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As soon as day broke they arranged the symbolic objects in the inner courtyard or in the garden. The midwife, provided with a full water-jar, addressed the baby, saying 'Eagle, jaguar, valiant warrior, oh my grandson! Here you are come into this world, sent by your father and mother, the great god and the great goddess. You have been made and begotten in your own place, among the almighty gods, the great god and the great goddess who live above the nine heavens. It is Quetzalcoatl, who is in all places, who has done you this kindness. Now be joined to your mother the goddess of the water, Chalchiuhtlicue, Chalchiuhtlatonac.' With her wet fingers she set some drops of water on his mouth. 'Take and receive this, for it is with this water that you will live upon earth, and grow and grow green again; it is by water that we have what we must have to live upon this earth. Receive this water.'
After this she touched the baby's chest with her wet hand and said, 'Here is the heavenly water, the very pure water that washes and cleans your heart and that takes away all stain.' Then she threw some drops on his head. 'Let this water enter into your body, and may it live there, this heavenly water, the blue celestial water.' Lastly she washed the child's whole body, saying the formula meant to keep off evil. 'Wherever you may be, you who might do this child a mischief, leave him, go off, go away from him; for now this child is born again -- he is new-born and newformed by our mother Chalchiuhtlicue.'
After the four water-rites, the midwife presented the child four times to the sky, invoking the sun and the astral gods. In this way the traditional gestures were regulated by the holy number. The last formula also invoked the earth, the divine spouse of the sun. And, taking the shield and the arrows, the midwife begged the gods that the boy might become a courageous warrior, 'so that he may go into your palace of delights where the brave who die in battle rest and rejoice'.
The ceremony for naming the girls was similar, but the baby was not presented to the sun, which was the god of men and warriors: after the ritual washing the midwife and
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the relatives, in a touching ceremony, spoke to the cradle in which the little girl would lie, calling it Yoalticitl, 'the healer by night', and saying, 'You who are her mother, take her, old goddess. Do her no harm; watch over her kindly.' 5
When these rites were over, the name of the child was chosen and announced. The ancient Mexicans had no surnames, but some names were often handed down from grandfather to grandson in the same family. The birthday was also taken into consideration: a child who was born during the set of thirteen days that was ruled by the sign ce miquiztli, under the influence of Tezcatlipoca, received one of the appellations of this god. 6
In some tribes, and particularly among the Mixtecs, each person was called by the day of his birth, usually followed by a nickname; for example 'seven -- flower, eagle's feather' or 'four -- rabbit, garland of flowers'. 7 There was a very great variety in Mexican personal names. Taking them at random from the texts one finds such names as Acamapichtli (handful of reeds), Chimalpopoca (smoking shield), Itzcoatl (obsidian snake), Xiuhcozcatl (turquoise necklace), Ouauhcoatl (eagle-snake), Citlalcoatl (snake of stars), Tlacateotl (godlike man), and Quauhtlatoa (speaking eagle). Women were given charming names like Matlalxochitl (green flower), Quiauhxochitl (rain-flower), Miahuaxiuitl (turquoise-maize-flower) and Atototl (water-bird). All these names, like those of villages, mountains, etc., could be represented by pictograms in the manuscript records. 8
The ceremony closed with a family banquet, at the end of which the old men and women might give themselves up to the pleasures of drink.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH, EDUCATION
In the Codex Mendoza there is a series of pictures divided into two columns (the one on the left for the boys, the one on the right for the girls) which shows the stages in the education of a Mexican child. This education seems to have been one of the parents' chief cares, and to have been carried out with a great deal of concern and firmness. At the same time this table shows the rations that each child
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was allowed -- half a cake of maize at each meal for a threeyear-old, one cake at four and five years, a cake and a half from six to twelve years and two cakes from thirteen onwards. These rations were the same for both sexes.
To judge by this manuscript, the education of a boy was entrusted to his father between the age of three and fifteen years, and that of a girl to her mother; this very probably means that such was the case in families in modest circumstances, for judges and important officials obviously did not have the necessary time for educating their children personally -- besides, as it will be seen later, the family's part in education usually ceased much earlier.
The pictures in the Codex Mendoza also show how the children were dressed. On occasion the boys up to the age of thirteen wore a small cloak tied at the shoulder, but they did not wear the maxtlatl; it was only after thirteen, at the beginning of man's estate, that they appeared in a loincloth. The little girls, on the other hand, wore the usual blouse from the beginning, and a skirt which, although it began short, very soon descended to their ankles.
During the first years the parents' teaching was limited to good advice (a blue scroll, the colour of the precious stone, is shown coming from their lips) and to showing them how to do little domestic tasks. The boy learnt to carry water and wood, and to go to the market-place with his father and pick up the maize scattered on the ground. The little girl watched her mother spinning, but did not begin to handle the spindle herself until she was six. From seven to fourteen the boys learnt to fish and to manage boats on the lake, while the girls spun cotton, swept the house, ground the maize on the metlatl and at last began to learn the use of the loom, a very delicate instrument in precolumbian Mexico.
