05-03-2007, 03:40 PM
Discussing the diffusion of Indian religions to Mexico, a recent scholar, <b>Paul Kirchhoff</b> (1900 - 1972) German anthropologist from the University of Frankfurt, in "<b>The Diffusion of a Great Religious System from India to Mexico</b>" had even suggested that it is not simply a question of miscellaneous influences wandering from one country to the other, but that China, India, Java, and Mexico actually share a common system."
Kirchhoff has sought
"to demonstrate that a calendaric classification of 28 Hindu gods and their animals into twelve groups, subdivided into four blocks, within each of which we find a sequence of gods and animals representing Creation, Destruction and Renovation, and which can be shown to have existed both in India and Java, must have been carried from the Old World to the New, since in Mexico we find calendaric lists of gods and animals that follow each other without interruption in the same order and with attributes and functions or meanings strikingly similar to those of the 12 Indian and Javanese groups of gods, showing the same four subdivisions."
(source: India and World Civilization - By D P Singhal part II p. 62 â 63).
Trilokinath, the Hindu ruler of the three worlds, was known to the Mexicans by the name, until the Spanish conquerors mistakenly changed the name into Tloque Nahuaque.
The Hindu goddess Maya, - "the cosmic illusion" the female energy, "mother of gods and men" - is sometimes represented as the sakti. This same "mother of the gods" was carried to America and appeared in the Maya theogony of Yucatan under the same name, - May, - in the same functions she performed in India. In Mexico, Maya was also called "the mother of the gods". Other names for her were "nourisher of the human race" "type of earth mother."
Kirchhoff has sought
"to demonstrate that a calendaric classification of 28 Hindu gods and their animals into twelve groups, subdivided into four blocks, within each of which we find a sequence of gods and animals representing Creation, Destruction and Renovation, and which can be shown to have existed both in India and Java, must have been carried from the Old World to the New, since in Mexico we find calendaric lists of gods and animals that follow each other without interruption in the same order and with attributes and functions or meanings strikingly similar to those of the 12 Indian and Javanese groups of gods, showing the same four subdivisions."
(source: India and World Civilization - By D P Singhal part II p. 62 â 63).
Trilokinath, the Hindu ruler of the three worlds, was known to the Mexicans by the name, until the Spanish conquerors mistakenly changed the name into Tloque Nahuaque.
The Hindu goddess Maya, - "the cosmic illusion" the female energy, "mother of gods and men" - is sometimes represented as the sakti. This same "mother of the gods" was carried to America and appeared in the Maya theogony of Yucatan under the same name, - May, - in the same functions she performed in India. In Mexico, Maya was also called "the mother of the gods". Other names for her were "nourisher of the human race" "type of earth mother."