11]

[136: Gould's "Mythical Monsters," 1886.]

The Dragon in America and Eastern Asia.

In the early centuries of the Christian era, and probably also even for
two or three hundred years earlier still, the leaven of the ancient
civilizations of the Old World was at work in Mexico, Central America
and Peru. The most obtrusive influences that were brought to bear,
especially in the area from Yucatan to Mexico, were inspired by the
Cambodian and Indonesian modifications of Indian beliefs and practices.
The god who was most often depicted upon the ancient Maya and Aztec
codices was the Indian rain-god Indra, who in America was provided with
the head of the Indian elephant[137] (i.e. seems to have been confused
with the Indian Ganesa) and given other attributes more suggestive of
the Dravidian Naga than his enemy, the Aryan deity. In other words the
character of the American god, known as _Chac_ by the Maya people and as
_Tlaloc_ by the Aztecs, is an interesting illustration of the effects of
such a mixture of cultures as Dr. Rivers has studied in Melanesia.[138]
Not only does the elephant-headed god in America represent a blend of
the two great Indian rain-gods which in the Old World are mortal
enemies, the one of the other (partly for the political reason that the
Dravidians and Aryans were rival and hostile peoples), but all the
traits of each deity, even those depicting the old Aryan conception of
their deadly combat, are reproduced in America under circumstances which
reveal an ignorance on the part of the artists of the significance of
the paradoxical contradictions they are representing. But even many
incidents in the early history of the Vedic gods, which were due to
arbitrary circumstances in the growth of the legends, reappear in
America. To cite one instance (out of scores which might be quoted), in
the Vedic story Indra assumed many of the attributes of the god Soma. In
America the name of the god of rain and thunder, the Mexican Indra, is
_Tlaloc_, which is generally translated "pulque of the earth," from
_tlal[l]i_, "earth," and _oc[tli]_, "pulque, a fermented drink (like the
Indian drink _soma_) made from the juice of the agave".[139]

The so-called "long-nosed god" (the elephant-headed rain-god) has been
given the non-committal designation "god B," by Schellhas.[140]

[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Reproduction of a Picture in the Maya Codex
Troano representing the Rain-god _Chac_ treading upon the Serpent's