Fig. 3.—Itzmiquilpan.
In one respect I believe the ikonomatic writing of the Mexicans is peculiar; that is, in the phonetic value which it assigns to colors. Like the Egyptian, it is polychromatic, but, so far as I know, the Egyptian polychromes never had a phonetic value; they were, in a general way, used by that people as determinatives, from some supposed similarity of hue; thus green indicates a vegetable substance or bronze, yellow, certain woods and some animals, and so on. In heraldry the colors are very important and have well-defined significations, but very seldom, if ever, phonetic ones. Quite the contrary is the case with the Mexican script. It presents abundant instances where the color of the object as portrayed is an integral phonetic element of the sound designed to be conveyed.
To quote examples, the Nahuatl word for yellow is cuztic or coztic, and when the hieroglyphics express phonetically such proper names as Acozpa, Cozamaloapan, Cozhuipilcan, etc., the monosyllable coz is expressed solely by the yellow color which the scribe lays upon his picture. Again, the name Xiuhuacan, “the place of grass,” is represented by a circle colored pale blue, xiuhtic. The name of this tint supplies the phonetic desired. The name of the village Tlapan is conveyed by a circle, whose interior is painted red, tlapalli, containing the mark of a human foot-print. Such examples are sufficient to prove that in undertaking to decipher the Mexican writing we must regard the color as well as the figure, and be prepared to allow to each a definite phonetic value.
Fig. 4.—Acozpa. (A yellow center surrounded by water drops, atl, a.)
Fig. 5.—Tlamapa.
It must not be understood that all the Aztec writing is made up of phonetic symbols. This is far from being the case. We discover among the hundreds of curious figures which it presents, determinatives, as in the Egyptian inscriptions, and numerous ideograms. Sometimes the ideogram is associated with the phonetic symbol, acting as a sort of determinative to the latter. An interesting example of this is given at the beginning of the “Manuscrito Hieratico,” recently published by the Spanish government.[213] It is the more valuable as an example, as the picture writing is translated into Nahuatl and written in Spanish characters. The date of the document, 1526, leaves no doubt that it is in the same style as the ancient Codices. The page is headed with the picture of a church edifice; underneath is the outline of a human arm, and the legend in Nahuatl is:
These words mean, “the town of Santa Cruz Tlamapa.” The name “tlamapa” means “on the hill-side,” and doubtless originally referred to the position in which the village was situated. But the prefix “tlama” usually signifies, “to do something with the arms or hands,” derived from maitl, hand or arm. Hence, the figure of the extended arm gives this disyllable, tlama, which was sufficient to recall the name of the town.
The Aztecs by no means confined the ikonomatic system to proper names. They composed in it words, sentences, and treatises on various subjects. In proportion as it is applied to these connected and lengthy compositions, its processes become more recondite, curious and difficult of interpretation. Without a knowledge of the spoken language considerably more than rudimentary, it would be hopeless for the student to attempt to solve the enigmas which he meets at every step. Yet every well-directed effort will convince him that he is on the right track, and he will constantly be cheered and stimulated to further endeavor by the victories he will win day by day.
The analogy which is presented in so many particulars between Mexican and Maya civilization would lead us to infer that the Maya writing, of which we have a number of examples well preserved, should be unlocked by the same key which has been successfully applied to the Aztec Codices. The latest writers on the Maya manuscripts, while agreeing that they are in part, at least, in phonetic characters, consider them mostly ideographic. But it is to be noted that not one of these writers had any practical acquaintance with the sounds of the Maya language, and scarcely any with its vocabulary. From this it is evident that even were these codices in ikonomatic writing, such investigators could make very little progress in deciphering them, and might readily come to the conclusion that the figures are not phonetic in any sense. Precisely the same position was taken by a number of students of Egyptian antiquity long after the announcement of the discovery of Champollion; and even within a few years works have been printed denying all phoneticism to the Nilotic inscriptions.
