Note 265 — APPENDIX
Reading edition
This, which Sir William Jones considered as the ritual of the Tartars, is also employed by the Sioux or Naudowessies, as I have repeatedly witnessed.
According to the observations of Mr. Wm. Bartram, the Creeks likewise practised the same ceremony.
An invocation not very dissimilar to this sacred ceremony, is that of Agamemnon in the Iliad; thus translated by Pope:
Then loudly thus before th’ attentive bands He calls the gods, and spreads his lifted hands: O first and greatest power! whom all obey, Who high on Ida’s holy mountain sway, Eternal Jove! and yon bright orb that rolls From east to west, and views from pole to pole! Thou mother Earth! and all ye living Floods; Infernal Furies! and Tartarian Gods; ——Hear and be witness. Pope’s Iliad, Book III. lines 344–354.
According to Humboldt, in his Monumens de l’Amérique, vol. ii. pp. 54 and 55, the Mexican cycle of 52 years was divided into four indictions of 13 years, in reference to the four seasons of the year, the four elements, and the cardinal points. The most ancient division of the zodiac, according to Albategnius,[B] is that into four parts. “These four signs,” he adds, “of the equinoxes and the solstices, chosen from a series of 20 signs” (the number of days in the Mexican month), “recall to mind the four royal stars, Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares, and Fomahault, celebrated in all Asia, and presiding over the seasons.[C] In the new continent, the indictions of the cycle of 52 years, formed, as we would say, the four seasons of the grand year, and the Mexican astrologers were pleased to see presiding over each period of 13 years one of the four equinoctial or solstitial signs.”—NUTTALL.