first able to do this. Likewise they said that the dwarfs were created by the sun, and that at the time (that is during the eclipse) the Sun-god wanted the dwarfs as his property. And therefore wherever dwarfs or undersized persons were found in a house the people fell upon and killed them, and they hid themselves in order not to be killed, so that during that time few escaped from their fate.”
One of the hymns or songs given in the Sahagun MS. says of Xolotl:
Old Xolotl plays ball, plays ball
On the magic playing-ground.
NATURE AND STATUS
The Mexican game of tlachtli symbolized the movements of the moon (but more probably of both sun and moon). This, perhaps the favourite Mexican amusement, was a ball-game, played with a rubber ball by two persons one at each end of a T-shaped court, which in the manuscripts is sometimes represented as painted in dark and light colours, or in four variegated hues. In several of the MSS. Xolotl is depicted striving at this game against other gods. For example, in the Codex Mendoza we see him playing with the Moon-god, and can recognize him by the sign ollin which accompanies him, and by the gouged-out eye in which that symbol ends. Seler thinks “that the root of the name olin suggested to the Mexicans the motion of the rubber ball olli and, as a consequence, of ball-playing.” It seems to me to have represented both light and darkness, as is witnessed by its colours. Xolotl is, indeed, the darkness that accompanies light. Hence he is “the twin” or shadow, hence he travels with the sun and the moon, with one or other of which he “plays ball,” overcoming them or losing to them. He is the god of eclipse, and naturally a dog, the animal of eclipse. Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois, Algonquins, and Eskimos believed him to be so, thrashing dogs during