What induces me to believe that much of the Maya script is of the nature of the Mexican is the endeavor, undertaken for a very different purpose, of Professor Valentini to explain the origin of the so-called Maya alphabet, preserved by Bishop Landa, and printed in the editions of his celebrated “Description of Yucatan.”[214] Professor Valentini shows by arguments and illustrations, which I think are in the main correct, that when the natives were asked to represent the sounds of the Spanish letters in their method of writing, they selected objects to depict, whose names, or initial sounds, or first syllables, were the same, or akin, to the sounds of the Spanish vowel or consonant heard by them. Sometimes they would give several words, with their corresponding pictures, for the same sound; just as I have shown was the custom of the ancient Egyptians. Thus, for the sound b they drew a foot-print, which in their tongue was called be; for the sound a an obsidian knife, in Maya, ach, etc. Valentini thinks also that the letter e was delineated by black spots, in Maya eek, meaning black, which, if proved by further research, would show that the Mayas, like the Mexicans, attributed phonetic values to the colors they employed in their painted scrolls.
Outside of the two nations mentioned, the natives of the American continent made little advance toward a phonetic system. We have no positive evidence that even the cultivated Tarascas and Zapotecs had anything better than ikonographs; and of the Quiches and Cakchiquels, both near relatives of the Mayas, we only know that they had a written literature of considerable extent, but of the plan by which it was preserved we have only obscure hints. Next to these we should probably place the Chipeway pictography, as preserved on their meda sticks, bark records, and adjidjiatig or grave-posts. I have examined a number of specimens of these, but have failed to find any evidence that the characters refer to sounds in the language; however, I might not consider it improbable that further researches might disclose some germs of the ikonomatic method of writing even in these primitive examples of the desire of the human intellect to perpetuate its acquisitions, and hand them down to generations yet unborn.
THE WRITING AND RECORDS OF THE ANCIENT MAYAS.[215]
1.—Introductory.
One of the ablest living ethnologists has classified the means of recording knowledge under two general headings—Thought-writing and Sound-writing.[216] The former is again divided into two forms, the first and earliest of which is by pictures, the second by picture-writing.
The superiority of picture-writing over the mere depicting of an occurrence is that it analyzes the thought and expresses separately its component parts, whereas the picture presents it as a whole. The representations familiar among the North American Indians are usually only pictures, while most of the records of the Aztec communities are in picture-writing.
The genealogical development of Sound-writing begins by the substitution of the sign of one idea for that of another whose sound is nearly or quite the same. Such was the early graphic system of Egypt, and such substantially to-day is that of the Chinese. Above stands syllabic writing, this as that of the Japanese, and the semi-syllabic signs of the old Semitic alphabet; while, as the perfected result of these various attempts, we reach at last the invention of a true alphabet, in which a definite figure corresponds to a definite elementary sound.
It is a primary question in American archæology, How far did the most cultivated nations of the western continent ascend this scale of graphic development? This question is as yet unanswered. All agree, however, that the highest evolution took place among the Nahuatl-speaking tribes of Mexico and the Maya race of Yucatan.
I do not go too far in saying that it is proved that the Aztecs used to a certain extent a phonetic system of writing, one in which the figures refer not to the thought, but to the sound of the thought as expressed in spoken language. This has been demonstrated by the researches of M. Aubin, and, of late, by the studies of Señor Orozco y Berra.[217]
Two evolutionary steps can be distinguished in the Aztec writing. In the earlier the plan is that of the rebus in combination with ideograms, which latter are nothing more than the elements of picture-writing. Examples of this plan are the familiar “tribute rolls” and the names of towns and kings, as shown in several of the codices published by Lord Kingsborough. The second step is where a conventional image is employed to represent the sound of its first syllable. This advances actually to the level of the syllabic alphabet; but it is doubtful if there are any Aztec records entirely, or even largely, in this form of writing. They had only reached the commencement of its development.
The graphic system of the Mayas of Yucatan was very different from that of the Aztecs. No one at all familiar with the two could fail at once to distinguish between the manuscripts of the two nations. They are plainly independent developments.
We know much more about the ancient civilization of Mexico than of Yucatan; we have many more Aztec than Maya manuscripts, and hence we are more at a loss to speak with positiveness about the Maya system of writing than about the Mexican. We must depend on the brief and unsatisfactory statements of the early Spanish writers, and on what little modern research has accomplished, for means to form a correct opinion; and there is at present a justifiable discrepancy of opinion about it among those who have given the subject most attention.
