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On the Translation of Myths Between the Old And: China

Another coincidence, although perhaps of minor value, will be seen in the dresses of the soldiers of China and Mexico, as noted in the passages annexed. "Thus, in our * Harris' Voyages, vol. i. p. 859. † Dr. J. le Conte describes a ceremonial of cremation among the Cocopa Indians of California, and it is an ancient practice among the Chinese, dating back beyond the Greek and Roman historical periods. + British Association, 1871.

OLD AND NEW WORLD MYTHS. own time, the Chinese soldiers wear a dress resembling the tiger skin, and the cap, which nearly covers the face, is formed to represent the head of a tiger";* while the Mexican warriors, according to Spanish historians, "wore enormous wooden helmets in the form of a tiger's head, the jaws of which were armed with the teeth of this animal.'† دو Mr. C. Wolcott-Brooks, in an address to the California Academy of Science, has pointed out that, according to Chinese annals, Tai Ko Fo Kee, the great stranger-king, ruled the kingdom of China, and that he is always represented in pictures with two small horns like those associated with the representation of Moses. He and his successors are said to have introduced into China "picture writing " like that in use in Central America at the time of the Spanish conquest. Now there has been found at Copan, in Central America, a figure strikingly like the Chinese symbol of Fo Kee, with his two horns. "Either," says Mr. Brooks, "one people learned from the other, or both acquired their forms from a common source."

In reviewing all these cases we cannot fail to perceive that early and frequent communication must have taken place between the two worlds, and that the myths of one have probably been carried with them by the migrants to the other. * Staunton, China, vol. ii. p. 455. † Humboldt, Researches in America, English Translation, vol. i. p. 133. MYT THICAL MONSTERS.

FIG. 32. MURAL TABLET, TEMPLE OF LONGEVITY, CANTON.