Maya

“ CHAPTER XIV. I cannot look back on the days that followed our find of the Maya treasure without a mental shudder. It was as if the gods had put a curse upon us that was executed by nature herself. We started at dawn and had not reached the first edge of the jungle before one of the pack mules was bitten by a snake so venomous that within an hour the poor beast died despite all our efforts to save it. ”

“ The Maya believed in the immortality of the soul and in a spiritual life hereafter. As a man lived in this world so he was rewarded in the next. The good and righteous went to a heaven of material delights, a place where rich foods never failed and pain and sorrow were unknown. ”

“ We are aware that the people who reared them entered into religious and perhaps philosophical considerations their interpretations of which place them upon a level with the most enlightened races of antiquity; but we have only stepped upon the margin of Maya history. What dread secrets, what scenes of orgic splendour have those carven walls witnessed? What solemn priestly conclave, what magnificence of rite, what marvels of initiation, have these forest temples known? These things we shall never learn. ”

“ Under the name of Maya, she is the mother of Agni—i.e., the principle of motherhood and creation simply, as which she is in the Rigveda at one time represented by the fire-producing wood, the soft pith, in which the fire-stick was whirled; at another as the earth, with which the sky has mated. ”

“ In Yucatan they had a kind of writing, the Maya writing, of the most curious and elaborate character. So far as we have been able to decipher it, it was used mainly for keeping the exact and complicated calendars upon which the priests expended their intelligence. The art of the Maya civilization came to a climax about 700 or 800 A.D. The sculptured work of these people amazes the modern observer by its great plastic power and its frequent beauty, and perplexes him by a grotesqueness and by a sort of insane conventionality and intricacy outside the circle of his ideas. ”

“ The Maya entertained an excessive and constant fear of death, many of their religious practices having no other end in view than that of warding off the dread visitor. After death there followed a prolonged period of sadness in the bereaved family, the days being given over to fasting, and the more restrained indulgence in grief, and the nights to dolorous cries and lamentations, most pitiful to hear. Among the common people the dead were wrapped in shrouds; their mouths were filled with ground corn and bits of worked stone so that they should not lack for food and money in the life to come. ”

“ Very little is known of the Mayas of Afghanistan, except that they call themselves Mayas, and that the names of their tribes and cities are words belonging to the American Maya language.
Who can give the etymology of the name Magi, the learned men amongst the Chaldees. We only know [83] that its meaning is the same as Maya in Hindostan: magician, astronomer, learned man. If we come to Greece, where we find again the name Maia, it is mentioned as that of a goddess, as in Hindostan, the mother of the gods: only we are told that she was the daughter of Atlantis—born of Atlantis. ”

“ Religion was indeed the very fountain-head of their civilization, and on its rites and observances they lavished a devotion rarely equaled in the annals of man. To its great uplifting force was due the conception and evolution of the hieroglyphic writing and calendar, alike the invention and the exclusive property of the priesthood. To its need for sanctuary may be attributed the origin of Maya architecture; to its desire for expression, the rise of Maya sculpture. ”

“ Then the electric telegraph, that we consider the discovery par excellence of the nineteenth century, was known of the ancient Itza sages 5000 or 10,000 years ago. Ah, Nihil novum sub solem! And in that slab we have a clue to the deciphering of the Maya inscriptions,—an American Rosetta stone.
I will now say a few words of that language that has survived unaltered through the vicissitudes of the nations that spoke it thousands of years ago, and is yet the general tongue in Yucatan—the Maya. There can be no doubt that this is one of the most ancient languages on earth. ”

“ The greater number of these exhibit a carved serpent (which in Maya is kan) in their centres and this fact affords a clue to the possible origin of the Maya name for a neck ornament given in the Motul dictionary. It is undeniable that all evidence unites in proving that the ancient peoples of the Mississippi valley were in traffic, if not more intimately connected, with a Maya-speaking people and came under the influence of the ideas and symbolism current in Yucatan. ”

