NO. 1887. CENSERS AND INCENSE OF MIDDLE AMERICA— IIOUQE. Ill 

 3. SWINGING CENSERS. 



{a) Censers introduced from Europe. Accultural. (Chiapas 

 specimen.) 



I. Communal or General. 



1. STATIONARY. 



(6) The great masonry braziers located before shrines about the 

 teocallis, and at various other sacrificial spots where perpetual fires 

 were maintained and oft'erings consumed were not strictly incense 

 burners, though so treated at times.* Usually upon them living 

 victims were immolated and it was the custom to throw into the 

 brazier fire the ashes and unconsumed incense from the portable 

 censers together vnih. the paraphernalia and offerings which had 

 been employed in ceremonies. The brazier was the source from 

 which live coals were taken to ignite the incense in the hand censers. 



The brazier appears to be a perpetuation of the primitive com- 

 munal fire, and the Nahuatl name by which such braziers were 

 called, tlexidli, "fire navel," connotes an idea relating to birth and 

 the underworld like the Ilopi sipapu. In describing the ceremony of 

 kindling new fire on the Hill of the Star in the valley of Mexico, 

 Sahagun mentions the brazier: "The inhabitants of Mexico, having 

 arrived home with their torches Ughted, carried them at once to the 

 temple of Uitzilopochtli and proceeded to place the fire, \vith much 

 copal incense, on the great brazier of masonry elevated before the 

 idol." ^ He also states that "they burned much night and day in 

 the courts of the temples on the elevated fireplaces which they had 

 made for that purpose." ^ 



Again he speaks (p. 101) of a round hearth set in the midst of the 

 court where it was elevated two spans above the surface and to 

 which celebrants carried for deposit the ashes and coals from the 

 centers. 



Another form of brazier, described briefly b}' Sahagun, was a stone 

 basin encased in pine wood in wliich the flimsy ornaments and the 

 manias which had been worn by celebrants were burnt. Its name, 

 quauxicalli, is interpreted "wood vase"; it was situated at the foot 

 of the teocalli, while the great brazier in which victims were burned 

 stood on the apex platform. 



There is in the United States National Museum a cylindrical block 

 of hard eruptive rock having a rectangular shallow cavity 9 mches 



> It is said that there were COO braziers of stone, some round and some square, about the great temple 

 compound of Mexico. Bancroft, Native Races, vol. 2, p. 584, New York, 1875, citing the Motolina Ilistoria 

 de los Indios de la Nueva Espafia in Icazbalceta, Col. de Doc, vol. 1, p. 05. (Since published by Piraental, 

 Mexico, 1903.) Bancroft, Native Races, vol. 2, p. 5C7, ciliiig Vcytia, Hist. Antigua de Mejico, vol. 3, p. 31J, 

 states that the streets of Mexico were lighted with braziers tended by the patrol. 



= IIisloria universal de la Neuva Espafia, by Bernardino de Sahagun, translated by Jourdanet et 

 Simeon. G. Masson, I'aris, 1880, p. 491. 



• Sahagun, work cited, p. 186. 



