After this recognition of the diverging influences which guided the development of primitive marriage institutions, we will return to the rain-priests or "octli-lords," of whom it is repeatedly stated that there were four hundred, a number corresponding to an assignment of 100 or 5×20 to each of the four provinces or divisions of the commonwealth. Their emblem was the sacred vase or receptacle and in the "Lyfe of the Indians" this will be seen figured on their mantas and shields (no. 6_a_). A small gold plate, of the same shape, is represented as worn by these "lords," attached to the nose (no. 6_b_); and, in the same MS., the symbolical ornament is also carried by the "sister of Tlaloc." It was evidently worn, like similar ornaments in other countries, hanging from the septum of the nose, and seems to have indicated a consecration of the breath as the substance of life. As an inference, merely based on an insight gained into the native modes of thought, I suggest that the explanation for the adoption of this ornament may have been the religious idea that the breath of life, dividing itself as it issues through the nostrils and uniting when inhaled, appeared to the native thinkers as a marvellous illustration of unity and duality, both ideas having constantly been present in their minds.
In the Vienna Codex there is a remarkable picture of the earth-vase resting on a slab with five divisions. A profusion of puffs or breaths of air or vapor issue from it and, branching off in two directions, form what is like the conventional tree of life, also met with in Maya bas-reliefs and documents. At the extremities of the branches which turn downwards, a serpent's eye is visible and a forked-tongue issues above the middle (fig. 32, no. 1). The intention to express an exuberant vitality and growth issuing from the symbolical vase in the centre of the earth, seems obvious. This idea is still more clearly conveyed, however, in two symbolic pictures on pp. 21 and 29 of the Codex Borgia, which are reproduced as nos. 1 and 4 in fig. 1 of this publication. The first represents the vase overflowing with water and containing a flint-knife, the generator of the vital spark. The central group is surrounded by water and by sun-rays and obviously symbolizes the union of air, light and water, constituting the Above, with the flint the emblem of the earth-mother and of Tezcatlipoca, the lord of the Under-world. Fig. 1, no. 4, represents the vase overflowing with a liquid, which is designated as being the sacred octli or earth-wine by the presence of the rabbit, which expresses the sound of its name=tochtli. This rebus is surrounded by the nocturnal heaven strewn with stars and the reference to the union of rain or earth-wine with earth and darkness is evident. It has been generally assumed that these images of the vase, containing the rabbit or flint-knife, represented the moon. As the latter was intimately associated with the cult of night, of the earth-mother and ideas of growth, it is not impossible that by an extension of symbolism, this was the case, but only in the same way as the sun was the emblem of the cult of the Above. On the other hand the native drawings of the moon in Sahagun's Academia MS. represent it as a crescent with a human profile on the inner side, and in a specimen preserved at the Trocadéro Museum, Paris, it is similarly carved in rock crystal.