Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex Part 3

On the other hand, the glyphs in the upper part of all four pages 21 to 24 face to the right, and, as already set out in detail, are practically all written in _reverse position_ as regards their prefixes, etc. And so also does the Eb-glyph in the day-columns we are now considering face to the right. These columns, unlike those on page 21, which include all of the 20 day-signs, only include 5 of the day-signs: Kan, Lamat, Eb, Cib and Ahau; Eb being the only non-symmetrical one of these.

We have thus quite strong evidence, especially as provided by the position of the prefixes, for a right to left reading, opposed by the direction of this katun-number series--if it be one. In Egyptian writing, of course, the direction of the reading changes with the facing of the figures.

To return now to the columns themselves, all the day-signs in any one column have each the same red numeral, so that we have: 8 Cib, 8 Ahau, 8 Kan, 8 Lamat, 8 Eb; and so on. The red numerals to each column also decrease by 2 towards the right, pari pa.s.su with the blue numerals. If we read each column downwards, it will form a closed circuit or round, returning into itself, with intervals of 104 days, from 8 Cib to 8 Ahau, etc., and again from 8 Eb back to 8 Cib. But if we next try to go to the next column, the series breaks, for from 8 Eb to 6 Lamat is only 76 days. We get a like break whether we read upward or downward, or right to left. Taking the columns separately then, the entire series (whether made up of 13, 20 or any other number of columns) cannot be made to read in one regular series, with a constant interval between the successive days of the whole.

But, if we restore two columns, making 13 columns, and then read horizontally _across_, either right to left, or left to right, one line after another, the first day of the second line follows the last of the first, and after going through the whole 65 terms, we return again from the last of the last line to the first of the first--always with a constant interval. In other words, this section could be written around a wheel. If we read left to right, the distance from (10 Kan) to 8 Cib, etc., is 232 days; 23265=15,080. Or if from right to left,[33-*] the interval from (12 Lamat) to 1 Cib, etc., is 28 days; 2813 = 364, 5 = 1820. That both of these products are multiples of 260 is a truism, and cannot in any way require us to see a tonalamatl reckoning as the basis of this pa.s.sage. Nor is each separate day-column a tonalamatl in fifths, as so often found.

Finally, if we should a.s.sume that the series went on across page 25, to a full katun-round of 20 terms, the circuit would be broken; line 2 would not regularly follow line 1, and so on. The probabilities then, as derived from the succession of the days, seem almost conclusive that this is a section of 65 terms, to be read horizontally, in whichever direction. And then, since the subdivision of 15,080 days (or 1820, if read right to left) into 65 terms, _necessarily_ gives us successive day-_numbers_ decreasing (or increasing) by 2, the likeness to the katun-series may be only apparent--a simple truism. Or, on the other hand, in view of the glyph similarities (a point which I think should always be given close attention), there _may_ be some relation to the katun-series--all in spite of the right-left or left-right difficulties.

What part the blue[34-*] number series plays, I cannot say. Dr.

Seler,[34-] suggests that they are "corrections," to set each term ahead 20 days. This states a fact, but does not give any explanation.

Each blue number is 6 less than its red column, and 7 Kan _is_ of course 20 days later than 13 Kan.

FOOTNOTES:

[24-*] Dr. Forstemann (_Comm. z. Par. Mayahds._) speaks of the background to the central figure on page 16 as black, instead of red; he also describes the number columns as made up of red and black numerals only. There are many similar errors in his Commentary, due to his ignorance of the colors, and to the obscurity of the photographic reproductions.

[28-*] Where to place the Tro.-Cort., in view of the _apparent_ Kan, Muluc[TN-3] Ix, Cauac years indicated on pages 34-37, and the 13 c.u.mhu immediately next to 13 Ahau on page 73 (13 Ahau 13 c.u.mhu falling only possibly in a year 12 Lamat) I am not ready to say.

[29-*] Mr. Bowditch suggests to me that the numbers 1 2 3 3 5 6 6 are to be read with each of the day signs in their respective columns, and, being placed in the middle, may apply both to the upper and lower sets.

