INTRODUCTORY.
The intellectual development of a nation attains its fullest expression in language, oral or written. This “divine art” as Plato calls it, claims therefore from the student of man in the aggregate a prolonged attention and the most painstaking analysis. Too frequently one hears among anthropologists the claims of linguistics decried, and the many blunders and over-hasty generalizations of philologists quoted as good reasons for the neglect or distrust of their branch.
The real reason of this attitude I believe to be not so much the mistakes of the linguists, as a strong aversion which I have noticed in many distinguished teachers of physical science to the study of language and the philosophy of expression. The subject is difficult and distasteful to them. Having no aptitude for it, nor real acquaintance with it, they condemn it as of small value and of doubtful results. I have never known a scientific man who was really a well-read philologist who thus under-estimated the position of linguistics in the scheme of anthropology; but I have known many who, not having such thorough knowledge, depreciated its value in others.
The third and fourth parts of this volume are devoted to language, the third as it appears especially in its written forms, the fourth particularly to the profounder questions of linguistic philosophy. Here again I shall be found in opposition to the majority who have written on these subjects. The claim I make for the largely phonetic character of the Mexican and Maya hieroglyphs is not generally accepted; and the poetical spirit which I argue exists in many productions of the aboriginal muse will not be favored by those who deny the higher sentiments of humanity to uncivilized man.
I have endeavored by frequent illustration, and reference to the best sources of information, to put the reader in the position to judge for himself; and I shall feel highly gratified if he is prompted to such investigations by what I may say, whether his final conclusions agree with mine or not.
THE PHONETIC ELEMENTS IN THE GRAPHIC SYSTEMS OF THE MAYAS AND MEXICANS.[[201]]
All who have read the wonderful story of the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America will remember that the European invaders came upon various nations who were well acquainted with some method of writing, who were skilled in the manufacture of parchment and paper, and who filled thousands of volumes formed of these materials with the records of their history, the theories of their sciences, and the traditions of their theologies. Aiming at greater permanence than these perishable materials would offer, they also inscribed on plinths of stone, on slabs of hard wood, and on terra cotta tablets, the designs and figures which in the system they adopted served to convey the ideas they wished to transmit to posterity.
In spite of the deliberate and wholesale destruction of these records at the conquest, and their complete neglect for centuries afterwards, there still remain enough, were they collected, to form a respectably large Corpus Inscriptionum Americanarum. Within the present century many Mexican and Maya MSS. have for the first time been published, and the inscriptions on the temples of southern Mexico and Yucatan have been brought to the tables of students by photography and casts, methods which permit no doubt as to their faithfulness.
Nor have there been lacking diligent students who have availed themselves of these facilities to search for the lost key to these mysterious records. It is a pleasure to mention the names of Thomas and Holden in the United States, of De Rosny, Aubin and de Charencey in France, of Förstemann, Seler and Schellhas in Germany, of Ramirez and Orozco in Mexico. But it must frankly be confessed that the results obtained have been inadequate and unsatisfactory. We have not yet passed the threshold of investigation.
The question which forces itself upon our attention as demanding a reply at the very outset, is whether the Aztec and Maya systems of writing were or were not, in whole or in part, phonetic systems? Did they appeal, in the first instance, to the meaning of the word, or to the sound of the word? If to the latter—if, in other words, they were phonetic, or even partially phonetic—then it is vain to attempt any interpretation of these records without a preliminary study of the languages of the nations who were the writers. These languages must moreover be studied in the form in which they were spoken at the period of the conquest, and the course of native thought as expressed in the primitive grammatical structure must be understood and taken into account. I hasten to add that we have abundant materials for such studies.