. Hue says that the Mongols, to get over this
difficulty, affix a special name to all the years of each king's reign,
as for instance, "the year Tao-Kouang of the fire-ram;" apparently not
seeing that to give the special name and the number of the year of the
reign, and call it the 44th year of Tao-Kouang, would answer the same
purpose, with one-tenth of the trouble.

Not only are the Mexican and Asiatic systems alike in the singular
principle they go upon, but there are resemblances in the signs used
that seem too close for chance.[20] The other arguments which tend to
prove that the Mexicans either came from the Old World or had in some
way been brought into connexion with tribes from thence, are
principally founded on coincidences in customs and traditions. We must
be careful to eliminate from them all such as we can imagine to have
originated from the same outward causes at work in both hemispheres,
and from the fact that man is fundamentally the same everywhere. To
take an instance from Peru. We find the Incas there calling themselves
"Child of the Sun," and marrying their own sisters, just as the
Egyptian kings did. But this proves nothing whatever as to connexion
between the two people. The worship of the Sun, the giver of light and
heat, may easily spring up among different people without any external
teaching; and what more natural, among imperfectly civilized tribes,
than that the monarch should claim relationship with the divinity? And
the second custom was introduced that the royal race might be kept
unmixed.

Thus, when we find the Aztecs burning incense before their gods, kings,
and great men, and propitiating their deities with human sacrifices, we
can conclude nothing from this. But we find them baptizing their
children, anointing their kings, and sprinkling them with holy water,
punishing the crime of adultery by stoning the criminals to death, and
practising several other Old World usages of which I have already
spoken. We must give some weight to these coincidences.

Of some of the supposed Aztec Bible-traditions I have already spoken in
no very high terms. There is another tradition, however, resting upon
unimpeachable evidence, which relates the occurrence of a series of
destructions and regenerations of the world, and recalls in the most
striking manner the Indian cosmogony; and, when added to the argument
from the similarity of the systems of astronomical notation of Mexico
and Asia, goes far t