It was an essentially practical education, and a very severe one: punishments rained down upon an idle child, whose parents would scratch him with agave-thorns or compel him to breathe the acrid fumes of a fire in which red peppers were burning. Mexican teachers seem to have been very much in favour of the iron hand.
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Still according to the Codex Mendoza, it was at fifteen that the youths might enter either the calmecac, a temple or monastery in which they were entrusted to priests, or the school called the telpochalli, 'the house of the young men', which was run by masters chosen from among the experienced warriors. But here the document is in disagreement with the most authoritative texts. It seem sure that education at home stopped much earlier. Some fathers sent their children to the calmecac as soon as they could walk; and in any case they went to school between six and nine years of age. 9
As we have seen, there were two possibilities open to a family, the calmecac and the telpochcalli. In theory the calmecac was kept for the sons and daughters of the dignitaries, but the children of the trading class 10 were also admitted, and there is a passage in Sahagύn 11 which seems to say that the children of plebeian families could also go there. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that the high priests were 'chosen without any regard to their family, but only to their morals, their practices, their knowledge of doctrine and the purity of their lives'; 12 yet it was obligatory for a priest to have been brought up in a calmecac.
There were several calmecac in Mexico, each attached to a given temple. The Mexicatl teohuatzin, the 'vicar-general' of the Mexican church, was in charge of their administration and of the education of the boys and girls in them. 13 Each district, on the other hand, had several telpochcalli, which were administered by the telpochtlatoque, the 'masters of the young men', or for the girls by the ichpochtlatoque, 'mistresses of the girls', who were not religious but lay officials. 14
In general, the higher education given in the calmecac prepared the pupils either for the priesthood or for the high offices of the state: it was rigid and severe. The telpochcalli produced ordinary citizens, although this did not prevent some of them from reaching the highest rank, and its pupils had much more freedom and were much less harshly treated than those
in the religious school.
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There was no night of uninterrupted sleep for the scholars of the calmecac. They had to get up in the darkness to go into the mountains, each by himself, to offer incense to the gods and draw blood from their ears and legs with agavethorns. They were obliged to undergo frequent and rigorous fasts. They had to work hard on the temple's land, and they were severely punished for the least fault.
The whole emphasis of this education was upon sacrifice and abnegation. 'Listen, my son,' said a father to a boy about to enter a calmecac, 'you are not going to be honoured, nor obeyed, nor esteemed. You are going to be looked down upon, humiliated and despised. Every day you will cut agave-thorns for penance, and you will draw blood from your body with these spines and you will bathe at night even when it is very cold . . . Harden your body to the cold . . . and when the time comes for fasting do not go and break your fast, but put a good face upon both fasting and penance." 15 Above all it was a school of self-control and of firmness towards oneself. The pupils were also taught 'to speak well, to make proper salutations and to bow', and lastly '(the priests) taught the young men all the songs that are called holy, which were written in their books by means of their characters, as well as the astrology of the Indians, the interpretation of dreams and the reckoning of the years.' 16
Girls were consecrated to the temple from their earliest days, either to stay there for a given number of years or until they should be married. They were under the direction and the instruction of elderly priestesses, and they lived chastely, growing expert in the working of beautifully embroidered materials, taking part in the ritual and offering incense to the gods several times a night. They had the title of priestesses. 17
How very different and how very much less austere was the life of the other young people. It is true that the boy who went to the telpochcalli had many disagreeable and commonplace tasks, such as the sweeping of the communal house; and he went with the others, in bands, to cut wood for the school or to take part in public works -- the repairing
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of ditches and canals and the cultivation of the common land. But at sunset, 'all the youths went to sing and dance in a house called cuicacalco ('the house of singing') and the boys danced with the other young men . . . until after midnight . . . and those that had mistresses went off to sleep with them.' 18
There was little room in their education for the religious exercises, the fasts and the penances which had so much importance in that of the pupils of the calmecac. Everything was done to prepare them for war; from their earliest age they associated only with experienced warriors, whose exploits they admired and dreamed of rivalling. So long as they were bachelors they lived a communal existence, enlivened by dancing and songs, and by the company of the young women, the auianime, who were officially allowed them, as courtesans.
Indeed, these two systems of education were so different that from certain points of view they seem opposed and even hostile. Sahagύn, making himself the mouthpiece of the nobles, the former pupils of the calmecac, says that the young men of the telpochalli 'did not lead a good life, for they had mistresses; they presumed to utter light and ironic words, and spoke with pride and temerity.' 19 This antagonism showed itself, and burst out with the consent of public opinion in certain circumstances -- during the month Atemoztli, for example, when the youths of the calmecac and those of the telpochcalli threw themselves upon one another in mock battles. 20
Underlying this contrast is the contrast between the gods who presided over the two branches of education. The god of the calmecac was Quetzalcoatl, the priests' own god, the god of self-sacrifice and penance, of books, the calendar and the arts, the symbol of abnegation and of culture. The young men's god was Tezcatlipoca, who was also called Telpochtli, 'the young man', and Yaotl, 'the warrior', Quetzalcoatl's old enemy who had expelled him from the earthly paradise of Tula long ago by his enchantments.
