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NOTE X. (Page 88.)

(1) Bishop Heber, in his "Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India" (vol. i., p. 386; vol. ii., pp. 430, 525, 530; vol. iii., pp. 48, 49), says "that at the city of Cairah in Guzerat, as in Greece, the statues have the white of the eyes made of ivory and silver. The statues of the gods are still painted with colors emblematic of their attributes. The gods Vishnu and Krishna are painted blue; Thoth, the god of wisdom and letters, red, etc."

(2) Henry Layard, "Nineveh and its Remains" (vol. ii., part ii., chap. iii.), speaks of the painted sculptures discovered by him in Nineveh, Khorsabad, and other places; and in his work, "Nineveh and Babylon" (p. 276), he mentions the finding of statues with eyes made of ivory and glass. Diodorus Siculus (lib. ii., c. xx.) speaks of the figures of men and animals painted on the walls of the palace of Semiramis in Babylon, and so also does Ezekiel (chap. xxii., verses 14, 15) and Smith, "Five Monarchies" (vol. i., pp. 450, 451).

(3) Eusebius, "Præp. et Demons. Evang." (lib. iii., chap. xi.), says that the Egyptians painted the statues of their gods. Kneph, Amen, Ra, Nilus, were painted blue. Set and Atum were painted red. Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in "Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians" (vol. iii., chap. xiii., pp. 10, 207), also says that the Egyptians painted the statues of their gods and of their kings, and provided them with eyes made of ivory or glass.

(4) The Greeks colored their statues and provided them with

eyes.

NOTE XI. (Pages 100, 127, 128.)

(1) J. Talboys Wheeler informs us that the Nâgás were a tribe famous in the Kshatriya traditions, whose history is deeply interwoven with that of the Hindoos; that they worshipped the serpent as a national divinity, and that they had adopted it as a national emblem.' From it they derived their

name.

The origin of the Nagás is unknown to Indianists and other writers on the history of India. They agree, however, that they were strangers in the country, having established themselves in the southern parts of Hindostan in times anterior to the war of the Pandavas and the Kauvaras; nay, anterior even to the epoch when the Aryan colonists from Bactria emigrated to the Punjab and founded their first settlements on the banks of the Saraswati when this river still emptied itself into the Indus. They do not know whence they came, nor in what part of the earth their mother country was situated.

Conjectures are not wanting on that point. Because these Nagás worshipped the serpent, some have presumed that they were a tribe of Scythians, whose race, Herodotus tells us, was said to have descended from a mythical being, half-woman, half-serpent, who bore three sons to Heracles. We will not now inquire into the origin of that myth. Looking into the

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1 J. Talboys Wheeler, Hist. of India, vol. i., p. 146.

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land of fabulous speculations, we might as well imagine them to have been the descendants of that Emperor of Heaven, Tien-Hoang of Chinese mythology, who, the Chinese assert, had the head of a man and the body of a serpent, since they were regarded by the masses of Hindoos as semi-divine beings.

We have seen in the early part of this book that the Nâgás, having obtained a foothold in the Dekkan, founded a colony that in time became a large and powerful empire whose rulers governed the whole of Hindostan. They did not confine themselves to India; but pushed their conquests toward the west and northwest, extending their sway all over western Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean, introducing their civilization in every ancient country, leaving traces of their worship in almost every system of religion.

Pundit Dayanand Saraswati, said to be the greatest Sanscritist of modern India, and the most versed in the lore and legends of Hindostan,' affirms that he has discovered the mother country of the Nágás to have been Pátâla, the antipodes; that is, Central America.

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If it be so, then the Nágás

were colonists from Mayach; and their civilization, their

1 H. P. Blavatsky, From the Caves and the Jungles of Hindostan, p. 63. 2 Ibid., Secret Doctrine, vol. i., pp. 27–35.

The Swami Vive Kananda, a learned Hindoo monk, when lecturing in New York on Yogi, the Vedanta, and the religious doctrines of India, in speaking with the author on the origin of the Nágás, assured him that it was the received opinion of the learned pundits of that country that they came originally from Pátála, the antipodes; that is, Central America. Pátála was the name given by the inhabitants of India to America in those remote times. It was also that of a seaport and great commercial emporium frequently visited by ancient Egyptians in their commercial intercourse with India. In his Periplus maris Erythræe, Arrian informs us that it was situated at the lower delta of the river Indus. Tatta is the modern name of the place.

scientific attainments, their traditions, their religious conceptions, must, of necessity, have been those of the Mayas.

Will any one object to the fact of a small colony of civilized immigrants establishing themselves in the midst of barbarous peoples, and growing, in the course of a few centuries, so as to form a vast and powerful empire, exercising great influence on the populations within its limits and even beyond? To such objection it may be answered, History repeats itself. Without speaking of the origin of the great kingdoms whose history forms our ancient history, let us cast a glance at what happens round us. See what has occurred in the same countries within the last two hundred and fifty years. From Fort St. George and the small settlement called Madras, on the narrow strip six miles long and one mile deep, bought by the English in 1639, on the coast of Coromandel, in the peninsula of Dekkan, and for which they had to pay, as tribute, every year, the sum of twelve hundred pagodas, or about two thousand five hundred dollars, has not the East India Company by little and little, extended its domains, until in our day, after a lapse of only two centuries and a half, they have become the rich and mighty British Indian Empire, whose viceroys now rule part of the same territories conquered in olden times by the Nâgás and governed by their Cans, or kings?

Are not the English to-day endeavoring to obtain a foothold in Afghanistan, where, as we have already seen,1 the names of cities and localities are identical with the names of villages and places in Yucatan, some of which are actually inhabited, others being in ruins? For instance, Kabul is the name of the Afghan capital, and of the river on the banks of which it stands. It is likewise that of a celebrated mound in

1 See p. 27.

the city of Izamal in Yucatan. On its summit once stood a temple dedicated to the "miraculous hand." It was famous throughout the land, even to the time of the Spanish Conquest. Father Cogolludo, in his "Historia de Yucatħan,” 1 says: "To that temple they brought their dead and the sick. They called it kabul, the working hand,' and made great offerings. The dead were recalled to life, and the sick

were healed."

The Nahuatls, who settled in the northwestern parts of the peninsula of Yucatan about the sixth century of the Christian era, used to offer at that temple human sacrifices to obtain from the god the benisons they sought. This fact we learn from a mezzo-relievo, in stucco, that adorned the frieze that ran round the temple. (Plate LXVIII.) It represents a man with Nahuatl features. His body is held in a posture that must have caused great suffering. His hands are secured in stocks; his elbows rest on the edge of a hollow support; his emptied abdomen is propped by a small stool; his knees touch the ground, but his feet are raised and wedged by an implement; his intestines hang from his neck and shoulders; his heart is strapped to his thigh.

It is much to be regretted that since the author took the photograph here reproduced, this figure, with its accompanying inscription, has been purposely destroyed by the owner of the premises, because he considered it an annoyance to have interested parties coming to see it. This is but one instance of that lack of appreciation manifested by the people of Yucatan regarding the interesting and historically important remains that make the Peninsula famous and attractive. It is lamentable that the Mexican Government authorities take no Cogolludo, Hist. de Yucatħan, lib. iv., chap. viii.

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