Shell-Trumpets and their Distribution. 61 
tortoise] figures there in the centre of a remarkable 
ceremony in which a number of gods pull a rope up and 
down to which is fastened the element Kzz ‘Sun.’” 
(See Fzg. 3; plate facing p. 58). 
No one who carefully and conscientiously examines 
this remarkable picture can have any doubt that it repre- 
sents the tortoise incarnation of the Hindu god V7shnz. 
In these and other similar designs in the Maya manu- 
scripts we cannot fail to recognise the results of an infiltra- 
tion into America of somewhat confused ideas concerning 
Vishnu, the popular Hindu god, who, as already pointed 
out, is intimately associated with the conch-shell trumpet 
(the sacred chank) and the tortoise, among other objects. 
It is inconceivable that ideas of so arbitrary a nature could 
have arisen independently in India and Central America. 
That the fundamental conception of the Maya pictures is 
the Same as the Indian cannot be denied. They were 
certainly inspired by ideas brought from India, which 
again were probably founded upon elements of culture 
from Western Asia and the Mediterranean. As is well- 
known, one of the Babylonian myths relates how the 
people of Ancient Chaldza received their early knowledge 
of sciences and arts of all kinds from the fish-god, Ea or 
Oannes, who rose from out of the Erythrean Sea. But 
it is to the island of Crete we must turn for the earliest 
use of the shell-trumpet ; there it was a regular accom- 
paniment of Minoan temple-worship. 
The Maya evidence, only a part of which is dealt with 
here, thus confirms what has already been said concerning 
the ideas expressed in the Aztec picture writings, i.e, the 
use of shell-trumpets in temple-worship and the association 
of the conch-shell with the god of the moon in India and 
Central America. 
It is altogether incredible that merely by chance the 