2.—Descriptions by Spanish Writers.
The earliest exploration of the coast of Yucatan was that of Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, in 1517. The year following a second expedition, under Juan de Grijalva, visited a number of points between the island of Cozumel and the Bahia de Terminos.
Several accounts of Grijalva’s voyage have been preserved, but they make no distinct reference to the method of writing they found in use. Some native books were obtained, however, probably from the Mayas, and were sent to Spain, where they were seen by the historian Peter Martyr. He describes them in general terms, and compares the characters in which they were written to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, some of which he had seen in Rome. He supposes that they contain the laws and ceremonies of the people, astronomical calculations, the deeds of their kings, and other events of their history. He also speaks in commendation of the neatness of their general appearance, the skill with which the drawing and painting were carried out. He further mentions that the natives used this method of writing or drawing in the affairs of common life.[218]
Although Yucatan became thus early known to the Spaniards, it was not until 1541 that a permanent settlement was effected, in which year Francisco de Montejo, the younger, advanced into the central province of Ceh Pech, and established a city on the site of the ancient town called Ichcanziho, which means “the five (temples) of many oracles (or serpents),” to which he gave the name Mérida, on account of the magnificent ancient edifices he found there.
Previous to this date, however, in 1534, Father Jacobo de Testera, with four other missionaries, proceeded from Tabasco up the west coast to the neighborhood of the Bay of Campeachy. They were received amicably by the natives, and instructed them in the articles of the Christian faith. They also obtained from the chiefs a submission to the King of Spain; and I mention this early missionary expedition for the fact stated that each chief signed this act of submission “with a certain mark, like an autograph.” This document was subsequently taken to Spain by the celebrated Bishop Las Casas.[219] It is clear from the account that some definite form of signature was at that time in use among the chiefs.
It might be objected that these signatures were nothing more than rude totem marks, such as were found even among the hunting tribes of the Northern Mississippi Valley. But Las Casas himself, in whose possession the documents were, here comes to our aid to refute this opinion. He was familiar with the picture-writing of Mexico, and recognized in the hieroglyphics of the Mayas something different and superior. He says expressly that these had inscriptions, writings, in certain characters, the like of which were found nowhere else.[220]
One of the early visitors to Yucatan after the conquest was the Pope’s commissary-general, Father Alonzo Ponce, who was there in 1588. Many natives who had grown to adult years in heathenism must have been living then. He makes the following interesting observation:
“The natives of Yucatan are, among all the inhabitants of New Spain, especially deserving of praise for three things: First, that before the Spaniards came they made use of characters and letters, with which they wrote out their histories, their ceremonies, the order of sacrifices to their idols, and their calendars, in books made of bark of a certain tree. These were on very long strips, a quarter or a third (of a yard) in width, doubled and folded, so that they resembled a bound book in quarto, a little larger or smaller. These letters and characters were understood only by the priests of the idols (who in that language are called Ahkins) and a few principal natives. Afterwards some of our friars learned to understand and read them, and even wrote them.”[221]
The interesting fact here stated, that some of the early missionaries not only learned to read these characters, but employed them to instruct the Indians, has been authenticated by a recent discovery of a devotional work written in this way.
The earliest historian of Yucatan is Fr. Bernardo de Lizana.[222] But I do not know of a single complete copy of his work, and only one imperfect copy, which is, or was, in the city of Mexico, from which the Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg) copied and republished a few chapters. Lizana was himself not much of an antiquary, but he had in his hands the manuscripts left by Father Alonso de Solana, who came to Yucatan in 1565, and remained there til his death, in 1599. Solana was an able man, acquiring thoroughly the Maya tongue, and left in his writings many notes on the antiquities of the country.[223] Therefore we may put considerable confidence in what Lizana writes on these matters.
The reference which I find in his work to the Maya writings is as follows:
“The most celebrated and revered sanctuary in this land, and that to which they resorted from all parts, was this town and temples of Ytzamal, as they are now called; and that it was founded in most ancient times, and that it is still known who did found it, will be set forth in the next chapter.
