Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1898. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Fusang in support of this belief. These convictions have arisen by finding it difficult to believe that the ancient civilizations of Mexico and Peru could have been indigenous. In seeking for an exterior origin in the Fusang account overweight has been credited to every possible resemblance, and all discrepancies have been ignored.

      The fabulous account of the land of Fusang evidently supplied documentary evidence, and Mexico was conceived to be the mythical Fusang. Mr. Vining goes so far as to declare that "some time in the past the nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America were powerfully affected by the introduction of Asiatic arts, customs, and religious belief." To establish the details in the Chinese account the entire western hemisphere is laid under contribution: now it is the buffalo of North America, then the llama of Peru, the reindeer of the arctic, or some native word. These writers do not hesitate to bring to life animals that became extinct in the upper Tertiaries, and to account for the absence of others by supposing them to have become extinct. Literal statements of horses dragging wheeled vehicles are interpreted as an allusion in Buddhist cult which refers by metaphor to attributes and not to actual objects. As an illustration of the wild way in which some of these resemblances are established, Mr. Vining quotes the account of M. José Perez (Revue Orientale et Américaine, vol. viii). Perez reminds us that the inhabitants of the New World gave Old World names to places in the new continent, citing New York, New Orleans, and New Brunswick as examples, and then says that at some remote epoch the Asiatics had given to the cities of the New World the same names as the cities of their mother country; so the name of the famous Japanese city Ohosaka (Osaka), to the west of the Pacific, became Oaxaca in Mexico on the eastern side. Now it is well known that the ancient name of Osaka was Namihawa; this became corrupted into Naniwa, and not till 1492 does the name Osaka appear. Rev. J. Summers gives a full account of these successive names with their meanings (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. vii, part iv). The real question to be answered is not what might have been accomplished by ancient explorers from Asia, but what was accomplished. It is shown that Chinese Buddhist priests went to India in the years 388, 399, 629, and so on, and the question is asked, Why may they not have reached Mexico on the east? Migration on parallels of latitude with no intervening ocean is one matter; to go from latitude 30° on one side of the Pacific almost to the Arctic Ocean, and down on the other side nearly to the equator, is quite another exploit. It is assumed that five priests had gone to Mexico in 468 A.D., and there ingrafted Buddhistic cult on the races with whom they came in contact. It is simply beyond reason to believe that the introduction of Buddhism into Mexico antedated by half a century its introduction into Japan. Communication between Korea and Japan has been from the earliest times one without effort or peril: in the one case a trip of a day or more, in the other case a journey of unnumbered thousands of miles through perilous seas, across stormy fiords and raging waters, including arctic and tropical climates and contact with multitudinous savage hordes. Those who hold that Mexico and Central America were powerfully affected by Asiatic contact must be called upon to explain the absence of certain Asiatic arts and customs which would have been introduced by any contact of sufficient magnitude to leave its impress so strongly in other directions. A savage people takes but little from a civilized people save its diseases, gunpowder, and rum. The contact of barbarous with civilized people results in an interchange of many useful objects and ideas, but these introductions must be through repeated invasions and by considerable numbers. Peschel, while believing in the Asiatic origin of the American race, would place the time far back in the savage state. He repudiates the Fusang idea, and expresses his belief that "a high state of civilization can not be transmitted by a few individuals, and that the progress in culture takes place in dense populations and by means of a division of labor which fits each individual into a highly complex but most effective organization," and then insists that "the phenomena of American civilization originated independently and spontaneously"; and Keane shows how interesting the social, religious, and political institutions of America become when "once severed from the fictitious Asiatic connection and influences." That the savage derives little or derives slowly from contact with a superior race is seen in the fact that he still remains savage. Thus the Ainu, a low, savage people, though they have been in contact with the Japanese for nearly two thousand years, have never acquired the more powerful Mongolian arrow release, while the Persians, though Aryan, yet early acquired this release from their Mongolian neighbors. The Scandinavians, who in prehistoric times practiced the primary release, yet later acquired the more efficient Mediterranean method. Let us for a moment consider what would have occurred as a result of an Asiatic contact with a people advanced enough to have been powerfully affected in their "arts, customs, and religious belief." It seems reasonable to believe that traces of a Mongolian release would be found in Central America, the more so as a warlike people would eagerly seize upon a more powerful method of pulling the bow, yet no trace of a stone or metal thumb ring has ever been found in the western hemisphere. Ancient Mexican codices, while depicting the archer, reveal no trace of the Mongolian method. In the Old World this release crept westward as a result of the migration of, or contact with, Asiatic tribes, and metal thumb rings are dug up on the Mediterranean littoral. While the arrow release of China might not have effected a lodgment in America, the terra-cotta roofing tile certainly would. This important device, according to Schlegel, was probably known in China 2200 B.C., in Korea 500 B.C., and in Japan in the early years of our era. In the ancient records of Japan reference is made to "breaking a hole in the roof tiles of the hall," etc., and green-glazed tiles are dug up on the sites of ancient temples in Japan. The fragments are not only unmistakable but indestructible. I have shown elsewhere[2] that the primitive roofing tile crept into Europe from the East, distributing itself along both shores of the Mediterranean, and extending north to latitude 44°. Graeber finds its earliest use in the temple of Hira in Olympia, 1000 B.C. The ancient Greeks had no knowledge of the roofing tile. Among the thousands of fragments and multitudinous articles of pottery found by Schliemann in the ruins of Ilios, not a trace of the roofing tile was discovered. One is forced to believe that so useful an object, and one so easily made, would have been immediately adopted by a people so skillful in the making of pottery as the ancient Mexicans. Certainly these people and those of contiguous countries were equal to the ancient Greeks in the variety of their fictile products. Huge jars, whistles, masks, men in armor, curious pots of an infinite variety attest to their skill as potters, yet the western hemisphere has not revealed a single fragment of a pre-Columbian roofing tile. Vining, in his work, cites an observation of the Rev. W. Lobscheid, the author of a Chinese grammar. In crossing the Isthmus of Panama this writer was much struck with the similarities to China; "the principal edifices on elevated ground and the roofing tiles identical to those of China." The roofing tile is indeed identical with that of China. It is the form that I have elsewhere defined as the normal or Asiatic tile, but it reached America for the first time by way of the Mediterranean and Spain, and thence with the Spaniards across the Atlantic, where it immediately gained a footing, and rapidly spread through South America and along the west coast north, as may be seen in the old mission buildings in California.

      In China, Korea, and Japan the sandal has a bifurcated toe cord, the base of which, springing from the front of the sandal, passes between the first and second toes. It belongs to the Old World through its entire extent. It is the only form represented in ancient Egyptian, Assyrian, and Greek sculpture. One would have expected that with any close contact with Asian people this method of holding the sandal to the foot would have been established in Central America, yet one may seek in vain for the evidences of even a sporadic introduction of this method. Where representations are given in the sculptured stone pottery, or codex, the sandal is represented with two cords, one passing between the first and second and the other between the third and fourth toes. Dr. Otis T. Mason, who has given us an exhaustive monograph of the foot gear of the world, says that every authority on Mexico and Central America pictures the sandal with two cords, and he further says, in a general article on the same subject, "An examination of any collection of pottery of middle America reveals the fact at once, if the human foot is portrayed, that the single toe string was not anciently known."

      The Thibetans, Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese have used the serviceable carrying stick from time immemorial. The nearest approach to this method in this country is seen in Guadalajara, where a shoulder piece is used to carry jars. The representation of this method shows that the pole rests across the back in such a manner СКАЧАТЬ