15 
I 
EPOCHAS OF NATURE^ 
ACCORDING TO THE 
AZTECK MYTHOLOGY. 
PLATE XXVI. 
The most prominent feature among* the analo- 
gies observed in the monuments, the manners, 
and traditions of the people of Asia and Ameri- 
€a, is that which the Mexican mythology exhi- 
bits in the cosmogonical fiction of the periodical 
destructions and regenerations of the world. 
This fiction, which connects the return of the 
great cycles with the idea of the renewal of mat- 
ter, deemed indestructible ; and which attri- 
butes to space what seems to belong only totime^\' 
goes back to the highest antiquity. The sacred 
books of the Hindoos, especially the Bhagavata 
Pourana, speak of the four ages, and of the pra- 
layas^ or cataclysms, which at different epochas 
^ Herman, Mytliologie der Griechen, Th. 2, p. 332. 
