North Right fore
foot.
West Left fore foot.
South Right hind leg.
East Left hind leg.
Middle Heart.
Zenith Head.
Nadir Tail.
It is obvious from this that, to a Zuñi, the State and its subdivisions
appear under the allegorical form of a quadruped and I have traced the
identical mode of thought in Mexico and Central America(84) where, owing
to linguistic associations, an ocelot is in some instances employed as a
symbol for a State whilst in others the form of an eagle was adopted for
the same purpose (see Appendix I).
To sum up: in ancient America the human form was employed to represent
quadripartite division and the complete finger-and-toe count=20, and as
such became emblematic of the quadriform plan of universal application.
Owing to a variety of circumstances and suggestions arising from language,
the figure of a quadruped=ocelot was adopted as a symbol of the State by
some tribes and the form of an eagle by others, the inference being that
the ocelot was identified with the cult of the earth and night and the
eagle with the cult of heaven and day. While the ocelot and eagle occur in
the codices as representative of two distinct classes or divisions of the
State, there are some interesting and suggestive representations, to which
I shall revert, of figures combining the form and claws of an ocelot with
the wings and head of a bird, evidently symbolical of a union of the Above
and Below, or Heaven and Earth.
Having furnished the explanation that ancient America affords of the
origin of the primitive employment of the human body, the quadruped and
bird in allegory and the assignment of their various parts to points in
space, it is to Chinese scholars that I appeal for enlightenment as to the
origin and development of the same idea in China. To me one point of
difference between the Chinese and American list is very striking. In
America although the navel was also regarded as a symbol, the heart,
associated with the Middle, had obviously been recognized as the centre or
seat of life, and the tearing out of the heart had become the salient
feature in human sacrifices. In China the stomach is assigned to the
Middle, and death by disembowelling was customary.
An analysis of the Chinese and Mexican numerical systems likewise proves
that their ultimate development was strikingly different, although it is
easy to recognize how both might have arisen from the same source. Thus
whilst the Mexican and Central American calendar (and social organization)
is based on the combination of 20 characters with 13 numerals, the Chinese
“took two sets of 12 and 10 characters respectively and combined them.”
The outcome of the combination of 20 with 13 affords a marked contrast to
that of 12 with 10. In the Mexican calendar, as I have shown, there were
fixed periods of 5 days (associated with the Middle and Four Quarters) and
of 20 days, the latter being “one complete count” of days, based on the
primitive finger-and-toe count. In the Mexican social organization there
were 4 principal and 16 minor clans of people, known by 20 signs. Each of
these in turn was subdivided into 13 categories associated with the
directions in space. By mentioning a sign and a numeral, up to 13, the
exact subdivision of a clan was clearly designated while the direction of
its residence, as regards the capital, was likewise conveyed. A day was
associated with each of these 20 clans and their respective 13
subdivisions, and the unit of time produced by the combination of the 20
day-signs and 13 numerals was the period of 260 days, which held 4×65 days
and was approximately equivalent to nine lunations and to the period of
human gestation. The 260-day period, as will be more clearly shown in my
monograph on the Mexican Calendar System, constituted the religious year
of the “Sons or Lords of Night” in their cult of the Moon, the Nocturnal
Heaven, Earth and the Female principle.
Simultaneously with this lunar calendar, in which each moon had a
different name, a civil or solar calendar was employed consisting of 365
days, divided into 17 periods of 20 and 1 period of 25 days. These years
bore the names of four different signs in rotation combined with 13
numerals.(85) The cycles, thus produced, consisted of 4×13=52 years, 20,
or a “complete count” of which, produced the great cycle of 1040 years.
Totally different from this numerical system is that of the Chinese, who
“divided the year into 12 months of 29 and 30 days each and as these
periods represent with sufficient exactness the lunar month, it follows
that the new moon falls on the 1st of every month and that on the 15th the
moon is at its full. The month is thus associated with the moon and is
called by the same name and written with the same hieroglyphic.... The
Chinese also divide the year by seasons and recognize 8 main divisions and
16 subsidiary ones, which correspond to the days on which the sun enters
the 1st and 15th degrees of a zodiacal sign ...” (Douglas, China, p. 269).