The strongest objection I can see to this is that the numbers are black, instead of the usual red. In this case, instead of intervals of 8 and 16, giving rounds of 58=40 and 516=80 days, we would have intervals of 156 and 208 (from 1 Ymix to 1 Muluc, etc.), giving rounds of 780 and 1040 days respectively. Or, if read _upwards_, we would have 52 and 104 day intervals (1 Ben to 1 Chicchan, etc.), and rounds of 260 and 520 days. But whichever be the case, the page is _sui generis_, and its why is still beyond us.

[31-*] I have retained the usual term "shields" for the flaring forms which embrace the sun glyph, though without accepting its appropriateness. They might with equal likelihood be conventionalized wings.

[32-*] Dr. Forstemann ignores the s.p.a.ce on the right of page 24, and restores two columns to the left of page 23 in order to make up the thirteen columns; but, as shown by the edges of the pages in the photographs, one column restored in each place will just fill the obliterated s.p.a.ce.

[33-*] Dr. Seler's reading; _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, I, 515.

[34-*] The blue is a true blue, quite distinct from the turquoise blue elsewhere, and is found in the case of these numbers only.

[34-] _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, I, 515; "Zur mexik. Chronologie."

THE MAYA GLYPHS

Up to date our knowledge of the meanings of the glyphs is still to all intents and purposes limited to the direct tradition we have through Landa, and the deductions immediately involved in these. We know the day and month signs, the numbers, including 0 and 20, four units of the archaic calendar count (the day, tun, katun and cycle), the cardinal point signs, the negative particle. We have not fully solved the uinal or month sign, which seems to be _chuen_ on the monuments and a _cauac_, or _chuen_, in the ma.n.u.scripts. We are able to identify what must be regarded as metaphysical or esoteric applications of certain glyphs in certain places, such as the face numerals.[35-*] But every one of these points is either deducible directly by necessary mathematical calculation, or else from the names of certain signs given by Landa in his day and month list, and then found in other combinations, such as _yax_, _kin_, etc. That we have as many of the points as we have, and still cannot form from them the key--that we cannot _read_ the glyphs--is a constant wonder; but a fact nevertheless.

The innumerable efforts to identify the glyphs by their superficial appearance, calling the banded headdress a "pottery decoration," and explaining the face-glyph of the North thereby, because in Maya _xaman_ is north and _xamach_ a tortilla dish (to say nothing of others still more fanciful, by a host of writers), have broken down, as was to be expected. I mention this instance because it ill.u.s.trates fully the results of superficial a.n.a.lysis, united with a seeming ineradicable tendency even among those most able students who have added the most to our stock of Maya knowledge (among whom Dr. Brinton was certainly one of the foremost), to treat these glyphs as carelessly done, to disregard the differences between manifest variants, or else to talk freely, whenever a pa.s.sage does not fit the explanation which is being worked out, of scribal errors.

In the first place, _if_ these glyphs are to be interpreted primarily by the Yucatecan Maya dialect (one in which we have most ample printed and MS. lexicographic material), and if in that dialect no other words at all resembling _xaman_ and _xamach_ are found, as we are told, then (_if_ the Mayas named the north star, or the North, by a pun on a tortilla dish) wherever this banded headdress is found, we must a.s.sume the text to be treating either of the North, or of tortillas. That might safely be left to break down of its own weight; but we shall also see that the explanation is given in total disregard of manifest, important variants. This banded headdress appears ornamenting at least [Hieroglyphs] five separate and distinct faces; one a wholly human face, the others with various other definite characteristics, the most frequent and prominent of which are the monkey-like face and mouth we see in the [Hieroglyph] glyph for the north, and a sort of bird's plumage covering the back of the head. These two are separate, are never combined, and must be cla.s.sified rigidly apart. We have therefore three elements, the monkey face, the plumage covering (if we may call it so), and the banded headdress. It is obvious that while the monkey face may be specific of the North, the bands are not specific at all, but general.

It is with the greatest diffidence that I suggest any interpretations on my own part as yet, but it is of course certain that the distinction of masculine and feminine existed in the spoken language, and it must exist somewhere in the glyphs. And it will have to be a prefix, not a postfix; for what I may call the syntax of glyph formation must follow that of the speech. At the bottom of Dres. 61 and 62 are seven identical Oc-glyphs with subfix, and with prefixes. Five of these prefixes are faces with the woman's curl, recognized on the figured ill.u.s.trations.