“III. The history and the authorities which we can cite are certain ancient characters, scarcely understood by many, and explained by some old Indians, sons of the priests of their gods, who alone knew how to read and expound them, and who were believed in and revered as much as the gods themselves, etc.[224]”
We have here the positive statement that these hieroglyphic inscriptions were used by the priests for recording their national history, and that by means of them they preserved the recollection of events which took place in a very remote past.
Another valuable early witness, who testifies to the same effect, is the Dr. Don Pedro Sanchez de Aguilar, who was cura of Valladolid, in Yucatan, in 1596, and, later, dean of the chapter of the cathedral at Merida. His book, too, is extremely scarce, and I have never seen a copy; but I have copious extracts from it, made by the late Dr. C. Hermann Berendt from a copy in Yucatan. Aguilar writes of the Mayas:
“They had books made from the bark of trees, coated with a white and durable varnish. They were ten or twelve yards long, and were gathered together in folds, like a palm leaf. On these they painted in colors the reckoning of their years, wars, pestilences, hurricanes, inundations, famines, and other events. From one of these books, which I myself took from some of these idolaters, I saw and learned that to one pestilence they gave the name Mayacimil, and to another Ocnakuchil, which mean ‘sudden deaths’ and ‘times when the crows enter the houses to eat the corpses.’ And the inundation they called Hunyecil, the submersion of trees.”[225]
The writer leaves it uncertain whether he learned these words directly from the characters of the book or through the explanations of some native.
It has sometimes been said that the early Spanish writers drew a broad line between the picture-writing that they found in America and an alphabetic script. This may be true of other parts, but is not so of Yucatan. These signs, or some of them, are repeatedly referred to as “letters,” letras.
This is pointedly the case with Father Gabriel de San Buenaventura, a French Franciscan who served in Yucatan about 1670–'80. He published one of the earliest grammars of the language, and also composed a dictionary in three large volumes, which was not printed. Father Beltran de Santa Rosa quotes from it an interesting tradition preserved by Buenaventura, that among the inventions of the mythical hero-god of the natives, Itzamna or Kinich ahau, was that of “the letters of the Maya language,” with which letters they wrote their books.[226] Itzamna, of course, dates back to a misty antiquity, but the legend is of value, as showing that the characters used by the natives did, in the opinion of the early missionaries, deserve the name of letters.
Father Diego Lopez Cogolludo is the best-known historian of Yucatan. He lived about the middle of the seventeenth century, and says himself that at that time there was little more to be learned about the antiquities of the race. He adds, therefore, substantially nothing to our knowledge of the subject, although he repeats, with positiveness, the statement that the natives “had characters by which they could understand each other in writing, such as those yet seen in great numbers on the ruins of their buildings.”[227]
This is not very full. Yet we know to a certainty that there were quantities of these manuscripts in use in Yucatan for a generation after Cogolludo wrote. To be sure, those in the Christianized districts had been destroyed, wherever the priests could lay their hands on them; but in the southern part of the peninsula, on the islands of Lake Peten and adjoining territory, the powerful chief, Canek, ruled a large independent tribe of Itzas. They had removed from the northern provinces of the peninsula somewhere about 1450, probably in consequence of the wars which followed the dissolution of the confederacy whose capital was the ancient city of Mayapan.
Their language was pure Maya, and they had brought with them in their migration, as one of their greatest treasures, the sacred books which contained their ancient history, their calendar and ritual, and the prophecies of their future fate. In the year 1697 they were attacked by the Spaniards, under General Don Martin de Ursua; their capital, on the island of Flores, in Lake Peten, taken by storm; great numbers of them slaughtered or driven into the lake to drown, and the twenty-one temples which were on the island razed to the ground.
A minute and trustworthy account of these events has been given by Don Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor, in the course of which occur several references to the sacred books, which he calls Analtés.
The king Canek, he tells us, in reading in his Analtés, had found notices of the northern provinces of Yucatan and of the fact that his predecessors had come thence, and had communicated these narratives to his chiefs.[228]
These books are described as showing “certain characters and figures, painted on certain barks of trees, each leaf or tablet about a quarter (of a yard) wide, and of the thickness of a piece of eight, folded at one edge and the other in the manner of a screen, called by them Analtehes.”[229]
When the island of Flores was captured these books were found stored in the house of the king Canek, containing the account of all that had happened to the tribe.[230] What disposition was made of them we are not informed.
