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Parallels between certain religous symbols in Hindu and Mesoamerican cultures have been drawn by three modern writers and adduced as evidence suggestive of trans-Pacific diffusion of Hindu influences dating to about the mid-1st millennium A.D. and later. The symbols concerned are those of the deities of the lunar asterisms and the planets-the naksatra and navagrahah series, respectively-of the Hindus as compared with the structural features and symbolsof the 20-day period in the 260-day Tzolkin/Tonalpohualli sacred calendar of Mesoamerica, with a series of nine lunar hieroglyphs of the Maya, and with certain groups of deities of the Aztecs and the Zapotecs. These comparisons seem feeble not only because they are superficial and intrinsically contradictory, but also because they are opposed by a vast body of variations in Hindu religious symbolism. Furthermore, they are chronologically incompatible with historical events and, for these several reasons, are rejected. The arguments against these comparisons of imagined parallels have broader implications concerning the totally independent development of astronomical-astrological beliefs among pre-Columbian societies isolated from the Old World, and they illustrate the hazards of utilizing a veneer of religious data that would obscure this independence.
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