207 



monstrous figures, gave it as a plaything^to their 

 children. From their hands it was rescued by 

 an enlightened lover of antiquities, Cardinal 

 Borgia ; but not before attempts had been made 

 to burn some pages or folds of the deer skin, 

 on which the paintings are delineated. Nothing 

 indicates the antiquity of this manuscript, which 

 perhaps is but an Azteck copy of an older book. 

 The great freshness of the colours might lead us 

 to suspect, that the Codex Bor^giayuis, as well as 

 that of the Vatican, does not go beyond the four- 

 teenth century. i 



We cannot fix our eyes on these paintings, 

 without feeling a crowd of interesting questions 

 pressing on our minds. Did there exist at 

 Mexico, in the lifetime of Cortez, hieroglyphic 

 paintings made in the time of the Tolteck 

 dynasty, and consequently in the seventh cen- 

 tury of our era ? Were there other copies at 

 that period than those of the famous divine book, 

 called teoamoxtli, compiled at Tula, in the 

 year 660, by the astrologer Huematzin, and in 

 which we find the history of Heaven and of 

 Earth, a cosmogony, a description of the con- 

 stellations, the division of time, the migrations 

 of nations, mythology, and moral philosophy? 

 Was this Mexican Purana, the teoamoxtli, the 

 remembrance of which has been preserved so 

 many ages in the Azteck traditions, one of those, 

 which monkish fanaticism committed to the 



