395. This dedication of colors to the cardinal points is universal
in Central Asia. The geographical names of the Red Sea, the Black Sea,
the Yellow Sea or Persian Gulf, and the White Sea or the Mediterranean,
are derived from this association. The cities of China, many of them at
least, have their gates which open toward the cardinal points painted of
certain colors, and precisely these four, the white, the black, the red,
and the yellow, are those which in Oriental myth the mountain in the
centre of Paradise shows to the different cardinal points. (Sepp,
_Heidenthum und Christenthum_, i. p. 177.) The coincidence furnishes food
for reflection.
[81-1] _Le Livre Sacre des Quiches_, pp. 203-5, note.
[82-1] The analogy is remarkable between these and the "quatre actes de
la puissance generatrice jusqu'a l'entier developpement des corps
organises," portrayed by four globes in the Mycenean bas-reliefs. See
Guigniaut, _Religions de l'Antiquite_, i. p. 374. It were easy to
multiply the instances of such parallelism in the growth of religious
thought in the Old and New World, but I designedly refrain from doing so.
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