Whilst it is customary in China for years to be designated at times by the
Neen-haou or title of an emperor and an event to be alluded to as having
occurred in such or such a year of a certain ruler’s reign, the mode of
computing years is by reckoning by sexagenary cycles. According to native
historians this system was introduced by the emperor Hwang-te in the year
2637 B.C. which was the first year of the first cycle, and it has
continued in use until the present day. In this system a group of ten
characters, termed the “celestial stems” and associated with the male
principle, is combined with a group of twelve characters, named the
“terrestrial branches” and associated with the female principle. An
unbroken series of sixty-year cycles have thus been formed, in the
seventy-sixth of which the Chinese are now living. According to Biot, the
calendar instituted by Hwang-te was a day-count only, and year-cycles were
not in use until after the Christian era, having been introduced from
India.
There are indications which will be more fully discussed further on,
showing that the primitive day-count consisted of the seven-day period,
each day being consecrated to one of the seven bright stars of Ursa Major,
called the “Seven Regulators.”
It is well known that Taouism was founded by Laou-tsze, who was a
contemporary of Confucius and thus “lived in the sixth century before
Christ, a hundred years later than Buddha and a hundred years earlier than
Socrates. A mystery hangs over Laou-tsze’s history ... and there is the
possibility that he was a foreigner, or perhaps a member of an aboriginal
frontier tribe” (Legge).
The Shoo-king, the national book of history edited by Confucius, enables
us to follow the development of the state religion and government, the
basis of which was Heaven and its imperial ruler, the pole-star. The
almost mythical emperor Yaou, whose reign began in B.C. 2357, “imitated
Heaven, harmonized the various states of the empire and divided it into
four quarters.” His successor, Shun, extended its organization, but it was
Yü, the third ruler, in the thirteenth year of his reign (B.C. 1121), who,
acknowledging his ignorance of them “went to inquire of Kê-tsze” about
“the great plan of the 9 classifications and the arrangement of the
invariable principles.” It is also stated in the Shoo-King, that it was
“Heaven [who] gave to Yü the great plan and the 9 classifications, so that
the invariable principles were arranged, consisting of the 5 elements, the
8 regulations, and the 5 arrangers.”
In China the day is divided into periods equivalent to 120 minutes=2
hours. “In speaking of these periods, however, the practice which was
originally introduced into China by the Mongols, of substituting for the
twelve stems, the names of the twelve animals which are supposed to be
symbolical of them, is commonly adopted. Thus the 1st period, that between
11 P. M. and 1 A. M., is known as the Rat, period 2 as the Ox, 3 Tiger, 4
Hare, 5 Dragon, 6 Serpent, 7 Horse, 8 Sheep, 9 Monkey, 10 Cock, 11 Dog, 12
Boar. The night is divided into five watches, each of two hours
duration....” (Douglas, China, p. 296).
The ancient Mexican priest-astronomers marked three divisions of the night
by burning incense in honor of certain stars, after dusk, at midnight and
at break of day.
The mention of the introduction into China of the Mongolian
hour-computation leads to a consideration of the origin of what is known
as the Chinese civilization. It is, of course, impossible to do more here
than touch upon the various and opposite views held on this important
question by leading European and Chinese scholars. On the one hand, “the
existence of the Chinese civilization in the east of Asia, separated from
early centres by the whole width of Asia and intervening trackless
deserts, has seemed a problem to many students and led to the conclusion
of its sporadic growth, an idea which is fostered by Chinese historians.”
(See Douglas on Chinese Culture and Civilization, 1890.) On the other
hand, it is maintained that the Chinese entered China from Tartary and
were emigrants from Babylonia who abandoned their country when Nakhunte,
king of Susiana, conquered Babylon in 2295 B.C.
According to Legge, the Chinese came through central Asia about 2200 B.C.
and founded colonies on the banks of the Yellow river and its tributaries.