One is a face with the banded headdress. Remembering that this headdress occurs not infrequently on a plain human face with no other characteristic, it is not a far guess that it may have denoted a freeman, a lord, ent.i.tled to such a headdress. In this event it may on the one hand serve as a simple masculine definitive, the prefix _ah-_, and on the other, to attach the idea of lordship to other glyphs with which it is incorporated, as: the North Star, or region, the Lord of the Firmament.

This ill.u.s.tration serves to show what seems to me an essential preliminary of the work we have in hand, and the part to which I have so far devoted most effort. The glyphs must be determined, compared and cla.s.sified, and what I have called the "syntax" of their composition, studied. The particles and their positions, the various _incorporated_ elements, are of the utmost importance, though they are very frequently ignored. _They are the written picture of the spirit of the spoken language._ The task I have most looked forward to in this connexion has of course been with the Dresden, but having started upon the Perez for the reasons I have given, it was a smaller task in itself, and could be brought to completion within less time, while serving as part of the larger work. As the determination and cla.s.sification of the glyphs had to proceed all as one work, it has enabled me not only to complete my Index for this codex, but also to print the text in type, and to verify and bring out such facts regarding the color questions as was possible to do--both of them stages needed in the general work. In doing it I have studied with my hands as well as with eyes, and I have been well repaid. The actual labor has not been small, but it has been worth it all if only to see before the eyes something of what this Codex must have been when fresh and new. For as I have said, while in my colored restoration I may have made some mistakes of eye, for which the photographs will be a check, I have _guessed_ nothing.

The cla.s.sification of the glyphs meets of course with some difficulties in detail, but it can readily be cast into a quite simple general outline. Something over 2000 different compound forms are found in the three codices. The simple elements composing these are perhaps 350 in number, and may be divided broadly into main elements and affixes or particles. First of course come day and month signs, which, with _kin_, _tun_, _kal_, and a few marked variants, use up 50 numbers. Next will come the faces, about 75 simple elements. Next the animal and bird heads and figures, about 50 numbers. Next the hands, crosses, etc., and the list of conventional or geometric forms, another 75. Then some 75 particles.

The cards required for the first 50 numbers, including only compounds formed from day-signs and excluding day-signs used simply as such, amount to practically one half of the number required for the whole index. Certain elements, notably the _kin_, the _tun_, the monkey-face with banded headdress, already referred to, the face with tau-eye, the _yax_, the cross, produce a great number of compounds--a fact of note, as it is evident that the number of compounds, having due regard to our limited material, is an index to the relative position of the idea in the Mayan vocabularies. Some of the day-signs produce practically no compounds, others a great many. The compounds fall readily into a system of primary and secondary derivatives, by which their relations may be easily studied, and their proportions recognized.

Coming to the distinguishing of variants, one first meets the fact that the three codices differ. The writing of the Dresden and Perez is regular and accurate, the Perez exceedingly so. Every different variant must here be accounted for. In Tro.-Cort. the writing is crude and careless, so that we have many evident abbreviations which are not genuine variants. In the next place, certain regular differences occur in this or that glyph or particle, between the forms of the different ma.n.u.scripts. Thus the Perez uses [Hieroglyph] and the others [Hieroglyph] and so on. A comparison of the compounds shows that these must be the same. The regular variations between the three ma.n.u.scripts and variations of abbreviation, when well evidenced, may be eliminated.

The day-signs have many variants, mostly quite simple, and all checked positively by the use of the form in some day-series. Ix has many forms. There are at least three entirely different Cimi forms: [Hieroglyphs][TN-4] There are found two different forms of the closed eye, one of which certainly is Cimi, the other occurs regularly in such different compounds (and I think never as a simple day-sign), as to make it necessary to separate it; [Hieroglyph] it has probably a different meaning entirely--perhaps that of sleep.

A noteworthy technical line is to be found in the drawing of the glyphs.