I have reserved until now a discussion of the description of the Maya writing presented in the well-known work of Diego de Landa, the second bishop of Yucatan. Landa arrived in the province in August, 1549, and died in April, 1579, having passed most of the intervening thirty years there in the discharge of his religious duties. He became well acquainted with the language, which, for that matter, is a comparatively easy one, and though harsh, illiberal, and bitterly fanatic, he paid a certain amount of attention to the arts, religion, and history of the ancient inhabitants.
The notes that he made were copied after his death and reached Spain, where they are now preserved in the library of the Royal Academy of History, Madrid. In 1864 they were published at Paris, with a French translation, by the Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg).
Of all writers Landa comes the nearest telling us how the Mayas used their system of writing; but, unfortunately, he also is so superficial and obscure that his words have given rise to very erroneous theories. His description runs as follows:
“This people also used certain characters or letters, with which they wrote in their books their ancient matters and their sciences, and with them (i. e., with their characters or letters), and figures (i. e., drawings or pictures), and some signs in the figures, they understood their matters, and could explain them and teach them. We found great numbers in these letters, but as they contained nothing that did not savor of superstition and lies of the devil, we burnt them all, at which the natives grieved most keenly and were greatly pained.
“I will give here an a, b, c, as their clumsiness does not allow more, because they use one character for all the aspirations of the letters, and for marking the parts another, and thus it could go on in infinitum, as may be seen in the following example. Le means a noose and to hunt with one; to write in their characters, after we had made them understand that there are two letters, they wrote it with three, giving to the aspiration of the l the vowel é, which it carries before it; and in this they are not wrong so to use it, if they wish to, in their curious manner. After this they add to the end the compound part.”[231]
I need not pursue the quotation. The above words show clearly that the natives did not in their method of writing analyze a word to its primitive phonetic elements. “This,” said the bishop, “we had to do for them.” Therefore they did not have an alphabet in the sense of the word as we use it.
On the other hand, it is equally clear, from his words and examples, that they had figures which represented sounds, and that they combined these and added a determinative or an ideogram to represent words or phrases.
Fig. 1.—Fac Simile of Landa’s Manuscript.
The alphabet which he inserts has been engraved and printed several times, but nowhere with the fidelity desirable for so important a monument in American archæology. For that reason I insert a photographic reproduction of it from the original MS. in the library of the Academia de la Historia of Madrid.
A comparison of this with the alphabet as given in Brasseur’s edition of Landa discloses several variations of importance. Thus the Abbé places the first form of the letter C horizontally instead of upright. Again in the MS., the two figures for the letter U stand, the first at the end of one line, the second at the beginning of the next. From their strong analogy with the sign of the sky at night, I am of opinion that they belong together as members of one composite sign, not separately as Brasseur gives them.
Both in it and in the inscriptions, manuscripts, and paintings the forms of the letters are rounded, and a row of them presents the outlines of a number of pebbles cut in two. Hence the system of writing has been called “calculiform,” from calculus, a pebble. The expression has been criticised, but I agree with Dr. Förstemann in thinking it a very appropriate one. It was suggested, I believe, by the Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg).
This alphabet of course, can not be used as the Latin a, b, c. It is surprising that any scholar should have ever thought so. It would be an exception, even a contradiction, to the history of the evolution of human intelligence, to find such an alphabet among nations of the stage of cultivation of the Mayas or Aztecs.
The severest criticism which Landa’s figures have met has been from Dr. Phillip J. J. Valentini. He discovered that many of the sounds of the Spanish alphabet were represented by signs or pictures of objects whose names in the Maya begin with that sound. Thus he supposes that Landa asked an Indian to write in the native character the Spanish letter a, and the Indian drew an obsidian knife, which, says Dr. Valentini, is in the Maya ach; in other words, it begins with the vowel a. So for the sound ki, the Indian gave the sign of the day named kinich.
Such is Dr. Valentini’s theory of the formation of Landa’s alphabet; and not satisfied with lashing with considerable sharpness those who have endeavored by its aid to decipher the manuscripts and mural inscriptions, he goes so far as to term it “a Spanish fabrication.”