These colonists founded a Middle Kingdom in China, a federation of states
with a chief supreme ruler, on the pattern of Babylonia. They introduced
the art of writing and established a calendar with a year of 360 days and
an intercalary month.
It is stated that the names of the five planets of the Chinese, besides
the Sun and Moon, were called by the same names as in Babylon. (See Edkins
_op. cit._, also The old Babylonian characters and their derivatives,
Terrien de Lacouperie, Babylonian and Oriental Record, March, 1888.) Some
authorities are inclined to consider Chinese astronomy as derived from the
Chaldean; whilst others have instituted comparisons between it and the
Hindoo system. The results of the latter line of investigation are set
forth by J. F. Davis in the following passage of his work on the Chinese
(London, 1836, vol. II., p. 304): “A comparison between the ancient system
of the Chinese and of Hindoo astronomy is rendered somewhat perplexing by
the fact that, while there are some points of resemblance there are others
in which they essentially differ. Both of them have twenty-eight lunar
mansions and a cycle of sixty years, but a careful observation detects
some important distinctions: the Hindoo cycle is a cycle of Jupiter while
that of the Chinese is a solar cycle, and the twenty-eight constellations
of the Hindoos are nearly all of them equal divisions of the great circle,
consisting of about 13° each, while the Chinese constellations are
extremely unequal, varying from 30° to less than 1°. The author’s father,
in conjunction with Sir William Jones and Messrs. Colebrook and Bentley,
proved that the Hindoo astronomy did not go farther than the calculation
of eclipses and some other changes with the rules and tables for
performing the same. Besides their lunar zodiac of twenty-eight mansions,
the Hindoos (unlike the Chinese) have the solar, including twelve signs
perfectly identical with ours, and demonstrating, in that respect, a
common origin.”
As we know from Herodotus, the Egyptians had a week of seven days and it
is remarkable that the Hindoos had anciently the same, the planetary names
being given to the days in exactly the same order as among ourselves,
except that Friday was the first. The Chinese reckon five planets to the
exclusion of the sun and moon, but they give the name of one of their
twenty-eight lunar mansions successively to each day of the year in a
perpetual rotation, without regard to the moon’s changes; so that the same
four out of the twenty-eight invariably fall on our Sundays and
constitute, as it were, perpetual _Sunday letters_. A native Chinese first
remarked this odd fact to the author, and on examination it proved
perfectly correct.
To the above it may be well to add the following comparison between the
Chinese, Tibetan and Indian systems: “The Tibetans received astronomical
science from India and China ... the Chinese taught them the science of
divination. Both systems are based upon a unit of sixty years, differing,
however, in modes of denominating years. In these cycles of sixty years,
when numbered according to the Indian principle, each year has a
particular name; but in the Chinese method the names used in the Chinese
duodecimal cycle are used five times, coupled with the five elements or
their respective colors, each of the latter introduced in the series twice
in immediate succession” (Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Thibet, p. 27).
According to Humboldt, “the Tzihichen, or public calculators of Lhassa
take pride in the fact that years of the same name only return about every
two centuries. They combine 15 signs: five masculine, five feminine and
five neuter, with twelve signs of the zodiac” (Monuments des peuples de
l’Amérique I, p. 386).
With regard to the ancient connection between China and India it is well
to recall the well-known fact that Buddhism did not enter China from India
until the first century of the Christian era and had a prolonged struggle
for existence and influence in the country during several centuries.
The Buddhist missionaries introduced the mode of calculating cycles of
years into China, according to Biot, who states that the primitive
calendar of the Chinese, instituted by Hwang-te, the first king of the
“Flowery land,” was a day-count only.
Let us briefly enumerate some bare facts bearing upon the age and
development of the state, religion and government of ancient China. In
2697 B.C. Hwang-te (the Babylonian?) erected a temple to the honor of
Shang-te, the deity associated with the earliest traditions of the Chinese
race. Upon the authority of a Chinaman of the present day it is stated
that “the word Shang-te means supreme ruler; but, as it is not lawful to
use this name lightly, Chinamen usually name the supreme ruler by his
residence, which is Tien=heaven” (Edkins, _op. cit._ p. 71).
