[17]. Förstemann, Entzifferung, No. IV, and Maudslay, Biologia Centrali-Americana, Archæology. Part IV.
[18]. According to Pousse (Archives de la Soc. Amer. de France, 1887, p. 165), it is used to designate the particular day which falls on the 20th of the month, that is, the last day of the month, and has therefore the sense of “last,” “final,” rather than of 20. It is written as an affix to the month sign. Thomas states that it is used with month symbols “only where the month (of 20 days) is complete or follows one completed.” Amer. Anthropologist, Vol. VI, p. 246. There is some doubt whether No. 4 is not an element of union. Compare Seler, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1887, p. 57.
[19]. Dr. Förstemann’s article, “Zur Maya-Chronologie,” assigning the reasons for these identifications, appeared in the Berlin Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1891.
[20]. Etude sur le Manuscrit Troano, p. 220.
[21]. A. P. Maudslay: Biologia Centrali-Americana; Archæology, Part II. Text, pp. 40–42 (London, 1890). The character b closely resembles the day-sign chuen. This could readily be chosen to express ikonomatically chun, “the beginning, the first,” and my studies convince me that it repeatedly must be so understood. To this I shall recur on a later page.
[22]. Since the above was written, Mr. Stewart Culin, Director of the museum of the University of Pennsylvania, has called my attention to the fact that the cross-hatching on the “cosmic sign” would, in Oriental, especially Chinese symbolism, convey the idea of the fundamental dual principles of existence,—male and female, upper and lower, etc. The same interpretation may quite possibly apply in the Mayan symbolism.
[23]. See my Native Calendar of Central America, pp. 49–59 (Philadelphia, 1893).
[24]. The dictionaries give: “bolon pixan, bien adventurado;” bolon dzacab, and oxlahun dzacab, “cosa eterna.” The numeral “one,” as in English, had a superlative sense, as hun miatz, “the one scholar,” i. e., the most distinguished. Why a symbolic or superlative sense was attached to such numbers is a question too extensive to discuss here. I have touched upon it in my Native Calendar of Central America, pp. 8, 13, and in an article on “The Origin of Sacred Numbers” in The American Anthropologist, April, 1894. In another connection we find maay, odor from something burning; “bolonmayel, qualquier olor suavissimo y transcendente”—Dicc. Motul. Dr. Seler has suggested that the number 13 may refer to the thirteen heavens; but offers no evidence that the Mayas entertained the Nahuatl myth to which this refers.
[25]. Schrader: Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, pp. 307–9.
[26]. To enter into this debated question at length would not be possible in this connection; but I would merely note: (1) The positive assertion of Landa that the Maya year “invariably” began July 16 (Cosas de Yucatan, p. 236), could not be true even for five years, unless the bissextile correction was made, which he asserts was done; (2) the example of a Maya year given by Aguilar (Informe contra Idolum Cultores del Obispado de Yucatan, Madrid, 1639), is actually one containing six intercalary days, “seis dias que fueron sus caniculares;” and (3) Father Martin de Leon, in his “Calendario Mexicano,” pointedly states that the fourth year was a bissextile year (Camino del Cielo, fol. 100, Mexico, 1611). I do not maintain that this knowledge was general, but that it had been acquired by the astronomer-priests of certain localities. The investigations of Mrs. Zelia Nuttall tend to demonstrate this opinion.