Images de page
PDF
ePub

done by the Mayas without first performing a very interesting ceremony called Heɔmek; or the prevalence of the tree and serpent worship, or that of the cross and the elephant, among the Mayas as among the Hindoos-is all this without meaning?

In another work I have shown how the worship of the tree originated in Mayach, and why it was always allied to that of the serpent and of the monarch. But no antiquary has ever been able to trace the origin of these cults either to Egypt, Chaldea, or India, although it is well known they existed in those countries from remote ages.

The object of these pages is not to give here all the proofs that can be adduced of the presence of the Mayas in India, and of the influence of their civilization on its inhabitants; but to follow their tracks along the shores of the Indian Ocean, into the interior of Asia, across Asia Minor where they established colonies, on to Africa, until finally they reached the valley of the Nile, and laid the foundation of the renowned Egyptian kingdom, some six thousand years before the reign of Menes, the first terrestrial Egyptian king.3

2

3

1 Alice D. Le Plongeon, Harper's Magazine, vol. xx., p. 385.

Augustus Le Plongeon, Sacred Mysteries, p. 109, et passim.

Bunsen, Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. iii., p. 15.

III.

CONTINUING the examination of the cosmogonic diagrams of ancient historic Asiatic nations, we find, next in importance, the "Ensoph" of the Chaldees. It can be seen at a glance that this also is an amplification of the Maya symbol of the universe, as yet existing at Uxmal, as well as of the "Sri-Santara" of the Hindoos.

It may be asked, How came the Chaldees to adopt the same geometrical figures used by the Mayas to symbolize their cosmogonic conceptions?

Berosus, the Chaldean historian, tells us that civilization was brought to Mesopotamia by Oannes and six other beings, half man, half fish, who came from the Persian Gulf; in other words, by men who dwelt in boats, which is precisely the meaning of the vocable "Oannes," or Hoa-ana in the Maya language (ha, "water;" a, "thy;" na, "house," "residence"-" he who has his residence on the water"). Sir Henry Rawlinson, speaking of the advent of the early Chaldeans in Mesopotamia, says: "With this race originated the

'Sir Henry Rawlinson, note to Herodotus, lib. i., 181, in George Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i., p. 319.

[merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small]

THE CELESTIAL SUBJECTIVE AND REAL WORLD OF

Matter

EARTH

Spirit

WATER

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

art of writing, the building of cities, the institution of a religious system, the cultivation of all sciences and of astronomy in particular."

If philology, like architecture, may serve as guide in following the footsteps of a people in its migrations on the face of the earth, then we may safely affirm that the Mayas, at some epoch or other, travelling along the shores of the Indian Ocean, reached the mouth of the Indus, and colonized Beloochistan and the countries west of that river to Afghanistan; where, to this day, Maya tribes live on the north banks of the Kabul River.1

The names of the majority of the cities and localities in that country are words having a natural meaning in the Maya language; they are, in fact, those of ancient cities and villages whose ruins cover the soil of Yucatan, and of several still inhabited.

I have made a careful collation of the names of these cities and places in Asia, with their meaning in the Maya language. In this work my esteemed friend the Rt. Rev. Dr. Dn. Crecencio Carillo y Ancona, the present bishop of Yucatan, has kindly helped me, as in many other studies of Maya roots and words now obsolete; the objects to which they applied having ceased to exist or having fallen into disuse. Bishop Carillo is a literary gentleman of well-known ability, the author of an ancient history of Yucatan, a scholar well versed in the language of his forefathers. He is of Maya descent.

2

Following the Mayas in their journeys westward, along the seacoasts, we next find traces of them at the head of the

1 London Times, weekly edition, March 4, 1879, p. 6, col. 4.

2 This list is given in full in my large work, yet unpublished, The Monuments of Mayach and their Historical Teachings.

« PrécédentContinuer »