An extremely instructive light is thrown upon the Taouist conception of a
supreme being or ruler, by the following episode related by Mr. Edkins in
his “Religion in China” (p. 109). “I met [in 1872] on one occasion a
schoolmaster from the neighborhood of Chapoo.... The inquiry was put to
him, Who is the Lord of heaven and earth? He replied that he knew none but
the pole-star, called in the Chinese language Teen-hwang-ta-te, the great
imperial ruler of heaven. It was stated to him that it was a matter very
much to be regretted that he should hold such views as this of the Supreme
Being.”
In this connection and with special reference to the title Tien=heaven,
employed by the Chinese in addressing the supreme ruler, I must quote T.
de Lacouperie’s opinion that the Akkadian name=Din-gira and symbol for
God, the eight-pointed star, was the origin of Ti, a Chinese character
with the same meaning and sound. Mr. C. J. Ball (The New Akkadian
Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology) explains the Akkadian
Din-gira as composed of di=to shine and gira=heaven and that thus the
Accadian name for God is “the shining one of heaven,” which explains why
the ideogram is a star. According to Mr. K. Douglas (p. 171) “Mr. Ball has
practically demonstrated that the Chinese and Akkadian are the same tongue
and that everywhere in China we are reminded of that great centre of
civilization in Babylonia.”
An investigation of the Taouist religion reveals that it consists chiefly
of star-worship, stars being deemed “divine.” “Among the liturgical works
used by the priests of Taou, one of the commonest consists of prayers to
Tow-moo, a female divinity supposed to reside in the Great Bear. A part of
the same constellation is worshipped as a male spirit under the name of
Kwei-sing” (Edkins).
A name closely resembling the latter in sound, Tseih-ching, and meaning
the “Seven Regulators” is now applied to the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In ancient times, however, according to native
authorities, “this term was used to designate the seven bright stars of
Ursa Major which subsequently, by an astrological device, were associated
with the seven planets; so, that, by metonymy, the latter became the
established meaning.”(86)
The association of the term “Regulators” with Septentriones is
particularly interesting because the seven-day period has been employed in
China from time immemorial, the seventh day being invariably marked by the
ancient character mih, which means “quiet, secret or silent.” In the
modern Chinese almanacs and astrological works “the mih days are marked by
the four constellations which correspond among the seven planets to the
principal one among them, the Sun” (_cf._ Wylie, On the Knowledge of a
weekly Sabbath in China, _op. cit._ p. 86). I am strongly tempted to refer
the origin of the Chinese mih or quiet day, on which rest was generally
observed, to that remote period of time when, to primitive observers, one
of the stars in Ursa Major would have appeared more closely associated
with immovability and nearer the polar axis than its companions (see pp.
20 and 21).
If we pause here to review the preceding data we are particularly struck
at the unanimity of evidence establishing that even the most ancient form
of civilization and religion was not indigenous to China, but was carried
there by colonists from distant parts, presumably from Babylonia. The
latter conclusion finds a strong support in the undeniable fact that
during subsequent centuries a steady stream of emigration has carried
colonists of different nationalities into the heart of China.
Buddhism entered China from India in the first century of the Christian
era. Alexander Wylie tells us that “according to the testimony of one of
the stone tablets in the synagogue at Kai-fung foo, the Israelites first
entered China during the Han dynasty” and we are further told in the
letters of the Jesuits that “they came during the reign of Ming-ti (A.D.
58-75) from Si-yih, _i. e._ the western regions. It appears by all that
can be gathered from them that this western country is Persia and that
they came by Khorasan and Samarcand. They have many Persian words in their
language and they long preserved a great intercourse with that country”
(The Israelites in China, Wylie’s Chinese Researches, Shanghai, 1897).