To send a boy to the calmecac was to devote him to Quetzalcoatl; to send him to the telpochcalli was to pledge
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him to Tezcatlipoca. 21 Beneath the mask of these divine persons two different concepts of life are set one against the other: on the one hand there is the priestly ideal of selfdenial, the study of the stars and the signs, contemplative knowledge and chastity; on the other, the ideal of the warriors, with the emphasis deliberately set upon action, battle, the collective life and the fleeting pleasures of youth. It is by no means the least curious feature of Aztec civilisation that a society so passionately given to war should have chosen the teaching of Quetzalcoatl to mould its rulers, and that it should have left that of Tezcatlipoca to the more numerous, but the less honoured, class.
A deeper study of this society would no doubt bring to light profound contradictions which in their turn would explain those internal tensions that the community sublimated from time to time by forms of ritual. The origin of these contradictions would have to be sought in the superimposition and mixture of the differing cultures, that of the Toltecs, passed on by the settled inhabitants of the valley, and that of the nomadic tribes to which the Aztecs had belonged, which together made up the Mexican civilisation as it was at the time of its discovery by the Europeans. Native thought was dominated by dualism -- in this case that which set up Quetzatcoatl against Tezcatlipoca -and this dualism is also found in the education itself.
However that may be, this education functioned: it prepared governors, priests, warriors and women who knew their future work. It was only in the calmecac that what may properly be called intellectual teaching had a considerable place; but there all the knowledge of the time and the country was taught -- reading and writing in the pictographic characters, divination, chronology, poetry and rhetoric.
It should also be remembered that the songs which were learnt by heart often concerned the history of the cities, of former reigns and wars, and in this way the young people came to know their own past. In the telpohcalli, however, the songs and the dances and the music did not provide the future warriors with any excessive load of learning.
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In a general manner, Mexican education in both its forms hoped to produce strength of mind and of body, and a character devoted to the public good. The stoicism with which the Aztecs were able to meet the most terrible ordeals proves that this education attained its end.
Lastly, although their system was divided into two markedly distinct branches, it is evident that this separation did not bring into being an impassable barrier against the rise of boys of poor or lowly family, since the highest offices, such as that of tlacochcalcatl, were sometimes held by plebeians who had been at a telpochcalli. And then in their turn the sons of these promoted plebeians might go to the calmecac.
It is well worth noting that in that age and upon that continent an American native race practised compulsory education for all 22 and that no Mexican child of the sixteenth century, whatever his social origin, was deprived of schooling. One has but to compare this state of affairs with what is known of our own classical antiquity or middle ages to realise the care that the native civilisation of Mexico, for all its limitations, devoted to the training of its young people and to the moulding of its citizens.
MARRIAGE, FAMILY LIFE
Once he was twenty a young man might marry, and most Mexicans did so between this age and twenty-two. Only the high dignitaries and the rulers could live for years with concubines before being officially married -- the king of Texcoco, Nezaualcoyotl, was an example of this. 23 Marriage was considered as primarily a matter for the families and by no means for the individuals; at least, this was the traditional view of it. But it is likely that the young people could offer suggestions to their parents, if no more.
But before passing from the celibate to the married state, that is, before reaching full adult status, it was necessary to be free of the calmecac or the telpochcalli and to gain the consent of those who had been the young man's masters for so many years. This permission was a
sked for at a banquet given by the young man's family.
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The telpochtlatoque were asked to a feast as magnificent as the family's means would allow: there would be tamales, different kinds of ragout and cocoa. The masters, having relished the dishes, smoked the pipes that they were given; and then, in the happy atmosphere of well-being that comes after a good meal, the young man's father, the elders on the paternal side and the local councillors brought a polished stone axe with great ceremony, and turning to the masters, addressed them in the following words: 'Lords, and masters of the young men, here present, do not be wounded if your brother, our son, desires to leave your company. At this time he wishes to take a wife. Behold this axe: it is the sign that this young man is going to leave you, according to the custom of the Mexicans. Take it and set free our son.' To this a telpochtlato replied, 'We have all heard, we and the young men with whom your son has been brought up, that now you intend to marry him and that from now on he will leave us for ever: let it be as you wish it to be.' Then the masters took the axe, a symbolic gesture of acquiescence in the young man's withdrawal, and ceremoniously left the house. 24
Of course, everything had been known in advance, the feast, the request and the reply; but this occasion was ruled, as were so many others, by the Indian love of form and of traditional words and actions. According to Motolinía 25 the telpochtlato did not let his pupils go without a homily, 'exhorting them to behave like worthy servants of the gods and not to forget all they had learnt at school; and, since they were going to take a wife and set up house, to work like men and feed and maintain their family . . . He also told them that in time of war they should conduct themselves like brave and courageous soldiers.' As for the girls, 'they too were not left without advice or good teaching, but on the contrary, they were admonished at length, particularly the daughters of the lords and dignitaries.' They were told that three precepts above all others should guide their lives: they should serve the gods, they should be chaste, and they should love, serve and look up to their husbands. 'Although they were heathens,' adds
Daily Life of the Aztecs Page 22
