An inglorious Columbus; . iililliiililiiiiliii Fig. 21.—Detail of facade of a building at Uxmal. bear a great resemblance to the statues of Buddha, which areplaced in similar niches in the walls of many Asiatic temples. Taken by itself, the similarity might be considered as acci-dental ; but when consideration is given to the nature of thebuilding in which the American figure is found, and to its won-deiful resemblance to the religious structures erected by theBuddhists of Asia, much weight is added to the assumption thatboth figures are the product of the same religious belief. If these resem
An inglorious Columbus; . iililliiililiiiiliii Fig. 21.—Detail of facade of a building at Uxmal. bear a great resemblance to the statues of Buddha, which areplaced in similar niches in the walls of many Asiatic temples. Taken by itself, the similarity might be considered as acci-dental ; but when consideration is given to the nature of thebuilding in which the American figure is found, and to its won-deiful resemblance to the religious structures erected by theBuddhists of Asia, much weight is added to the assumption thatboth figures are the product of the same religious belief. If these resemblances are accidental, why is it that the ac-cident occurs nowhere in the world except in the region de-scribed by Hwui Shan ? EELIGIOUS CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS. 595 Perhaps the most remarkable similarity to the Asiatic imagesof Buddha which is found in any Mexican object is, however,exhibited in a small image now contained in the museum of theEthnographical Society of Paris, and said to be a representationof Fig. 22.—A Mexican image, said to represent Quetzalcoatl. Fig. 22, which (as well as the cut of the elephant-mound inthe following chapter) is copied by permission of Messrs G. Sons, from the translation published by them of theMarquis de Nadaillacs Pre-Historic America, shows the com-plete identity of this image with those which are found in Asia. The Chinese character for Buddha is ?^ Fo, which consistsof the Chinese representation of a bow, ^, kung, and fournearly vertical lines. On each side of the seated figure, of which 596 AN INGLORIOUS COLUMBUS. an illustration is given on the last page, there may be seen anumber of hieroglyphics ; and the one in the upper left-handcorner consists of an exact reproduction of the Chinese bow (except for the reversal—which may exist only in the engrav-ing, not in the original figure), together with four vertical certainly does not seem impossible that the Chinese characterFo, copied blindly by one
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