dia.

Heaven and Earth were jointly worshipped at the same altar until A.D.
1531, when it was decreed that there should be separate altars and that
the worship of Earth should be separately conducted (Edkins). At the same
time, while the Emperor acts as the high-priest of Heaven, we find
associated with him, from remote antiquity, the Empress, the
representative of the Earth-mother.

The fact that the roll of Chinese emperors records heavenly and earthly,
light and sombre, emperors, and that empresses have repeatedly occupied
the throne, seems to indicate that, in remote antiquity, a male and a
female line of rulers, personifying the dual principles of nature,
alternately assumed prominence in power. This natural outgrowth of the
cult of heaven and earth, which has its parallel in Mexico, seems to
afford an explanation of the usurpation and retention of power exercised
by the present Empress of China, who is probably ruling in her own right,
as the representative of the earth or dark principle. As such she is the
exact equivalent to the ancient Mexican Cihua-coatl, or "Woman-serpent;"
and modern China supplies us with an episode in the development of the
fundamental set of ideas it holds in common with ancient America, closely
resembling the historical dissension which led in ancient Mexico to a
separation of the two cults and the establishment of two separate
governments, under their respective male and female rulers.

Although the difference in primitive Chinese and Mexican definitions of
heaven and earth worship is evidently accountable for this fact, it is
nevertheless interesting to note that it was in A.D. 1531 only that the
Chinese cult of heaven and earth separated and the process of
disintegration began to be set into activity. From an evolutionary point
of view, the imperial religion of China stands to-day at a far less
advanced stage of development than the prehistoric Mexican state religion.
This circumstance might be passed over without comment did it not
strikingly coincide with the undeniable fact that the essentially
inorganic and monosyllabic Chinese language stands far lower in the scale
of linguistic development than the incorporative and polysynthetic
American languages, the most perfected types of which are the Maya and the
beautiful and refined Nahuatl which abounds in delicate metaphors and
formulas of exquisite politeness, indicative of the high degree of culture
and antiquity of the native rac