... he was figured as lying down, as though going to
sleep.... Out of reverence the image was covered with mantles or
cloths.... They said that when sterile women made offerings or sacrifices
to the god Quetzalcoatl, he immediately caused them to become
pregnant...." He was the god of the Winds which he sent to sweep or clear
the way for the tlaloques="the earth-wine" gods.

Senor Sanchez also quotes Gama, who, basing himself upon Torquemada's
authority, maintains that Tezcatzon-catl, the principal rain or octli-god,
was figured as lying in an intoxicated condition, holding a vase of pulque
in his hands. To the above data I add the description by Bernal Diaz, of a
"figure in sculpture" he saw on the summit of the great temple of Mexico:
"It was half man and half lizard (lagarto), was encrusted with precious
stones and one-half of it was covered with cloths. They said that half of
it was full of all the kinds of seeds that were produced in the entire
land, and told [me] that it was the god of sown land, of seeds and fruits.
I do not remember his name...." (Historia Verdadera, p. 71). It may be as
well to note, that the Nahuatl names for lizard, cuetz-palin and topitzin,
approximately convey the sound of the first syllables of the name of the
culture-hero Quetzalcoatl, and of the title "topiltzin" bestowed upon him.
It must, of course, remain a matter of conjecture whether the lizard was
possibly employed in the above case as a pictograph, to express the sound
of its name. One thing seems certain, that the Tula image of Quetzalcoatl,
to which divinity barren women directed their invocations, and the statue
described by Bernal Diaz as that "of the god of seeds, fruits and
cultivated land," were undoubtedly analogous to the sculptured recumbent
figure found in Mexico, and exhibiting the symbols of Tlaloc, or
earth-wine, of maize, and of parturition. Bernal Diaz further relates that
the said image was kept on the uppermost terrace of the Great Temple, in
one of five "concavities surrounded by barbacans or low walls the
wood-work of which was very richly carved" (_op. et loc. cit._).

The inference to be drawn from the foregoing data is that the Mexicans and
the Mayas habitually kept, on the summit of their principal temple, in
their centres of government, a statue holding a circular vessel and
figuratively representing the "navel or centre of the land." The group of
ideas already traced in the Maya ho=capital, hom=pyramid, ho