The Maya Chronicles Part 5

This great cycle of 13 20=260 years was called an _ahau Katun_ collectively, and each period in it bore the same name.

This name, _ahau Katun_, deserves careful a.n.a.lysis. _Ahau_ is the ordinary word for chief, king, ruler. It is probably a compound of _ah_, which is the male prefix and sign of the _nomen agentis_, and _u_, collar, a collar of gold or other precious substance, distinguis.h.i.+ng the chiefs. _Katun_ has been variously a.n.a.lyzed. Don Pio Perez supposed it was a compound of _kat_, to ask, and _tun_, a stone, because at the close of these periods they set up the sculptured stone, which was afterwards referred to in order to fix the dates of occurrences.[57-1]

This, however, would certainly require that _kat_ be in the pa.s.sive, _katal_ or _kataan_, and would give _katantun_. Beltran in his Grammar treats the word as an adjective, meaning very long, perpetual.[57-2] But this is a later, secondary sense. Its usual signification is a body or batallion[TN-7] of warriors engaged in action. As a verb, it is to fight, to give battle, and thus seems related to the Cakchiquel _[k]at_, to cut, or wound, to make prisoner.[58-1] The series of years, ordered and arranged under a controlling day and date, were like a row of soldiers commanded by a chief, and hence the name _ahau katun_.

Each of these _ahaus_ or chiefs of the Katuns was represented in the native calendars by the picture or portrait of a particular personage who in some way was identified with the Katun, and his name was given to it. This has not been dwelt upon nor even mentioned by previous writers on the subject, but I have copies of various native ma.n.u.scripts which ill.u.s.trate it, and give the names of each of the rulers of the Katuns.

The thirteen _ahau katuns_ were not numbered from 1 upward, but beginning at the 13th, by the alternate numbers, in the following order:--

13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3, 1, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2

Various reasons have been a.s.signed for this arrangement. It would be foreign to my purpose to discuss them here, and I shall merely quote the following, from a paper I wrote on the subject, printed in the _American Naturalist_, Sept., 1881:--

"Gallatin explained them as the numerical characters of the days "Ahau" following the first day of each year called Cauac; Dr.

Valentini thinks they refer to the numbers of the various idols wors.h.i.+ped in the different Ahaus; Professor Thomas that they are the number of the year (in the indiction of 52 years) on which the Ahau begins. Each of these statements is true in itself, but each fails to show any practical use of the series; and of the last mentioned it is to be observed that the objection applies to it that at the commencement of an Ahau Katun the numbers would run 1, 12, 10, 8, etc., whereas we know positively that the numbers of the Ahaus began with 13 and continued 11, 9, 7, 5, etc.

"The explanation which I offer is that the number of the Ahau was taken from the last day Cauac preceding the Kan with which the first year of each Ahau began--for, as 24 is divisible by 4, the first year of each Ahau necessarily began with the day Kan. This number was the "ruling number" of the Ahau, and not for any mystical or ceremonial purpose, but for the practical one of at once and easily converting any year designated in the Ahau into its equivalent in the current Kin Katun, or 52 year cycle. All that is necessary to do this is, to _add the number of the year in the Ahau to the number of the year Cauac corresponding to this "ruling number." When the sum exceeds 52, subtract that number._

"Take an example: To what year in the Kin Katun does 10 Ahau XI (the 10th year of the 11th Ahau) correspond?

"On referring to a table, or, as the Mayas did, to a 'Katun wheel,'

we find the 11th Cauac to be the 24th year of the cycle; add ten to this and we have 34 as the number of the year in the cycle to which 10 Ahau XI corresponds. The great simplicity and convenience of this will be evident without further discussion."

The important question remains, how closely, by these cycles, did the Mayas approximate to preserving the exact date of an event?

To answer this fairly, we should be sure that we have a perfectly authentic translation of their hieroglyphic annals. It is doubtful that we have. Those I present in this volume are the most perfect, so far as I know, but they certainly do not agree among themselves. Can their discrepancies be explained? I think they can in a measure (1) by the differing length of the katuns, (2) by the era a.s.sumed as the commencement of the reckoning.

It must be remembered that there was apparently no common era adopted by the Mayas; each province may have selected its own; and it is quite erroneous to condemn the annals off-hand for inaccuracy because they conflict between themselves.

-- 8. _Ancient Hieroglyphic Books._

The Mayas were a literary people. They made frequent use of tablets, wrote many books, and covered the walls of their buildings with hieroglyphic signs, cut in the stones or painted upon the plaster.