Whereas in the case of the day-signs, faces, and conventional forms in general, certain variations of handwriting, etc., are evidently permitted, but only within certain definite lines, in some few animal glyphs no two instances are just alike. In other words, the glyphs in general are conventions with established meanings--actual writing;[39-*]

but we also have _pictures_ of birds or animal forms, where the writer is not following convention, but nature. The freedom of style used in the latter case only serves to emphasize the conventionality of the former, and to separate the entire system from either picture or rebus writing. See the following fish-glyph forms:

[Hieroglyphs]

These pictures are almost exclusively in uncompounded forms, whereas the conventional glyphs, whether human, animal or otherwise, are subject to the general rules of incorporation.

Writing is a system of conventional forms with established meanings, corresponding to and reflecting the structure of the spoken language; some picture elements whose value as such has remained either wholly or partly present in the minds of those who use them, are not inconsistent with genuine writing; when present they add vividness to the writing, and emphasize its ideographic character. A combination of picture forms only, may be used as means of communication to a certain degree, but can never const.i.tute _writing_; that, like speech, must provide for the expression of the relationships and categories that make up the structure of language.

Egyptian writing, which is of course _true writing_, contains elements of every cla.s.s. It has symbols and also pictures, not only of things or creatures, but of actions as well, "contracted to a narrow s.p.a.ce, made cursive"; these pictures, although still ranking as such, stand for _words_--they can be _p.r.o.nounced_, and have syntax, which is the crucial test. Egyptian next has unrecognizable forms, whose meaning has become a simple convention, but which still stand for _words_, or particles. It has elements which are not p.r.o.nounced for themselves, but only serve as determinatives. (Such a use of determinatives is not limited to hieroglyphic writing, but is possessed also by alphabetic; the second _o_ in the word _too_ is strictly a determinative, to distinguish the adverb _too_ from the preposition _to_, both p.r.o.nounced alike. Tibetan has an elaborate system of silent letters used as grammatical determinatives.) And then Egyptian writing finally has pure alphabetic elements.

As to Maya, I think it far more than likely that, when at last deciphered, it will be found to contain most if not all of these cla.s.ses--_mutatis mutandis_. There seems every evidence that it is made up of pictures with probably both concrete and abstract meanings; word-conventions; and grammatical particles. It is at least probable that there are also silent determinatives and not unlikely that there is also a pure phonetic or alphabetic element. That the latter element is not the basic one may I think be now regarded as established.

FOOTNOTES:

[35-*] The Tibetan use of symbolical words in place of numerals is worth noting here, even though we do not know the Maya face numerals well enough as yet for any comparison. See Csoma de Koros, _Tibetan grammar_, Calcutta, 1824, pp. 155 _et seq._; also Ph. ed. Foucaux, _Grammaire Tibetaine_, Paris, 1858, pp. 157 _et seq._

[39-*] "These [the Maya glyphs] do not represent a real script, as is so often maintained, but are only pictures which have been reduced to the appearance of letters, contracted to a narrow s.p.a.ce, made cursive."!--Dr. Eduard Seler, _Codex Vatica.n.u.s No. 3773_, page 65.--Well?

CONCLUSION

_Introite, nam et hic dii sunt._

It is not my desire to add, as a conclusion to a comment bearing on the restoration and interpretation of Mayan hieroglyphic texts, any general discussion of the data which tradition and the early Spanish writers have left us of the mythology, rites and customs of the American races; and still less to run out a line of attractive a.n.a.logies between isolated instances of their words, symbols or works, with those of any of the various nations of the other hemisphere; nor to build up any theory of descent or intercourse with any of these latter as today known to history. The subject before us is on its very face too vast; the written and traditional data are entirely too scanty and too little understood; and while we are still obliged to designate the various G.o.ds and personages of the Codices as G.o.d A, B, etc., and are unable to fix definitely[41-*] a single inscribed date in terms of our chronology, or tell the event attached to it, fancied comparisons amount to little. And the favorite "linguistic" method is more fragile yet, especially when the uncertainties of spelling and transliteration are considered, and above all the frequent total ignorance of the past history and changes the different words compared must have gone through since the time when by any possibility a physical transmission from one locality to the other could have taken place. These ought to be commonplaces of research, but it is to be feared that they have not quite yet become so.[42-*] There is no need to give instances of such false a.n.a.logies which have served as the bases for a mult.i.tude of filiation theories, all equally well "supported" by details, and all mutually exclusive. Nor on the other hand can we deny the existence actually of a very great number of resemblances and ident.i.ties which cannot be ignored, but must imply connexions of some kind. The English nation is not a Hebrew people because it had a prime minister Disraeli, nor Greeks because they have a Queen Alexandra, nor Romans because of certain local names. Such facts even when real, and established as such, may only be evidence of a single continental culture or transcontinental intercourse.

