Introduction. XXV 
It was also used in India as the receptacle for libations, 
which, as I have already mentioned, was one of the essen- 
tial ritual procedures for animating the dead, and in course 
of time for performing the same devotional act for the 
deity. 
Thus it was intimately interwoven into the very 
texture of the remarkable culture-complex of which these 
practices represent a few of the ingredients 
Mrs. Zelia Nuttall has published a remarkable scene 
from an unpublished manuscript of Sahagun’s, now at 
Florence, representing the ancient Mexicans’act of homage 
to the sun. Two priests offer blood by piercing their 
ears, two others burn incense in a characteristically Egyp- 
tian fashion, and another pair blow conch-shell trumpets.” 
The use of the shell trumpet in a similar ceremonial for 
sun-worship in Indonesia indicates one stage in the route 
from Crete to America. One might multiply such illus- 
trations almost without limit to demonstrate the reality 
of the cultural bonds between these shell-elements and 
the rest of the sun-cult both in the New World and in 
the Old. 
One of the most remarkable proofs of the derivation 
of the civilisation of America from the Old World is 
afforded by the representation in Maya and Aztec docu- 
ments of unmistakably Indian religious scenes, often with 
a Far Eastern tinge. The late Sir Edward Tylor called 
attention to a clear example of such transference. 
Humboldt, Stolberg and Tschudi have cited others,’* 
t7 << A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans,” Archzclogical and 
Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Vol. I, 
No. 7, 1904. 
18 “On the Diffusion of Mythical Beliefs as Evidence in the History 
of Culture,” Report British Association, 1894, p. 774. 
19 See Bancroft ‘‘The Native Races of the Pacific States uf North 
America,” Vol. V., p. 40 e¢ seq. 