“ No white man has ever penetrated their zealously guarded stronghold that lays between Guatemala, Tabasco, Chiapas and Yucatan, the river Uzumasinta watering part of their territory.
The Maya language seems to be one of the oldest tongues spoken by man, since it contains words and expressions of all, or nearly all, the known polished languages on earth. The name Maya, with the same signification everywhere it is met, is to be found scattered over the different countries of what we term the Old World, as in Central America. ”

“ Nothing of which the peon understood save the word “hombre.”
“I am a man,” he proclaimed, thrusting out his chest and straightening up his bruised head. “I am a hombre and I am a Maya.”
“Maya Indian—you?” Francis scoffed.
“Half Maya,” was the reluctant admission. “My father is pure Maya. But the Maya women of the Cordilleras did not satisfy him. He must love a mixed-breed woman of the tierra caliente. I was so born; but she afterward betrayed him for a Barbadoes nigger, and he went back to the Cordilleras to live. And, like my father, I was born to love a mixed breed of the tierra caliente. ”

“ Here the Maya are said to have lived for 260 years, until the destruction of Chakanputun by fire about 960 A. D. again set them wandering. By this time, however, some four centuries had elapsed since the first colonization of the country, and they doubtless felt themselves fully competent to cope with any problems arising from their environment. Once more their energies had begun to find outlet in artistic expression. The Transitional Period was at an end, and The Maya Renaissance, if the term may be used, was fully under way. ”

“ Although the deities above described represent only a small fraction of the Maya pantheon, they include, beyond all doubt, its most important members, the truly great, who held the powers of life and death, peace and war, plenty and famine—who were, in short, the arbiters of human destiny. ”

“ Opposing each other we behold on the one hand the deities of the sun, the gods of warmth and light, of civilisation and the joy of life, and on the other the deities of darksome death, of night, gloom, and fear. From these primal conceptions of light and darkness all the mythologic forms of the Maya are evolved. When we catch the first recorded glimpses of Maya belief we recognise that at the period when it came under the purview of Europeans the gods of darkness were in the ascendant and a deep pessimism had spread over Maya thought and theology. ”

“ Whatever the primitive meaning and first application of the name Maya, it is now used to signify specifically the aborigines of Yucatan. In a more extended sense, in the expression “the Maya family,” it is understood to embrace all tribes, wherever found, who speak related dialects presumably derived from the same ancient stock as the Maya proper. ”

“ The name Maya is also found in the form Mayab, and this is asserted by various Yucatecan scholars of the present generation, as Pio Perez, Crescencio Carrillo, and Eligio Ancona, to be the correct ancient form, while the other is but a Spanish corruption.13-1
But this will not bear examination. All the authorities, native as well as foreign, of the sixteenth century, write Maya. ”

“ In this poem are represented as nearly as possible, the religious ideas of the Mayas, their belief in KU, the Supreme Intelligence; in the immortality of the soul, and in successive lives on earth before returning to the great Source whence all emanate; also their rites and ceremonies as gathered from traditions of the natives of Yucatan, the fresco paintings found at Chicħen, and the books of ancient Maya authors. ”

“ The occupation and colonization of Yucatan marked the dawn of a new era for the Maya although their Renaissance did not take place at once. Under pressure of the new environment, at best a parched and waterless land, the Maya civilization doubtless underwent important modification. ”

“ The following data will corroborate this statement.
A Maya native drawing, copied by Cogolludo in 1640 from the MS. of the Chilan Balam or Sacred Book of Man, which relates the [pg 191] history of the Mayas, has been recently reproduced in Dr. Daniel G. Brinton's Primer of Maya Hieroglyphics, p. 47. It displays a rectangular stone slab like a table, on the centre of which rests a circular bowl, the symbol, as I have shown, of the earth and centre. Growing from this is a spreading tree. ”

“ Even now, after three centuries of degrading oppression, a Maya, or Maya-Toltec, preserves distinctive characteristics by which he can be singled out from among a number of different nationalities, nor would it be easy to find among the rural classes of Europe men of a better build, or with more intelligent and open countenances. ”