It has been the dictum of a certain school of archaeology, still very much in general favor, that all these ident.i.ties are to be explained as the natural result of the innate tendencies of untutored men, on their evolutionary rise, at certain cultural stages, to imagine the same myths and invent the same rites. From this as a principle I wholly dissent; it simply does not meet the facts. There are of course many facts to which it does apply, such as those that both Chinese and Americans made paper, tanned leather, made feather ornaments, used star and flower names for their children, and so on: facts which had been used to prove Chinese and American ident.i.ty, and to which Dr. Brinton justly added in retort that they also slept at night, wore clothes when it was cold, and so on.

But there is a very great number of facts, a number constantly growing with research, which cannot be so dismissed. Such are the employment of abstract symbolism, the erection of great structures all having a definite and identical astronomical bearing and evident use, the common possession of so-called myths all telling the one story, and only slightly modified locally, such as the birth-stories of Huitzilopochtli and of Herakles, and the stories of the travail of Latona pursued by the Python and of the Woman clothed with the Sun in _Revelation_; or the universal tradition of seven ancestral caves or cities in America, compared with the Tibetan and Puranic stories of the seven lotus-leaves of Sveta-dvipa, the first continental home of the race; the _Hacha de cobre_ of the Miztecs and the ever-turning spear of jade of the j.a.panese story of the place where the G.o.ds first descended on earth; or the whole question of the origin of the Zodiac. These things, and a host of others, need a different explanation--all the more since the more we are learning of them the more we find that they enclose facts of which the hypothetical "savage children" could not, _ex hypothesi_, have been aware--some facts indeed which our very latest modern science is only now learning.[43-*]

But while dissenting now wholly from this theory (of "coincidentalism") one cannot but hold in all respect those who in their time held it. It is the duty of the savant to make the best logical use he can of what he has, and he cannot be criticised for not using finer scales than the time affords. And this theory was needed as an answer to the absurdities, brought out in utter disregard of physical possibilities, postulating off-hand migrations and filiations and evolutionary advances totally impossible within the periods allowed for their completion, and utterly without parallel in any known part of the world or page of history. And yet, when this theory had its birth, the most of Christendom was still enthralled by the Ussherian chronology of the creation and history of the whole divine universe, which simply did not have room in it for all these things to happen naturally and connectedly.

And if it is urged that present science had already say a generation ago, a second's time we might say in the life of humanity, begun to emanc.i.p.ate our ideas of time and evolution, still it is the fact that that increase in breadth of vision has so far applied to every known thing but man himself. The old belief that gave the world 6000 years of life, at least put thinking man at its beginning; the modern nightmare gives us a world for hundreds of millions of years without _thought_, and makes human civilization an ephemeral episode of a few seconds of universal duration. Disregarding, one is forced to say wilfully, the fact that every single one of their own arguments in favor of anthropoid descent for man would equally support a theory that the anthropoids are debased offshoots of human stocks,[45-*] biology still demands such a lapse of time for its physical evolution that its adherents oppose and belittle to the utmost every bit of evidence of any antiquity even for the physical frame of man. We have, to say nothing of the rest of the world, Egyptian civilization now pushed back 10,000 years, and (together with others as we slowly uncover them) as far removed as ever from barbarism, if not indeed growing greater as we go back; but we are not allowed anything but apelike, half arboreal savages 50,000 years ago.

And yet every observed _fact_ shows us savage or worn-out races everywhere throughout the world deteriorating and dying out, and nowhere any savages progressing or, unaided by outside influence, developing what we know as civilization. We see everywhere the rise and fall of nations, races and civilizations, and their utter blotting out; and we refuse to accept that process as a universal law through which the destiny of the human race is working itself out. In fact, we do not seem to believe that the human race has any destiny; it may have beginning and an end, but no destiny.