the sacred pulque or octli at
certain religious festivals. As the Mexican name given to the design
itself is xical-coliuhqui, it seems as though it was most popularly known
as the "twisted or winding pattern" of the sacred drinking vessels.

Having originated, as I have shown, from the simplest observation of the
action of air upon a surface of water, it is but natural that the same
design should have independently originated in several localities. It is,
nevertheless, worth mentioning here that the dome of one of the most
beautiful of ancient Greek remains, the choragic monument of Lysicrates,
or lantern of Demosthenes at Athens, is surrounded by a band or fascia,
cut into the water design. It is evident that, seen against the sky, this
graphically represented the curling waves of water "on summer seas," and
this was evidently the most primitive method of employing this form of
symbolical decoration which is more familiar when executed in solid
masonry stucco, as a frieze.

The identical process of development may be observed in Mexican
architecture. In the Vienna and other native Codices, countless temples
are depicted as surmounted with fasciae cut into rectangular designs in
such a manner that the blank space left between each solid projection
figures its inverted image in the air (fig. 35, _a_-_d_). In these open
fasciae an intention to symbolize the solid or Earth, and the fluid or
Heaven, is discernible, whilst the step-like projections seem to express
or convey the idea of ascent and descent, perhaps the ascent of human
supplication and the descent of the much-prayed-for rain. From the other
examples of temple decorations (fig. 35, _f_ and _h_) it is evident that,
in solid friezes, a light and a dark color were employed in the same
designs, to convey the same idea.

Evidence proving that the emblems on the roofs of the temples were replete
with meaning is furnished by several representations of roofs, on which
rows of upstretched hands or of human hearts are depicted. My horror at
these seemingly ghastly emblems vanished as soon as I ascertained their
actual meaning from a passage in Sahagun's Historia. Describing a certain
sacred dance he records that "on the white garments of the girls who took
part in it, hands and hearts were painted, signifying that they lifted
their hearts and hands to heaven, praying for rain." Not only does this
explain the symbolism of the hands on the temples but also the native
cust