Shell-Trumpets and tJieir 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 Kin 'Sun.'" 

 (See Fig. 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 Vishnu. 



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. 

 Jt 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 Chaldaea received their early knowledge 

 of sciences and arts of all kinds from the fish-god, Ea or 

 Oannes, who rose from out of the Erythraean 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 



