[57]. Beltran, Arte de la lengua Maya, p. 217. Another name he gives is Ox kokol tzek, “thrice beaten bones.”
[58]. Dr. Seler (Verhand. Berlin. Anthrop. Gesell., 1886, S. 416) considers Hun Ahau to be a calendar name; but it is significant, without having recourse to this roundabout explanation. Xibilbay, “the place of disappearance,” is the Quiche name for the underworld, corresponding to the Mictlan of the Nahuas. Both the terms in the text may therefore be borrowed. See my Essays of an Americanist, pp. 127, 143.
[59]. There are some reasons to believe that at the time of the composition of the Cod. Dres. the priests calculated that the world had then been in existence 3744 years. See Förstemann, in Compte Rendu du Congrés des Américanistes, VII Session, p. 746. Elsewhere, however, another suggestion as to the meaning of that number is offered.
[60]. See my Essays of an Americanist, p. 269; and also an article by me, “Notes on the Codex Troano and Maya Chronology,” in the American Naturalist, September, 1881.
[61]. See the interesting observations of Mr. F. H. Cushing in my Native Calendar of Central America and Mexico, p. 8.
[62]. Thus in the Popol Vuh, pp. 4, 6, it is called “the quadrated earth, four-pointed, four-sided, four-bordered.”
[63]. “Ol; el corazon formal y no el material.” Dic. Motul.
[64]. “E alom, e qaholom.” Popol Vuh, p. 6. Ximenes adds: “y mas en los nacimientos de los niños son los que asisten.” Origen de los Indios, p. 158.
[65]. See numerous examples in Prof. Cyrus Thomas’s suggestive monograph, “Notes on certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts,” in the third annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1884). Mr. Francis Parry, in an article entitled “The Sacred Symbols and Numbers of Aboriginal America,” in Bull. of the Amer. Geog. Soc., 1894, classes it as a “sun symbol;” but in this, as in most of his identifications, I find myself unable to agree with him.
[66]. The doubts expressed by Dr. Schellhas as to the worth of mythology in these studies (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1892, p. 102), are justified by the confusion of Mayan with Mexican myths in Dr. Seler’s writings; but I hope to show not by the facts themselves.