o each personage under
a slightly different form.

[Illustration.]

Figure 47.

The accompanying drawing (fig. 47) of one of the Santa Lucia bas-reliefs,
reproduced from Dr. Habel's work, will suffice to establish its
resemblance to Padre Oliva's description of the apparition seen by the
youthful Inca Yupanqui. After a careful comparison of the text to the
sculptured bas-relief, it must be admitted that a more graphic and
impressive illustration of the episode can scarcely be imagined. Its lower
portion displays a youthful figure, looking upwards and exhibiting a
necklace, the circular ear-pieces and royal fringe or llautu of the Incas.
From his shoulders hangs the skin of a puma or lion with its head
downwards. Molina relates that lion-skins with the heads were specially
prepared for the ceremonial when youths were admitted into the ranks of
knighthood, the last rite of which was the piercing of their ears and the
enlargement of the orifice made.(28)

The youth wears a singular head-dress, or diadem, consisting of what
appears to be an eye with conventionally drawn upper lid, surmounted by
three pointed rays, behind which some long wavy feathers are visible.(29)

The celestial apparition to which the youthful figure is looking up,
likewise exhibits the same necklace, pieces, and royal fringe of the
Incas. Indistinctly though some of the details are given, it seems as
though intertwined serpents encircled its head and possibly its neck. The
head of the vision is surmounted by an enlarged rendering of the
conventionally drawn eyelid and three pointed rays which form the diadem
of the youthful knight. The face of the vision occupies, however, the
place of the eye on the diadem. In this connection it is interesting to
note that in the Nahuatl language, which, as (_op. et loc. cit._) proven
by Buschmann, was spoken in Guatemala where the bas-relief was found, the
word ixtli designates face, whilst ixtololotli signifies eye. Situated
between the right elbow of the celestial figure and the diadem of the
youth, there is a diminutive reproduction of the eye, eyelid and three
rays, with the addition that what appear like two (or three?) drops of
water or two eyes descend from it towards a square symbol which resembles
the Mexican sign for tlalli=earth, whilst the eye symbol is closely
analogous to a well-known Mexican sign which has been interpreted as a
star, a