his
emigration, which probably spread itself over generations, was in all
likelihood one at which the Mongolian type was not yet so fully
specialised as not to admit of the acquirement under specific conditions
of very marked structural and physiological attributes.[1] In recent
years large numbers of Japanese have settled in Mexico, and in the
native dress can hardly be distinguished from the Mexican peasants.
Of course it would be unsafe to assume that, once settled in the
Western Hemisphere, its populations were subject to none of those
fluctuations or race-changes which are so marked a feature in the early
history of European and Asiatic peoples. It is thought, and with
justice, that some such race-movement convulsed the entire northern
division of the continent at a period comparatively near to that of the
Columbian discovery. Aztec history insists upon a prolonged migration
for the race which founded the Mexican Empire, and native maps are still
extant in several continental collections, which depict the routes taken
by the Aztec conquerors from Aztlan, and the Toltecs from Tlapallan,
their respective fatherlands in the north, to the Mexican Tableland.
This, at least, would appear to be worthy of notice: that the
'Skraelings' or native Americans mentioned in the accounts of the
tenth-century Norse discoverers of America, by the description given of
them, do not appear to be the same race as that which inhabited the New
England States upon their rediscovery.
As regards the origin of the American mythologies it is difficult to
discover traces of foreign influence in the religion of either Mexico or
Peru. At the time of their subjugation by the Spaniards legends were
ripe in both countries of beneficent white and bearded men, who brought
with them a fully developed culture. The question of Asiatic influences
must not altogether be cast aside as an untenable theory; but it is well
to bear in mind that such influences, did they ever exist, must have
been of the most transitory description, and could have left but few
traces upon the religion of the peoples in question. If any such contact
took place it was merely of an accidental nature, and, when speaking of
faiths carried from Asia into America at the period of its original
settlement, it is first necessary to premise that Pleistocene Man had
already arrived at that stage of mental development in which the
existence of supernatural beings is recognised--a premise with which
modern anthropology would scarcely find itself in agreement.
Almost exhaustive proof of the wholly indigenous nature of the American
religions is offered by the existence of the ruins of the large centres
of culture and civilisation which are found scattered through Yucatan
and Peru. These civilisations preceded those of the Aztecs and Incas by
a very considerable period, how long it is impossible in the present
state of our knowledge of the subject to say. Those huge, buried cities,
the Ninevehs and Thebeses of the West, have left not even a name, and
of the peoples who dwelt in them we are almost wholly ignorant. That
they were of a race cognate with the Aztecs and Toltecs appears probable
when we take into account the similarity of design which their
architecture bears to the later ruins of the Aztec structure. Yet there
is equally strong evidence to the contrary. At what epoch in the history
of the world these cities were erected it would at the present time be
idle to speculate. The recent discovery of a buried city in the
Panhandle region of Texas may throw some light upon this question, and
indeed upon the dark places of American archaeology as a whole. In the
case of the buried cities of Uxmal and Palenquee a great antiquity is
generally agreed upon. Indeed one writer on the subject goes so far as
to place their foundation at the beginning of the second Glacial Epoch!
He sees in these ruins the remnants of a civilisation which flourished
at a time when men, fleeing from the rigours of the glacial ice-cap,
huddled for warmth in the more central parts of the earth. It is
unnecessary to state that this is a wholly preposterous theory, but the
fact that the ruins of Palenquee are at the present time lost in the
depths of a tropic forest goes far to prove their great antiquity.
Arguing, then, from this antiquity, we may be justified in assuming that
in these now buried cities the mythology of Mexico was partly evolved;
that it was handed down to the Aztec conquerors who entered the country
some four hundred years before its subjugation by Cortes, and that it
received additions from the tribal deities. In the case of the Peruvian
mythology we may argue a similar evolution, which, as we shall see
later, had been spread over a considerably shorter period.