Some other interesting facts related by Wylie deserve mention here. In
translating the name of Jehovah into Chinese, the Israelites in China, to
the present day, say Teen, “just as the scholars of China do when they
explain their term Shang-te.” We thus observe a growing practice in
western Asia, among the Hebrews, of designating Jehovah as the God of
Heaven and sometimes as Heaven. In Chinese history distinct mention is
made of a foreign sect distinguished as the “worshippers of Heaven,”
spoken of as existing in China at the beginning of the sixth century.
Wylie has surmised that the Hebrews were thus designated and remarks “that
this name, as the designation of a foreign sect, is the more remarkable
inasmuch as the state ritual of China has designated the Supreme by the
name of Heaven, from the earliest times down to the present day.”
It is a curious reflection that it may possibly have been due to a gross
misconception of the Hebrew religion on the part of the Chinese and a
supposed identity of worship that caused the Israelites to be treated with
such tolerance and hospitality in China that their colony situated in the
heart of the country still exists to the present day. It is, in fact,
related of the Dowager Empress Ling, in the first half of the sixth
century, that she “abolished the various corrupt systems of religious
worship, excepting that of the foreign tien-spirit.” A strange insight
into the Chinese view of the Christian religion is likewise afforded by
the following native documents cited by Wylie: “Now Jesus, the Lord of
Heaven, is worshipped by the Europeans. They say that this is the ancient
religion of Ta-tsin (Syria).”
The following remarkable passages occur on the famous Nestorian tablet,
dated A.D. 781, which eulogizes the propagation of the “Illustrious
[Christian] Religion” in China. This tablet was discovered by the Jesuit
fathers in 1625 and, after its authenticity had been violently assailed,
Wylie’s painstaking researches have now vindicated its genuineness.(87)
The following extracts are from the preface engraved upon it and composed
by King-tsing, a priest of the Syrian Church: “... Our eternal, true lord
God.... He appointed the cross as the means of determining the four
cardinal points, he moved the original spirit and produced the two
principles of nature; the sombre void was changed and heaven and earth
were opened out; the sun and moon revolved and day and night commenced;
having perfected all inferior objects, he then made the first man ... the
illustrious and honorable Messiah, veiling his true dignity, appeared in
the world as a man ... a bright star announced the felicitous event [of
his birth] ... he fixed the extent of the eight boundaries.... As a seal
[his disciples] hold the cross, whose influence is reflected in every
direction uniting all without distinction. As they strike the wood the
fame of their benevolence is diffused abroad; worshipping towards the east
they hasten on the way to life and glory ... they do not keep slaves, but
put noble and mean all on an equality; they do not amass wealth but cast
all their property into the common stock.”
Referring the matter to oriental scholars for further discussion I merely
note here the astonishing fact that in China, in the seventh century of
our era, the supreme God of the Hebrews and Christians was spoken of as
the God of Heaven, or Heaven, that He is credited with having created the
two principles of nature besides heaven and earth and instituted the cross
as “a means of determining the cardinal points.”
It is likewise strange to find the “Heen or Toen foreigners” credited in a
sixteenth-century native cyclopædia, with having introduced into China a
system of astronomy denominated the “Four Heavens,” and obviously based on
a quadruplicate division of the Heaven similar to the division of the
empire instituted by Yaou (Wylie, Israelites in China, _op. cit._ p. 19).
The current Chinese name for Christians has been “Cross-worshippers,” and
it is odd to note that the ancient Chinese seem to have regarded the
symbolism of the Christian cross as closely identical with that of their
swastika, and to have concluded that the foreign “Heaven” religion rested
on the same basis as theirs.
