218 



A STUDY OF CHIRIQUIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



hand, sustaining one on his forehead." 1 It should be noted that here the entire bird 

 takes the place of the bird foot present in figure 371 evidently another example 

 of the bird-god. The Imperial Museum of Natural History, Vienna, possesses a 



small bird-god of gold an avian head 

 and wings and a human body and lower 

 extremities. Decorative alligator heads 

 are attached to the calves, one on each 

 side, and a small animal is held in the 

 beak of this deity. If God created man 

 in His own image, man on the other hand 

 in making to himself graven images of 

 his god or gods would quite naturally give 

 them human attributes. This rule seems 

 to have held good in Chiriqui as well as 

 elsewhere. It is not strange therefore that 

 the pre-Columbian Chiriquians should have 

 chosen to represent their gods, many of 

 them at least, with human attributes. 

 In fact the parallelism between these 

 Chiriquian deities and certain gods of the 

 Hindu pantheon is most suggestive. I need 

 only mention Ganesha, the god of prudence 

 and policy, represented with human body 

 and elephant's head ; or some of the many 

 incarnations (avataras) of Vishnu, as: 1) 

 Matsya, part fish and part man ; 2) Kurma, 

 part tortoise and part man ; 3) Varaha with 

 human body and the head of a boar. There 

 is also Hanuman, one of the lesser deities, 

 with a monkey's head on a human body. 

 The evident esteem in which the parrot 

 was held, both among the Chibchas and 

 the Chiriquians, as well as the particular 

 type of avian characters seen in the bird- 

 god, leads me to conclude that the latter 

 might be given the specific name of parrot- 

 god instead. The beaks are always parrot- 

 like. Two of the finest examples of what 

 we shall henceforth call the parrot-god 

 were recently acquired by Mr. Keith and 

 like the two alligator-gods in the Keith 

 collection form part of the golden treasure of the Huacal de los Reyes in the 

 valley of Rio General, Costa Rica, discovered some three years ago, and 



1 Bulletin Amer. ethnol. soc., I, 12, 1860-'61. 



2 Edward Moor. The Hindu pantheon, Pis. 1, 48, 53, 54, 1810. 



Fig. 370. Gold 

 collection. '/' 



figure of the parrot-god. Heye 



Fig. 371. Gold 

 collection. V" 



figure of the parrot-god. Heye 