The explanation of these signs is one of the leading problems in American archaeology. It was supposed to have been solved when the ma.n.u.script of Bishop Landa's account of Yucatan was discovered, some twenty years ago, in Madrid. The Bishop gave what he called "an A, B, C," of the language, but which, when applied to the extant ma.n.u.scripts and the mural inscriptions, proved entirely insufficient to decipher them.

The disappointment of the antiquaries was great, and by one of them, Dr.

Felipe Valentini, Landa's alphabet has been denounced as "a Spanish fabrication."[61-1] But certainly any one acquainted with the history of the Latin alphabet, how it required the labor of thousands of years and the demands of three wholly different families of languages, to bring it to its perfection, should not have looked to find among the Mayas, or anywhere else, a parallel production of human intelligence. Moreover, rightly understood, Landa does not intimate anything of the kind. He distinctly states that what he gives are the sounds of the Spanish letters as they would be transcribed in Maya characters; not at all that they a.n.a.lyzed the sounds of their words and expressed the phonetic elements in these characters. On the contrary, he takes care to affirm that they could not do this, and gives an example in point.[62-1] Dr.

Valentini, therefore, was attacking a windmill, and entirely misconstrued the Bishop's statements.

I shall not, in this connection, enter into a discussion of the nature of these hieroglyphics. It is enough for my purpose to say that they were recognized by the earliest Spanish explorers as quite different from those of Mexico, and as the only graphic system on the continent, so far as they knew it, which merited the name of writing.[62-2]

The word for book in Maya is _huun_, a monosyllable which reappears in the Kiche _vuh_ and the Huasteca _uuh_. In Maya this initial _h_ is almost silent and is occasionally dropped, as _yuunil Dios_, the book of G.o.d (syncopated form of _u huunil Dios_, the suffix _il_ being the "determinative" ending). I am inclined to believe that _huun_ is merely a form of _uoohan_, something written, this being the pa.s.sive participle of _uooh_, to write, which, as a noun, also means a character, a letter.[63-1]

Another name for their books, especially those containing the prophecies and forecasts of the priestly diviners, is said to have been _anahte_; or _a.n.a.lte_. This word is not to be found in any of the early dictionaries. The usual authority for it is Villagutierre Sotomayor, who describes these volumes as they were seen among the Itzas of Lake Peten, about 1690.[64-1]

These books consisted of one long sheet of a kind of paper made by macerating and beating together the leaves of the maguey, and afterwards sizing the surface with a durable white varnish. The sheet was folded like a screen, forming pages about 9 5 inches. Both sides were covered with figures and characters painted in various brilliant colors. On the outer pages boards were fastened, for protection, so that the completed volume had the appearance of a bound book of large octavo size.

Instead of this paper, parchment was sometimes used. This was made from deerskins, thoroughly cured and also smoked, so that they should be less liable to the attacks of insects. A very durable substance was thus obtained, which would resist most agents of destruction, even in a tropical climate. Twenty-seven rolls of such parchment, covered with hieroglyphics, were among the articles burned by Bishop Landa, at Mani, in 1562, in a general destruction of everything which related to the ancient life of the nation. He himself says that he burned all that he could lay his hands upon, to the great distress of the natives.[65-1]

A very few escaped the destructive bigotry of the Spanish priests. So far as known these are.--

1. The Codex Tro, or Troano, in Madrid, published by the French government, in 1869.

2. What is believed to be the second part of the Codex Troano, now (1882) in process of publication in Paris.

3. The Codex Peresia.n.u.s, in the National Library, Paris, a very limited edition of which has been issued.

4. The Dresden Codex, in Kingsborough's Mexico, and photographed in colors, to the number of 50 copies, in 1880, which is believed to contain fragments of two different ma.n.u.scripts.

To these are, perhaps, to be added one other in Europe and two in Mexico, which are in private hands, and are alleged to be of the same character.

All the above are distinctly in characters which were peculiar to the Mayas, and which are clearly variants of those found on the sculptured beams and slabs of Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Palenque and Copan.

It is possible that many other ma.n.u.scripts may be discovered in time, for Landa tells us that it was the custom to bury with the priests the books which they had written. As their tombs were at times of solid stones, firmly cemented together, and well calculated to resist the moisture and other elements of destruction for centuries, it is nowise unlikely that explorations in Yucatan will bring to light some of these hidden doc.u.ments.

The contents of these books, so far as we can judge from the hints in the early writers, related chiefly to the ritual and calendar, to their history or Katuns, to astrological predictions and divinations, to their mythology, and to their system of healing disease.

-- 9. _Modern Maya Ma.n.u.scripts._

As I have said, the Mayas were naturally a literary people. Had they been offered the slightest chance for the cultivation of their intellects they would have become a nation of readers and writers.

