-MASTERPIECES OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN ART 
V.—_THE GREAT DRAGON OF QUIRIGUA 
JPANRUTS UE 
W. H. Hotmes 
The Symbolism.—It is not questioned 
that the great groups of monumental 
remains that mark the sites of the 
ancient Maya cities owe their existence 
to religion and that they were devoted 
to the service of the gods. The temples 
were the sanctuaries of the divinities, 
the resorts of their mortal servitors, and 
storage places for paraphernalia and 
the offerings of the faithful. The sacred 
enclosures, the courts and plazas in 
which the great stone monoliths were 
set up, were the conjuring places of the 
priesthood where the gods were con- 
sulted and invoked—the sacred pre- 
cincts where on festive occasions the 
people were permitted to enter and to 
take part in elaborate ceremonies and 
where they were made to realize the 
power and glory of the gods, thus in- 
suring their willing subservience to the 
temporal powers. To the people, the 
stele, probably originally the images of 
rulers set up at stated intervals, as the 
dates indicate, were divinities to be 
revered and served. The zo6morphic 
divinities represented by the massive 
altar—like monuments were doubtless 
in the native mind definitely individu- 
alized, vitalized beings, eternal and 
endowed with varied powers of extra- 
ordinary potency. When, under the 
inspired direction of the shamanistic 
master, the sculptor carved a wing, it 
was not of a bird he thought; when he 
carved the reptilian fangs, it was not 
of a serpent he thought; when he carved 
the turtle-like flippers, he thought not 
[39 | 
of a turtle. In all cases he had in mind 
a being or divinity, a real entity, which, 
though a work of the imagination pure 
and simple, was to him as real as the 
living forms with which nature sur- 
rounded him. 
The assemblage of attributes repre- 
sented in the sculptured dragon were 
not necessarily the invention of the 
people or the priesthood of Quirigua, 
but probably grew up with the growth 
of myth through unnumbered genera- 
tions. They were probably but dimly 
understood even by the officials who 
directed the sculpture of their images 
and who assumed to be the familiars 
of the gods. We may be quite sure that 
every one of the multitude of features 
carved with so much labor and artistic 
care had associated with it some ele- 
ment of myth. The dragon was doubt- 
less regarded as the material embodi- 
ment of a divine being perhaps of the 
highest order in the native pantheon. 
May it then not be, as some have sur- 
mized, that this image impersonates the 
Earth Monster, the World God, and 
that from the wide-open jaws, facing 
the ceremonial plaza, issued the divin- 
ity of the world of man, that through 
the glyph-hidden jaws of the southern 
end peered the grotesque demon of the 
under world, and that the strangely 
compounded visage of the upper sur- 
face was the guardian of the sky? We 
must remain content, however, with 
mere surmises, until research penetrates 
more deeply into the mysteries of Maya 