Referring the reader to Wylie’s valuable researches and Edkins’ Religion
in China for information concerning the establishment of colonies of
Manicheans, Mohammedans and of successive Christian missions, etc., in
China, I shall but quote the following passage from Marco Polo’s travels
(pp. 167 and 168) because it shows how the doctrine of the quadruplicate
division of all things, celestial and terrestrial, led to a broad
tolerance of opinion in the famous Tartar prince, Kubla Khan, who, in
1260, at Kanbalu=Peking, honored the Christian festivals. “And he observed
the same at the festivals of the Saracens, Jews and idolaters. Upon being
asked his motive for this conduct, he said: ‘There are four great Prophets
who are reverenced and worshipped by the different classes of mankind. The
Christians regard Jesus Christ as their divinity; the Saracens, Mahomet;
the Jews, Moses; and the idolaters Sagomombarkan (Buddha) the most eminent
amongst their idols. I do honor and show respect to all of the four, and
invoke to my aid whichever of them is in truth supreme in heaven.’ ” This
attitude of mind and that of the Chinese towards the Christian Cross can
only be fully understood and appreciated when it is realized that their
“imperial ruler of Heaven” was the pole-star and that the Ursa Major
described each year the sign of a cross in the heaven which ever impressed
upon them quadruplicate division and differentiation and the union of four
in one. It is doubtlessly owing to the same reason that the Chinaman of
today finds it possible to believe in, at once, the three great national
religions which exist in China. Edkins has explained that, whereas
“Confucianism speaks to the moral nature, Taouism is materialistic and
Buddhism is metaphysical; thus, they are supplemental to each other and
are able to co-exist without being mutually destructive” (_op. cit._ p.
60). Somewhat apart from these three state religions and embodying the
most ancient ideas and traditions of the race, exists the elaborate and
solemn “Imperial worship,” the study of which Edkins designates as
“specially interesting because it takes us back to the early history of
the Chinese people and introduces us to many striking points of comparison
with the patriarchal religion of the Old Testament and with the worship of
the kings of Nineveh, Babylon and Egypt.” The same authority states that
“the account given by Herodotus of the religion of the ancient Persians
shows that it consisted in much the same usages as those now found in
Chinese Imperial worship” (_op. cit._ pp. 6, 22, 18 and 30). In the
preceding pages it has been shown that the fundamental principles of the
primitive religions of China and America were identical, but that their
subsequent stages of development or evolution were strikingly divergent.
The following study of certain details connected with the “Imperial
worship” brings out a marked differentiation in the Chinese and Mexican
cult of heaven and earth.
The altar of Heaven at Peking consists of three circular marble terraces,
the uppermost of which is paved with eighty-one stones arranged in
circles. It is on a round stone in the centre of these circles that the
Emperor kneels and is considered to occupy the centre of the earth. In the
worship of Heaven, offerings are made to the heavenly bodies, the Sun,
Moon, the Pole-star, Great Bear, five planets and twenty-eight
constellations. The worship at the altar of Earth consists of offerings to
the mountains, rivers and seas.
This arrangement is strikingly unlike that of the ancient Mexicans, who
associated the sun only with the Above, the male principle and the blue
heaven, and worshipped the nocturnal heaven, the moon and stars, with the
earth, darkness and the female principle.
It is interesting to note the marked effect, produced by the two different
modes of classification, upon the subsequent development of the state
religions of China and Mexico. In the latter country where the contrast of
light and darkness and of the duality of nature seems to have been most
powerfully felt, the gradual institution, on a footing of equality of a
diurnal masculine and nocturnal feminine cult or of a separate sun and
moon worship, led to the formation of two equally powerful castes of
priest-astronomers who devised their respective calendars and cults and
ultimately stood in open rivalry and antagonism towards each other, as
children of heaven and light: sun worshippers; and children of earth and
darkness: moon worshippers. In China, as the cult of earth was subordinate
from the first and all heavenly bodies were included in the worship of
Heaven, there was no opportunity for any rivalry to develop in the
superior caste of astronomers who jointly ruled, instituted their calendar
and altered it under influences emanating from India.
Heaven and Earth were jointly worshipped at the same altar until A.D.
1531, when it was decreed that there should be separate altars and that
the worship of Earth should be separately conducted (Edkins). At the same
time, while the Emperor acts as the high-priest of Heaven, we find
associated with him, from remote antiquity, the Empress, the
representative of the Earth-mother.
