Of the former only four examples remain, none of them perfect. They have all been published with great care, some of them in several editions. They are usually spoken of as “codices” under the following names: the Codex Troanus and the Codex Cortesianus, probably parts of the same book, the original of which is at Madrid; the Codex Peresianus, which is in Paris; and the Codex Dresdensis, in Dresden. The two former and the two latter resemble each other more closely than they do either member of the other pair. There are reasons to believe that the two first mentioned were written in central Yucatan, and the last two in or near Tabasco.[[5]] This district and that of Chiapas, adjacent to it on the south, was occupied at the time of the Conquest by the Tzental-Zotzil branch of the Mayan stock, who spoke a dialect very close to the pure Maya of Yucatan; they were the descendants of the builders of the imposing cities of Palenque, Ococingo, Toniná and others, and we know that their culture, mythology, and ritual were almost identical with those of the Mayas. I shall treat of them, therefore, as practically one people.
Although Lord Kingsborough had included the Dresden Codex in his huge work on “Mexican Antiquities,” and the Codex Troanus had been published with close fidelity by the French government in 1869, it cannot be said that the serious study of the Mayan hieroglyphs dates earlier than the faithful edition of the Dresden Codex, issued in 1880 under the supervision of Dr. E. W. Förstemann, librarian-in-chief of the Royal Library of Saxony.
The most important studies of the codices have been published in Germany. Besides the excellent writings of Dr. Förstemann himself, those by Dr. P. Schellhas and Dr. E. Seler, of Berlin, are of great utility and will be frequently referred to in these pages. In France, Professor Leon de Rosny, the competent editor of the Codex Peresianus, the Count de Charencey, and M. A. Pousse, whose early death was a severe loss to this branch of research, deserve especial mention. In England no one has paid much attention to it but Mr. Alfred P. Maudslay, whose investigations have yielded valuable results, forerunners of others of the first importance. The earlier speculations of Bollaert are wholly fanciful. In our own country, the mathematical portions of the essays of Professor Cyrus Thomas are worthy of the highest praise; and useful suggestions can be found in Charles Rau’s article on the inscriptions of Palenque, and in Edward S. Holden’s paper on Central American picture-writing.[[6]]
3. Theories of Interpretation.
The theories which have been advanced as to the method of interpreting the Mayan hieroglyphs may be divided into those which regard them as ideographic, as phonetic, or as mixed. The German writers, Förstemann, Schellhas, and Seler, have maintained that they are mainly or wholly ideographic; the French school, headed by the Abbé Brasseur, de Rosny, and de Charencey, have regarded them as largely phonetic, in which they have been followed in the United States by Professor Cyrus Thomas, Dr. Cresson, Dr. Le Plongeon, and others.
The intermediate position, which I have defended, is that while chiefly ideographic, they are occasionally phonetic, in the same manner as are confessedly the Aztec picture-writings. In these we constantly meet with delineations of objects which are not to be understood as conveying the idea of the object itself, but merely as representing the sound of its name, either in whole or in part; just as in our familiar “rebus writing,” or in the “chanting arms” of European heraldry. I have applied to this the term “ikonomatic writing,” and have explained it so fully, as it is found in the Mexican manuscripts, in my “Essays of an Americanist,” that I need not enter upon it further in this connection, but would refer the reader to what I have there written.[[7]]
The attempt to frame a real alphabet, by means of which the hieroglyphs could be read phonetically, has been made by various writers.
The first is that preserved in the work of Bishop Landa. It has failed to be of much use to modern investigators, but it has peculiar value as evidence of two facts; first, that a native scribe was able to give a written character for an unfamiliar sound, one without meaning, like that of the letters of the Spanish alphabet; and, secondly, that the characters he employed for this purpose were those used in the native manuscripts. This is proof that some sort of phonetic writing was not unknown.[[8]]
This alphabet was extended by the Abbé Brasseur, and especially by de Rosny, who, in 1883, defined twenty-nine letters, with numerous variants from the Codices and inscriptions.[[9]]
Two years later, Dr. A. Le Plongeon published an “Ancient Maya Hieratic Alphabet according to Mural Inscriptions,” containing twenty-three letters, with variants. This he applied to the translating of certain inscriptions, but added nothing to corroborate the correctness of the interpretations. Each sign, he believed, stood for a definite letter.[[10]]