I shall not enter into a close examination of Dr. Valentini’s supposed identification of these figures. It is evident that it has been done by running over the Maya dictionary to find some word beginning with the letter under criticism, the figurative representation of which word might bear some resemblance to Landa’s letter. When the Maya fails, such a word is sought for in the Kiche or other dialect of the stock; and the resemblances of the pictures to the supposed originals are sometimes greatly strained.
But I pass by these dubious methods of criticism, as well as several lexicographic objections which might be raised. I believe, indeed, that Dr. Valentini is not wrong in a number of his identifications. But the conclusion I draw is a different one. Instead of proving that this is picture-writing, it indicates that the Mayas used the second or higher grade of phonetic syllabic writing, which, as I have before observed, has been shown by M. Aubin to have been developed to some extent by the Aztecs in some of their histories and connected compositions (see above, page 231). Therefore the importance and authenticity of Landa’s alphabet are, I think, vindicated by this attempt to treat it as a “fabrication.”[232]
Landa also gives some interesting details about their books. He writes:
“The sciences that they taught were the reckoning of the years, months, and days, the feasts and ceremonies, the administration of their sacraments, the fatal days and seasons, their methods of divination and prophecies, events about to happen, remedies for diseases, their ancient history, together with the art of reading and writing their books with characters which were written, and pictures which represented the things written.
“They wrote their books on a large sheet doubled into folds, which was afterwards inclosed between two boards, which they decorated handsomely. They were written from side to side in columns, as they were folded. They manufactured this paper from the root of a tree and gave it a white surface on which one could write. Some of the principal nobles cultivated these sciences out of a taste for them, and although they did not make public use of them, as did the priests, yet they were the more highly esteemed for this knowledge.”[233]
From the above extracts from Spanish writers we may infer that—
1. The Maya graphic system was recognized from the first to be distinct from the Mexican.
2. It was a hieroglyphic system, known only to the priests and a few nobles.
3. It was employed for a variety of purposes, prominent among which was the preservation of their history and calendar.
4. It was a composite system, containing pictures (figuras), ideograms (caracteres), and phonetic signs (letras).
3.—References from Native Sources.
We might reasonably expect that the Maya language should contain terms relating to their books and writings which would throw light on their methods. So, no doubt, it did. But it was a part of the narrow and crushing policy of the missionaries not only to destroy everything that related to the times of heathendom, but even to drop all words which referred to ancient usages. Hence the dictionaries are more sterile in this respect than we might have supposed.
The verb “to write” is dzib, which like the Greek γράφειν, meant also to draw and to paint. From this are derived the terms dziban, something written; dzibal, a signature, etc.
Another word, meaning to write, or to paint in black, is zabac. As a noun, this was in ancient times applied to a black fluid extracted from the zabacche, a species of tree, and used for dyeing and painting. In the sense of “to write,” zabac is no longer found in the language, and instead of its old meaning, it now refers to ordinary ink.
The word for letter or character is uooh. This is a primitive root found with the same or a closely allied meaning in other branches of this linguistic stock, as, for instance, in the Kiché and Cakchiquel. As a verb, pret. uooth, fut. uooté, it also means to form letters, to write; and from the passive form, uoohal, we have the participial noun, uoohan, something written, a manuscript.
The ordinary word for book, paper, or letter, is huun, in which the aspirate is almost mute, and is dropped in the forms denoting possession, as u uun, my book, yuunil Dios, the book of God, il being the so-called “determinative” ending. It occurs to me as not unlikely that uun, book, is a syncopated form of uoohan, something written, given above. To read a book is xochun, literally to count a book.
According to Villagutierre Soto-Mayor, the name of the sacred books of the Itzas was analté. In the printed Diccionario de la Lengua Maya, by Don Juan Pio Perez, this is spelled anahté, which seems to be a later form.
The term is not found in several early Maya dictionaries in my possession, of dates previous to 1700. The Abbé Brasseur indeed, in a note to Landa, explains it to mean “a book of wood,” but it can have no such signification. Perhaps it should read hunilté, this being composed of hunil, the “determinative” form of huun, a book, and the termination té, which added to nouns, gives them a specific sense, e. g. amayté, a square figure, from amay, an angle; tzucublé, a province, from tzuc, a portion separated from the rest. It would mean especially the sacred or national books.
