[CAMPBELL] THE ANCIENT LITERATURE OF AMERICA 59 



the Cachiquels, our lathers and elders used to say, O my children ! 

 Sucdi were the lofty deeds of Kings Oxlahun Pek and Cablahun Tox, as 

 well as Woo Imox and Eokelbatzin ; it is thus and not otherwise that 

 they glorified the mountain of Iximche." 



The portrait of the great warrior known as Oxlahun Pek or Thirteen 

 Dogs, in Cachiquel Oxlahuh Tzy, is found on the Palenque Tablet of the 

 Cross, which is figured in Dr. Rau's monograph on the tablet, in Professor 

 Cyrus Thomas's Study of the Manuscript Troano, and in Professor Short's 

 North Americans of Antiquity. Ho is the larger, burlier figure of the 

 two represented, the small one being his later ally, Cocyoeza, King of 

 Oaxaca. Thirteen Dogs is a fine specimen of a large well nurtured, 

 sensual Malay, and the records of his deeds in the middle of the fifteenth 

 century, at Palenque, Copan, and Chichen-Itza, show him to have been a 

 monster of cruelty. Yet in this respect he seems to have been inferior to 

 some of the Mexican monarchs, who, in order to appease their diabolical 

 gods, at times offered them over one hundred thousand victims, captives 

 taken in war or defenceless creatures made prisoners in slave hunting 

 raids. Naturally one would deem a savage superstitious nature and a 

 state of almost constant warfare incompatible with the exercise of literary 

 talent, but, on the contrary, such has never been the case. Take away 

 from all ancient literature Avhat pertains to war and superstition, and 

 very small will be the residuum. Even tales of friendship and of love, 

 save in parts of the inspired record, are found bound up with one or both 

 of these. We do not wonder that John Ruskin, contemplating the 

 brutality of individuals among the English lower classes who had received 

 a common school education, insisted on the necessity for more than a 

 mere literary training to lift a human being out of the state of savagery. 



The ancient Mexicans had prayer-books, with the prayers of which 

 all religious persons were familiar, although only the priests and the 

 higher classes, who alone received a college education, were able to read 

 them. The formula at baptism was : 



" May the invisible God descend upon this water and efface the sin 

 and impurity thou hast contracted before the foundation of the world. 

 But remember thou, that the life thou hast begun is sorrowful and full 

 of pain, crowded with afHictions and miseries. Thou shalt only eat thy 

 bread by the price of thy labour. May God come to thy help in the 

 numberless adversities that await thee." 



The formula following the song of death at the funeral of a king 

 was: 



" Arise, lord, and set yourself on the road to rejoin your father, the 

 sovereign of the abode of the dead and of the region of oblivion, where 

 day and night are equally unknown, where rest is eternal, where your 

 mother, the queen of shades, awaits you, and where you shall rest from 

 your kingly toils in the midst of your ancestors." 



