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Pagan Prayers

9781465579799
42 pages
Library of Alexandria
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Overview
THIS little book of thoughts big, and thoughts childish, goes to the reader with the hope that it bears the little known fact that Ancient America had a written aboriginal literature—much of which was beautiful. The Apache and the Navajo prayers are oral, transmitted from priest to priest through the centuries; but the Mexican are fragments, rescued from a wide literature by the learned and courageous Franciscan, Bernardino de Sahagun, in the Seventeenth century. The first archbishop of Mexico took credit to himself for the burning, in one town, of 60,000 Mexican books and manuscripts on history, religion, law, medicine, astrology, genealogy and poetry. It was his part of the approved battle against the false gods. For four centuries he has had ardent imitators—which accounts for much. The masked, dramatized prayers of the Indians of the Southwest of today, suggested to the compiler a key to ancient Mexican rituals where god or goddess replies directly to priest or suppliant. This is the one special liberty taken with the records—the deity or priest is placed as the Indian places him, in the temple of feast or sacrifice; while the Spanish records gave only the spoken words with little to indicate the ritual or the speakers.

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