The particular class of books which were occupied with the calendar and the ritual were called tzolanté, which is a participial noun from the verb tzol, passive tzolal, to set in order, to arrange, with the suffix té. By these books were set in order and arranged the various festivals and fasts.
When the conquest was an accomplished fact and the priests had got the upper hand, the natives did not dare use their ancient characters. They exposed themselves to the suspicion of heresy and the risk of being burnt alive, as more than once happened. But their strong passion for literature remained, and they gratified it as far as they dared by writing in their own tongue with the Spanish alphabet volumes whose contents are very similar to those described by Landa.
A number of these are still in existence, and offer an interesting field for antiquarian and linguistic study. Although, as I say, they are no longer in the Maya letters, they contain quite a number of ideograms, as the signs of the days and the months, and occasional cartouches and paintings, which show that they were made to resemble the ancient manuscripts as closely as possible.
They also contain not infrequent references to the “writing” of the ancients, and what are alleged to be extracts from the old records, chiefly of a mystic character. The same terms are employed in speaking of the ancient graphic system as of the present one. Thus in one of them, known as “The Book of Chilan Balam of Chumayel,” occurs this phrase: Bay dzibanil tumenel Evangelistas yetel profeta Balam—“as it was written by the Evangelists, and also by the prophet Balam,” this Balam being one of their own celebrated ancient seers.
Among the predictions preserved from a time anterior to the Conquest, there are occasional references to their books and their contents. I quote, as an example, a short prophecy attributed to Ahkul Chel, “priest of the idols.” It is found in several of the oldest Maya manuscripts, and is in all probability authentic, as it contains nothing which would lead us to suppose that it was one of the “pious frauds” of the missionaries.
From this designedly obscure chant we perceive that the ancient priests inscribed their predictions in books, which were afterward explained to the people. The expression bin alic u than uoohe—literally, “he will speak the words of the letters”—seems to point to a phonetic writing, but as it may be used in a figurative sense, I shall not lay stress on it.[235]
4.—The Existing Codices.
The word Codex ought to be confined, in American archæology, to manuscripts in the original writing of the natives. Some writers have spoken of the “Codex Chimalpopoca,” the “Codex Zumarraga,” and the “Codex Perez,” which are nothing more than manuscripts either in the native or Spanish tongues written with the Latin alphabet.
Of the Maya Codices known, only four have been published, which I will mention in the order of their appearance.
The Dresden Codex.—This is an important Maya manuscript preserved in the Royal Library at Dresden. How or when it came to Europe is not known. It was obtained from some unknown person in Vienna in 1739.
This Codex corresponds in size, appearance, and manner of folding to the descriptions of the Maya books which I have presented above from Spanish sources. It has thirty-nine leaves, thirty-five of which are colored and inscribed on both sides, and four on one side only, so that there are only seventy-four pages of matter. The total length of the sheet is 3.5 meters, and the height of each page is 0.295 meter, the width 0.085 meter.
The first publication of any portion of this Codex was by Alexander von Humboldt, who had five pages of it copied for his work, Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples Indigenes de l’Amérique, issued at Paris in 1813 (not 1810, as the title-page has it). It was next very carefully copied in full by the Italian artist, Agostino Aglio, for the third volume of Lord Kingsborough’s great work on Mexican Antiquities, the first volume of which appeared in 1831.
From Kingsborough’s work a few pages of the Codex have been from time to time republished in other books, which call for no special mention; and two pages were copied from the original in Wuttke’s Geschichte der Schrift, Leipzig, 1872.
Finally, in 1880, the whole was very admirably chromo-photographed by A. Naumaun’s establishment at Leipzig, to the number of fifty copies, forty of which were placed on sale. It is the first work which was ever published in chromo-photography, and has, therefore, a high scientific as well as antiquarian interest.
The editor was Dr. E. Förstemann, aulic counselor and librarian-in-chief of the Royal Library. He wrote an introduction (17 pp. 4to.) giving a history of the manuscript, and bibliographical and other notes upon it of much value. One opinion he defends must not be passed by in silence. It is that the Dresden Codex is not one, but parts of two original manuscripts written by different hands.
