212 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [Voxr. “Wile 
original Malay-Polynesian classical speech than those languages and 
dialects with which it is now compared. It is well known that in many 
parts of Polynesia the priesthood employed hymns, prayers and incan- 
tations, the meaning of the. language of which was entirely lost when 
the islands were first explored by Europeans.’ 
CHAPTER XVII. 
FACTS CONNECTED WITH THIS AFFILIATION. 
The Maya-Quiche peoples had the rite of circumcision which they 
administered along with that of baptism, called in Maya caputzzhil, or 
the second birth. According to Landa this took place at the age of 
three, or at some point between three and twelve, but, according to 
Brasseur, it was not long after the birth of the child The writer has 
not been able to find the Maya word for circumcision. The rite is 
observed in Java and other islands of the Malay Archipelago, but as in 
eastern Africa, it seems to have come through Mahometan influence.” It 
existed, however, in the Fiji, Friendly and Society Islands of 
Polynesia.? In the Tonga or Friendly Islands it was called ¢efe, and in 
Fiji, camo. The forms of this ceremony are described by Mariner, as 
practised in the two groups which have contributed largely to the com- 
parative vocabulary.* The Mexicans did not circumcise, and the late 
Rev. Abbé Cuoqg, in conversation with the writer, stated that the 
Iroquois have a word for circumcision, the mention of which excites in 
them violent hatred or abhorrent contempt. Like the Maya cartouches, 
this rite leads back to Egypt, where circumcision prevailed, though by 
no means universally, to Ishmael, Ammon, Moab, and Edom on its 
borders, to the Sanni of the Black Sea, and the Odomantians of Thrace, 
rather than to Lord Kingsborough’s Lost Tribes of Israel. The union 
of baptism with circumcision among the Maya-Quiches is much more 
difficult to account for, yet the Mexican priests baptized. 
The mzshla drink described by Mr. Squier in his Adventures on the 
Mosquito Shore is of the same nature and of the same disgusting 
preparation as the cava of the Tonga Islands, and seems to have been 
the liquor with which Mayas, Quiches and Cachiquels made beasts of 
themselves in ancient days, for, according to Brasseur, sobriety, on the 
ers oe 
PH) ————_ =< 
