[127]. Nagualism; a Study in Native American Folk-lore and History, p. 20, note. Sometimes water was used, when the word in Maya is puhaa, “to blow water,” and is translated in the dictionaries, “rociar con la boca.”
[128]. Mallery: Picture Writing of the American Indians, p. 700. The double curves that we see on the snake, Cod. Cort., p. 15, etc., I construe as the sign of the sky. The expression in Maya was u nak caan, “la boveda del cielo;” literally, the “belly” of the sky.
[129]. The transformation of the human into the arboreal form and its opposite are frequently referred to in the myths and pictography of the red race. Some interesting observations upon this point, by the Rev. S. D. Peet, may be found in the American Antiquarian, for September, 1894.
[130]. See the Codex Borgia, plates 8, 16, 17, 18, 19; Cod. Vaticanus, plate 65; Cod. Colomb., Lam. 5, 17; Cod. Vienna, pp. 18, 37, etc.; and consult Pousse in Arch. de la Soc. Amer., 1887, p. 102; Schellhas, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1886, p. 53.
[131]. Dr. Harrison Allen: An Analysis of the Life Form in Art, p. 37 (Philadelphia, 1875); A. P. Maudslay: Biol. Cent. Amer. Archæology, Part II, plate 23, etc.
[132]. Mr. E. P. Dieseldorff, in a description of a very beautiful decorated vase from the vale of Chamá, Guatemala, says that fans were not in use among the natives, and that the object in the paintings usually identified as such is a “soplador,” or fire-blower, made of woven palm leaves, and still found in every house. Verhand. der Berliner Anthrop. Gesell., 1894, p. 374.
[133]. “Tenian cierto azofar blando y con alguna poca mezcla de oro, de que hazian las hachuelas de fundicion y unos cascabelejos con que vaylavan y una cierta manera de escoplillos con que hazian los idolos.” Relacion de Yucatan, p. 107. (Madrid edition.)
[134]. U hadz muyal, literally, “its blow, the cloud.” Another figure which seems to indicate the same is the broad, pointed object seen in the hands of deities. Cod. Cort., p. 28; Cod. Tro., pp. 29, 30, 38, 39. It is the same as the Nahuatl tlauitequiliztli, portrayed in the hands of Tlaloc, in plate 70, of Boban’s Catalogue Raisonné of the Goupil collection.
[135]. The name is from lil, to sprinkle, haa, water, and bal, the instrumental termination. The Relacion de la Villa de Valladolid, 1579, cap. xiv, says: “el ahkin llevaba un hisopo, atado en el muchas colas de vibora y culebras ponzoñosas.”
[136]. The Atlatl or Spear Thrower of the Ancient Mexicans. By Zelia Nuttall (Cambridge, Mass., 1891).