It appears that it has always been in two unequal fragments, which all previous writers have attributed to an accidental injury to the original. Dr. Förstemann gives a number of reasons for believing that this is not the correct explanation, but that we have here portions of two different books, having general similarity but also many points of diversity.
This separation led to an erroneous (or perhaps erroneous) sequence of the pages in Kingsborough’s edition. The artist Aglio took first one fragment and copied both sides, and then proceeded to the next one; and it is not certain that in either case he begins with the first page in the original order of the book.
The Codex Peresianus, or Codex Mexicanus, No. II, of the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris.—This fragment—for it is unfortunately nothing more—was discovered in 1859 by Prof. Leon de Rosny among a mass of old papers in the National Library. It consists of eleven leaves, twenty-two pages, each 9 inches long and 5¼ inches wide. The writing is very much defaced, but was evidently of a highly artistic character, probably the most so of any manuscript known. It unquestionably belongs to the Maya manuscripts.
Its origin is unknown. The papers in which it was wrapped bore the name “Perez,” in a Spanish hand of the seventeenth century, and hence the name “Peresianus” was given it. By order of the Minister of Public Instruction, ten photographic copies of this Codex, without reduction, were prepared for the use of scholars. None of them were placed on sale, and so far as I know the only one which has found its way to the United States is that in my own library. An ordinary lithographic reproduction was given in the Archives paléographiques de l’Orient et de l’Amérique, tome I. (Paris, 1869–'71).
The Codex Tro, or Troano.—The publication of this valuable Codex we owe to the enthusiasm of the Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg). On his return from Yucatan in 1864 he visited Madrid, and found this Manuscript in the possession of Don Juan de Tro y Ortolano, professor of paleography, and himself a descendent of Hernan Cortes. The abbé named it Troano, as a compound of the two names of its owner; but later writers often content themselves by referring to it simply as the Codex Tro.
It consists of thirty-five leaves and seventy pages, each of which is larger than a page of the Dresden Codex, but less than one of the Codex Peresianus. It was published by chromo-lithography at Paris, in 1869, prefaced by a study on the graphic system of the Mayas by the abbé, and an attempt at a translation. The reproduction, which was carried out under the efficient care of M. Leonce Angrand, is extremely accurate.
The Codex Cortesianus.—This Codex, published at Paris, 1883, under the editorship of Professor Leon de Rosny, presents the closest analogy to the Codex Troano, of which, indeed, it probably formed a part. It has forty-two leaves, closely written in the calculiform character. There is no evidence that it was brought to Spain by Cortes, but from a tradition to that effect, it has received its name.
All four of these codices were written on paper manufactured from the leaves of the maguey plant, such as that in common use in Mexico. In Maya the maguey is called ci, the varieties being distinguished by various prefixes. It grows luxuriantly in most parts of Yucatan, and although the favorite tipple of the ancient inhabitants was mead, they were not unacquainted with the intoxicating pulque, the liquor from the maguey, if we can judge from their word for a drunkard, ci-vinic (vinic==man). The old writers were probably in error when they spoke of the books being made of the barks of trees; or, at least, they were not all of that material.
The above-mentioned Manuscripts are the only ones which have been published. I shall not enumerate those which are said to exist in private hands. So long as they are withheld from the examination of scientific men they can add nothing to the general stock of knowledge, and as statements about them are not verifiable, it is useless to make any.
In addition to the Manuscripts, we have the mural paintings and inscriptions found at Palenque, Copan, Chichen Itza, and various ruined cities within the boundaries of the Maya-speaking races. There is no mistaking these inscriptions. They are unquestionably of the same character as the Manuscripts, although it is also easy to perceive variations, which are partly owing to the necessary differences in technique between painting and sculpture: partly, no doubt, to the separation of age and time.
Photographs and “squeezes” have reproduced many of these inscriptions with entire fidelity. We can also depend upon the accurate pencil of Catherwood, whose delineations have never been equalled. But the pictures of Waldeck and some other travelers do not deserve any confidence, and should not be quoted in a discussion of the subject.