29 
signs. It is impossible, that the fourth destruc- 
tion should have taken place in the year call% 
if the third happened in the year tecpatL I can- 
not guess what has caused this error : it may 
however have been only in appearance, and in 
the historical monuments, which have been trans- 
mitted to us, there may have been no mention of 
the small number of years employed by nature 
for each regeneration. The Hindoos distinguish 
the interval between two cataclysms, and the 
duration of each ; in the same manner, in the 
fragment of Ixtlilxochitl, we read, that the first 
catastrophe is seven hundred and seventy-six 
years distant from the second : but that the 
famine, which destroyed the giants, lasted thir- 
teen years, or the quarter of a cycle. In the two 
chronological systems which we have just men- 
tioned, the epocha of the creation of the world, 
or rather the beginning of the great periods, is 
the year presided by tochtli ; which sign was to 
the Mexicans, what Aries was to the Persians. 
In every nation astronomy indicates the position 
of the Sun, at the moment when the stars begin 
their course ; and we have already shown it to be 
probable, when speaking* of the relations ob- 
served between the fiction of the ages and the 
signification of the hieroglyphic ollm, that toditli 
corresponds to one of the solstitial points. 
* Vol. xiii, p. 352, p. 402. 