“ In the Maya pantheon he was regarded as having been the great organizer, the founder of cities, the framer of laws, and the teacher of their new calendar. Indeed, his attributes and life history are so human that it is not improbable he may have been an actual historical character, some great lawgiver and organizer, the memory of whose benefactions lingered long after death, and whose personality was eventually deified. The episodes of his life suggest he may have been the recolonizer of Chichen Itza after the destruction of Chakanputun. ”

“ The materialism of the Maya heaven and hell need not surprise, nor lower our estimate of their civilization. Similar realistic conceptions of the hereafter have been entertained by peoples much higher in the cultural scale than the Maya. ”

“ That we have succeeded in deciphering, up to the present time, only the calendric parts of the inscriptions, the chronological skeleton of Maya history as it were, stripped of the events which would vitalize it, should not discourage the student nor lead him to minimize the importance of that which is already gained. Thirty years ago the Maya inscriptions were a sealed book, yet to-day we read in the glyphic writing the rise and fall of the several cities in relation to one another, and follow the course of Maya development even though we can not yet fill in the accompanying background. ”

“ Although the arts and industries of the several districts inhabited by people of Maya race exhibited many superficial differences, these are so small as to make us certain of the fact that the various areas inhabited by Maya stock had all drawn their inspiration toward civilisation from one common nucleus, and had equally passed through a uniform civilisation and drawn sap from an original culture-centre. ”

“ Or who took to Greece that of the Mayas? Greek is the offspring of Sanscrit. Is Maya? or are they coeval? A clue for ethnologists to follow the migrations of the human family on this old continent. Did the bearded men whose portraits are carved on the massive pillars of the fortress at Chichen-Itza, belong to the Mayan nations? The Maya language is not devoid of words from the Assyrian.
We made up our minds to visit Aké, the place where the Spaniards escaping from Chichen took refuge in the first days of the conquest. The land where these ruins stand forms a part of the hacienda of Aké. ”

“ Le Plongeon has shown that in Yucatan and in Egypt the radical MA, of the word Maya, meant earth and place. This word was used by Hindoo sages to indicate matter, the earth, as it is found in their cosmogonic diagram. All matter being regarded as illusion, the word maya, in India, has that meaning. The mother of Buddha was Maya Devi (Beautiful Illusion) . Maya is matter, the feminine energy of Brahma. ”

“ I deem the grounds sufficient ... for accepting this Central American civilization of the past as a fact, referring it not to an extinct ancient race, but to the direct ancestors of the peoples still occupying the country with the Spaniards, and applying to it the name Maya as that of the language which has claims as strong as any to be considered the mother tongue of the linguistic family mentioned. ... There are no data by which to fix the period of the original Maya empire, or its downfall or breaking up into rival factions by civil and foreign wars. ”

“ In their sculpture the Maya far surpassed the artistic expression of all other Americans, attaining not only decorative power, but such idealization of the human countenance as is possible only among people whose aesthetic sensibilities have an intellectual background and guidance. No more convincing evidence of this mental power could be forthcoming than is shown in their mathematical and astronomical learning, at once a testimony to the antiquity of their culture and to the force of their native genius. ”

“ When the Maya peoples of Guatemala, the Kiches and the Kakchiquels, first made their way into that territory, they probably found there a race of Maya origin of a type more advanced and possessed of more ancient traditions than themselves. By their connection with this folk they greatly benefited in the direction of artistic achievement as well as in the industrial arts. Concerning these people we have a large body of tradition in the Popol Vuh, a native chronicle, the contents of which will be fully dealt with in the chapter relating to the Maya myths and legendary matter. ”

“ The Maya people, indeed, form about ninety-five per cent of the population of Yucatan. Even the majority of the fifty henequen kings are Mayas crossed with the blood of Spain. The Mayas are Indians—and yet they are not Indians. They are not like the Indians of the United States, and they are called Indians only because their homes were in the western hemisphere when the Europeans came. The Mayas had a civilization of their own when the Europeans "discovered" them, and it was a civilization admittedly as high as that of the most advanced Aztecs or the Incas of Peru. ”