Striking testimony to this effect is offered by Doctor Don Augustin de Echano, Prebend of the Cathedral Church of Merida, about the middle of the last century. He observes that twelve years of experience among the Indians had taught him that they were very desirous of knowledge, and that as soon as they learned to read, they eagerly perused everything they could lay their hands on; and as they had nothing in their tongue but some old writings that treated of sorceries and quackeries, the worthy Prebend thought it an excellent idea that they should be supplied, in place of these, with some ---- _sermons_![67-1] But what else could be expected of a body of men who crushed out with equal bigotry every spark of mental independence in their own country?

The "old writings" to which the Prebend alludes were composed by natives who had learned to write the Maya in the alphabet adopted by the early missionaries and conquerors. An official doc.u.ment in Maya, still extant, dates from 1542, and from that time on there were natives who wrote their tongue with fluency. But their favorite compositions were works similar to those to which their forefathers had been partial, prophecies, chronicles and medical treatises.

Relying on their memories, and no doubt aided by some of the ancient hieroglyphical ma.n.u.scripts, carefully secreted from the vandalism of the monks, they wrote out what they could recollect of their national literature.

There were at one time a large number of these records. They are referred to by Cogolludo, Sanchez Aguilar and other early historians.

Probably nearly every village had one, which in time became to be regarded with superst.i.tious veneration.

Wherever written, each of these books bore the same name; it was always referred to as "The Book of Chilan Balam." To distinguish them apart, the name of the village where one was composed was added. Thus we have still preserved to us, in whole or in fragments, the Book of Chilan Balam of Chumayel, of Kaua, of Nabula, etc., in all, it is said, about sixteen.

"Chilan Balam" was the designation of a cla.s.s of priests. "Chilan," says Bishop Landa, "was the name of their priests, whose duty it was to teach the sciences, to appoint holy days, to treat the sick, to offer sacrifices, and especially to utter the oracles of the G.o.ds. They were so highly honored by the people that usually they were carried on litters on the shoulders of the devotees."[69-1] Strictly speaking, in Maya, _chilan_ means "interpreter," "mouth-piece," from "_chij_," "the mouth," and in this ordinary sense frequently occurs in other writings.

The word _balam_--literally, "tiger,"--was also applied to a cla.s.s of priests, and is still in use among the natives of Yucatan as the designation of the protective spirits of fields and towns, as I have shown at length in a study of the word as it occurs in the native myths of Guatemala.[70-1] "_Chilan Balam_," therefore, is not a proper name, but a t.i.tle, and in ancient times designated the priest who announced the will of the G.o.ds and explained the sacred oracles. This accounts for the universality of the name and the sacredness of its a.s.sociations.

The dates of the books which have come down to us are various. One of them, "The Book of Chilan Balam of Mani," was undoubtedly composed not later than 1595, as is proved by internal evidence. Various pa.s.sages in the works of Landa, Lizana, Sanchez Aguilar and Cogolludo--all early historians of Yucatan--prove that many of these native ma.n.u.scripts existed in the sixteenth century. Several rescripts date from the seventeenth century--most from the latter half of the eighteenth.

The names of the writers are generally not given, probably because the books, as we have them, are all copies of older ma.n.u.scripts, with merely the occasional addition of current items of note by the copyist; as, for instance, a malignant epidemic which prevailed in the peninsula in 1673 is mentioned as a present occurrence by the copyist of "The Book of Chilan Balam of Nabula."

These "Books of Chilan Balam" are the princ.i.p.al sources from which Senor Pio Perez derived his knowledge of the ancient Maya system of computing time, and also drew what he published concerning the history of the Mayas before the Conquest, and from them also are taken the various chronicles which I present in the present volume.

That I am enabled to do so is due to the untiring researches of Dr. Carl Hermann Berendt, who visited Yucatan four times, in order to study the native language, to examine the antiquities of the peninsula, and to take accurate copies, often in fac-simile, of as many ancient ma.n.u.scripts as he could discover. After his death, his collection came into my hands.

The task of deciphering these ma.n.u.scripts is by no means a light one, and I must ask in advance for considerable indulgence for my attempt.

Words and phrases are used which are not explained in the dictionaries, or, if explained, are used in a different sense from that now current.

The orthography is far from uniform, each syllable is often written separately, and as the punctuation is wholly fanciful or entirely absent, the separation of words, sentences and paragraphs is often uncertain and the meaning obscure.

Another cla.s.s of doc.u.ments are the t.i.tles to the munic.i.p.al lands, the records of surveys, etc. I have copies of several of these, and among them was found the history of the Conquest, by Nakuk Pech, which I publish. It was added to the survey of his town, as a general statement of his rights and defence of the standing of his family.