The fact that the roll of Chinese emperors records heavenly and earthly,
light and sombre, emperors, and that empresses have repeatedly occupied
the throne, seems to indicate that, in remote antiquity, a male and a
female line of rulers, personifying the dual principles of nature,
alternately assumed prominence in power. This natural outgrowth of the
cult of heaven and earth, which has its parallel in Mexico, seems to
afford an explanation of the usurpation and retention of power exercised
by the present Empress of China, who is probably ruling in her own right,
as the representative of the earth or dark principle. As such she is the
exact equivalent to the ancient Mexican Cihua-coatl, or “Woman-serpent;”
and modern China supplies us with an episode in the development of the
fundamental set of ideas it holds in common with ancient America, closely
resembling the historical dissension which led in ancient Mexico to a
separation of the two cults and the establishment of two separate
governments, under their respective male and female rulers.
Although the difference in primitive Chinese and Mexican definitions of
heaven and earth worship is evidently accountable for this fact, it is
nevertheless interesting to note that it was in A.D. 1531 only that the
Chinese cult of heaven and earth separated and the process of
disintegration began to be set into activity. From an evolutionary point
of view, the imperial religion of China stands to-day at a far less
advanced stage of development than the prehistoric Mexican state religion.
This circumstance might be passed over without comment did it not
strikingly coincide with the undeniable fact that the essentially
inorganic and monosyllabic Chinese language stands far lower in the scale
of linguistic development than the incorporative and polysynthetic
American languages, the most perfected types of which are the Maya and the
beautiful and refined Nahuatl which abounds in delicate metaphors and
formulas of exquisite politeness, indicative of the high degree of culture
and antiquity of the native race.
If the preceding comparative study of the Chinese and ancient Mexican
civilizations be briefly summarized, the result is as follows: Both
civilizations alike rest on a foundation of pole-star worship and the set
of ideas which naturally proceed from this _i. e._, central impartial
power extending in constant rotation to the four quarters, figured by the
swastika, and the recognition of the all-pervading duality of nature.
These primitive concepts and their inevitable outgrowths, which might
naturally occur to human beings of the same grade of intellect in similar
conditions and circumstances and be most powerfully impressed upon the
mind of man in circumpolar latitudes beside a few resemblances in names,
which I shall proceed to point out, are nearly all that the Chinese and
ancient Mexicans may be safely said to have had in common. At a date
obviously anterior to 2356 B.C., when they were formulated, the Chinese
had made definitions of heaven and earth and of the five elements which
radically differ from those of the ancient Mexicans and Mayas.
The Chinese numerical system or calendar, though equally based on
rotation, and known to have been modified by contact with India, is
essentially different from the American. When carefully compared it must
be acknowledged that the Mexican is by far the more complex and highly
developed, and the same may be said of the social organization, which was
controlled by the calendar. A comparison between the Chinese and American
languages in general proves, moreover, that they differ not only in sound,
but in form and in grade of development, the Chinese being the lower in
the scale. To the above divergences we must add the fact that each people
evolved distinct national customs and costumes, foods and drinks,
industries, arts and forms of architecture, so markedly characteristic as
to be clearly distinguishable.
In conclusion a few words about the swastika in China (ouan). Its Chinese
name is wan, which signifies “ten thousand,” or “all,” also “many,” a
great number. At the time of the Empress Wu (A.D. 684-704) the swastika in
a circle signified “the sun;” half a swastika in the circle “the moon,”
and the plain circle “the star.” Deferring comment I emphasize here the
fact that the word wan resembles kwan=equal earth or land, and that it
signifies an entity composed of ten thousand parts. A proof that the wan
was also associated with the idea of time is given by the modern use of
the Chinese swastika to signify “long life,” “many years,” _i. e._, a
complete life, a complete cycle of years.
A prolonged study of the most ancient civilization of America, which
centred in Mexico and Central America and thence spread northward and
southward, has so deeply convinced me of its great antiquity, isolation
and prolonged period of independent evolution that, when Asiatic origin
and influence are discussed, I am tempted to take the national food-plant
of America, the maize, and, placing it beside the rice-plant of China,
invite comparisons to be made between them.