A South China Manuscript called the Moho, Mo-So, or Nashki

Before dealing with the Moho, Mo-So, (Nashki) Manuscript of Southern China, a description of the fish in panel 108 should come first. One should note in this sketch a unicorn is one of the elements that is recognizable.

THE FISH: Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia

Porcupine fish spits water at food or food providers when hundry. These fish are also called Diodona Chilomycteris Atinga as another species. Also Diodona holacanthus. They are tropical fish and a few are found along the European coast and in the Mediterranean Sea. (p. 250)

Apparently Porcupine fish are similar to another species called Puffer fish and/or Archer fish. This type fish blows water at insects on leaves, etc and knock them into the water to eat. They are called Lagocephalus Lagocephalus and Lagocephalus guttifer. They are found in the Mediterranean Sea (swept there from the Caribbean by the Gulf Stream.) (p. 253)

No mention is made of the tides at Gibraltar that makes it difficult for sailing ships to enter or leave the Mediterranean Sea. Yet this small fish of the tropics was able to cross the whole of the Atlantic and pass easily through the tides at Gibralter.

It is probably more likely that this fish was taken across the Ocean on a ship as an oddity of the Americas. Then, later, when the newness wore off, dumped into the Mediterraean Sea, to begin its European life.

The Porcupine fish is an interesting fish. It inflates only when it is threatened and lives mostly in the coral reefs in the Caribbean, North to Massachusetts, South to Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico,and occasionally in Florida. The Porcupine's scientific name is 'diodon holacanthus' and it has spines to protect itself. There are about 16 kinds of Porcupine fishes. They also have protective camouflage that blends in with the rocks where they like to hide. When the Porcupine fish is not frightened it is long and spotted instead of globular.

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The Porcupine fish eats crustaceans, mollusks, and any meaty thing. These tiny fish have a voracious appetite and when kept in an aquarium will swim to the top to await their food. In fact, some porcupine fish have even been known to spray a small stream of water at anything that moves when they are hungry.

The Manuscript called the Moho or Nashki

The Moho (Nashki) Manuscript of southern China is a very interesting document. In the back of his book, published in 1894, Terrien de Coupiere collected and photocopied pages of this manuscript. There are some 290 frames of very crude line drawings. A newer version of this manuscript has modern elements (i.e. boots, dancing trees, etc) in it that are not understood by its Chinese caretakers. One oriental scholar attempted to tie the manuscript information into the Olmec world of the Yucatan, Mexico, even though, the "story" found here is about Buddha and his religion that apparently entered China during or just before the T'ang dynasty.

Nevertheless, there are some anomalies to be found there which seem to agree with the flimsey Chinese/Meso-American connections previously noted. The first, of course, it the porcupine fish which spits water at its prey.This fish appears to be the fish implied in the middle of frame 108 (see top of page). Other frames that appear to be out of place are as follows:


This particular image of a animal/person form in the mouth of a leopard/jaguar (Frame 168) can be found at Tikal on Stela 28 This motif is repeated in the Madrid Codex on page 39C and in the lines on the plains of Nasca in Peru.(See The Radish with three nodes in the leaf section, that is also found in

(frame 60.) The image of two radishes with three leafy nodes are found in Nasca in a position that may indicate two ear flares in the Madrid Codex, only one of which is visible. In the Moho, it is floating over three smoking mountains together with a stick/man/sky god, and on the right side there appears to be three other constellations.


Frame 27 shows a man with a tree in his head (Milky Way?) a flying comet, a flaming sword, over the animal found previously in the mouth of the tiger/jaguar. The middle stick figure shows meteorites falling (similar to those found in theCodex Ríos

The last stick figure is carrying something in his back pack as if these people migrated overland.


(Frame 37) is a crude drawing of a sleeping "lady" (infered because of the double breast outline and the long skirt). She is not in a tomb, but under a great sky dome. Again it has a similarity in Mexico See the Children's Corner.

Other frames that are comparable are:


The hummingbird and the horse. Huitzilopochtli was the "Hummingbird of the South." He existed near a horse that has wings instead of feet. (Frame 33). It is possoble that the imagery of the volcano called Nevada de Toluca. This is a volcano within the cresent of the Altiplano of Mexico, with a horse head in the snow line. If the volcano would explode, the "horse' would "fly." (Symbolism at its finest.) This image of a horse flying out of flames is also found in the Japanese No Theater as a helmet. The "horse" is emerging from flames, and may be the verification of the volcanic image.


Tezcatlipochtli with a mirror (round)foot. (Frame 148) Why Tezcatlipochtli has a mirrored foot (or a smoking foot in Aztec myth,) is not fully understood. However, there is no myth in China regarding such an event.

Here the sky source of gold and silver according to Aztec and Maya concepts. In China, it is the flying monkey king, Son Wu Kong. (He has to evacuate even when fighting with star entities.)

The ladder escarpment that could not be conquered until Ahuizotl (Water Dog) succeeded. Was Water Dog an Aztec person or a constellation?(Frame 50) The mythical three hearth stones next to the "Oven of the Gods". (Frame 61) According to the Nahuatl poem "Birth of the Fifth Sun, there were two comets that were supposed to enter the "oven of the Gods." One failed and became Xolotl who "saved the sun," and the other became the Sun. Here we see the dog (with sharp ears) element, and an entity offering to the sun. Imteresting.

A diseased star animal and a twin star companion. The double star with crosses in the middle of them, have the appearance of the eclipse nodes shown in the Madrid Codex.(see "The Radish" in Archaeoastronomy)(Frame 24) Also written in the Nahuatl poem "Birth of the Fifth Sun," as the two competing sun entities.

Instead of matched characters (which seemed to change with every emperor), the pictures, even simple line drawings, can be compared with actual myth and tradition, half way around the world. The Moho (Mo-So, Naxi or Nashki) Manuscript might be the missing link to the history of the world and the Great Migration, which may have begun during the T'ang Dynasty and culminated with the discovery of the Americas in 1493.

Terrien de la Couperie, A. E. J. (1965). Beginnings of Writing in Central and Eastern Asia, or Notes on 450 Embryo- Writings and Scripts (Reprint of the 1894 Edition ed.). Osnabrück, Germany: Otto Zeller
Photo of Porcupine fish courtesy of Austin Community College, Botany Department.