Señor Sanchez cites Torquemada (Monarquia Indiana, vol. II, p. 52) as the only authority who mentions a recumbent image or idol and relates that, "in the city of Tula, there was preserved in the great temple, an image of Quetzalcoatl ... he was figured as lying down, as though going to sleep.... Out of reverence the image was covered with mantles or cloths.... They said that when sterile women made offerings or sacrifices to the god Quetzalcoatl, he immediately caused them to become pregnant...." He was the god of the Winds which he sent to sweep or clear the way for the tlaloques="the earth-wine" gods.
Señor Sanchez also quotes Gama, who, basing himself upon Torquemada's authority, maintains that Tezcatzon-catl, the principal rain or octli-god, was figured as lying in an intoxicated condition, holding a vase of pulque in his hands. To the above data I add the description by Bernal Diaz, of a "figure in sculpture" he saw on the summit of the great temple of Mexico: "It was half man and half lizard (lagarto), was encrusted with precious stones and one-half of it was covered with cloths. They said that half of it was full of all the kinds of seeds that were produced in the entire land, and told [me] that it was the god of sown land, of seeds and fruits. I do not remember his name...." (Historia Verdadera, p. 71). It may be as well to note, that the Nahuatl names for lizard, cuetz-palin and topitzin, approximately convey the sound of the first syllables of the name of the culture-hero Quetzalcoatl, and of the title "topiltzin" bestowed upon him. It must, of course, remain a matter of conjecture whether the lizard was possibly employed in the above case as a pictograph, to express the sound of its name. One thing seems certain, that the Tula image of Quetzalcoatl, to which divinity barren women directed their invocations, and the statue described by Bernal Diaz as that "of the god of seeds, fruits and cultivated land," were undoubtedly analogous to the sculptured recumbent figure found in Mexico, and exhibiting the symbols of Tlaloc, or earth-wine, of maize, and of parturition. Bernal Diaz further relates that the said image was kept on the uppermost terrace of the Great Temple, in one of five "concavities surrounded by barbacans or low walls the wood-work of which was very richly carved" (_op. et loc. cit._).