Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern

by Edward B. Tylor

[25] In the original, aras. In the Latin of Hernandez, arae I suppose to be the little polished stone slabs which are set on the altars in Roman Catholic churches, and in which their sacred quality is, so to speak, contained.

Vetancurt (Teatro Mejicano) gives an account, taken from the above. Hernandez (Rerum Med. Nov. Hisp. Thes.: Rome, 1631) gives a similar account of the process. He compares the wooden instrument used to a cross-bow. It was evidently a T-shaped implement, and the workman held the cross-piece with his two hands against his breast, while the end of the straight stick rested on the stone. He furthermore gives a description of the making of the well-known maquahuitl, or Aztec war-club, which was armed on both sides with a row of obsidian knives, or teeth, stuck into holes with a kind of gum. With this instrument, he says, a man could be cut in half at a blow—an absurd statement, which has been repeated by more modern writers.

II. ON THE SOLAR ECLIPSES RECORDED IN THE LE TELLIER MS.

The curious Aztec Picture-writing, known as the Codex Telleriano-Remenensis, preserved in the Royal Library of Paris, contains a list or calendar of a long series of years, indicated by the ordinary signs of the Aztec system of notation of cycles of years. Below the signs of the years are a number of hieroglyphic pictures, conveying the record of remarkable events which happened in them, such as the succession and death of kings, the dates of wars, pestilences, &c. The great work of Lord Kingsborough, which contains a fac-simile of this curious document, reproduces also an ancient interpretation of the matters contained in it, evidently the work of a person who not only understood the interpretation of the Aztec picture-writings, but had access to some independent source of information,—probably the more ample oral traditions, for the recalling of which the picture-writing appears only to have served as a sort of artificial memory. It is not necessary to enter here into a fuller description of the MS., which has also been described by Humboldt and Gallatin.

Among the events recorded in the Codex are four eclipses of the sun, depicted as having happened in the years 1476, 1496, 1507. 1510. Humboldt, in quoting these dates, makes a remark to the effect that the record tends to prove the veracity of the Aztec history, for solar eclipses really happened in those years, according to the list in the well-known chronological work, L’Art de Vérifier les Dates, as follows: 28 Feb., 1476; 8 Aug., 1496; 13 Jan., 1507; 8 May, 1510. The work quoted, however, has only reference to eclipses visible in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and not to those in America. The question therefore arises, whether all these four eclipses recorded in L’Art de Vérifier les Dates, were visible in Mexico. As to the last three, I have no means of answering the question; but it appears that Gama, a Mexican astronomer of some standing, made a series of calculations for a totally distinct purpose about the end of the last century, and found that in 1476 there was no eclipse of the sun visible in Mexico, but that there was a great one on the 13th Feb., 1477, and another on the 28th May, 1481.

Supposing that Gama made no mistake in his calculations, the idea at once suggests itself, that the person who compiled or copied the Le Tellier Codex, some few years after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, inserted under the date of 1476 (long before the time of the Spaniards) an eclipse which could not have been recorded there had the document been a genuine Aztec Calendar; as, though visible in Europe, it was not visible in Mexico. The supposition of the compiler having merely inserted this date from a European table of eclipses is strengthened by the fact that the great eclipse of 1477, which was visible in Mexico, but not in Europe, is not to be found there. These two facts tend to prove that the Codex, though undoubtedly in great part a copy or compilation from genuine native materials, has been deliberately sophisticated with a view of giving it a greater appearance of historical accuracy, by some person who was not quite clever enough to do his work properly. It may, however, be urged as a proof that the mistake is merely the result of carelessness, that we find in the MS. no notice of the eclipse of 25th May, 1481, which was visible both in Mexico and in Europe, and so ought to have been in the record. This supposition would be consistent with the Codex being really a document in which the part relating to the events before the Spanish Conquest in 1521 is of genuine ancient and native origin, though the whole is compiled in a very grossly careless manner. It would be very desirable to verify the years of all the four eclipses with reference to their being visible in Mexico, as this might probably clear up the difficulty.

III. TABLE OK AZTEC ROOTS COMPARED WITH SANSCRIT, ETC.

Several lists of Aztec words compared with those of various Indo-European languages have been given by philologists. The present is larger than any I have met with; several words in it are taken from Buschmann’s work on the Mexican languages. It is desirable in a philological point of view that comparative lists of words of this kind should be made, even when, as in the present instance, they are not of sufficient extent to found any theory upon.

As the Aztec alphabet does not contain nearly all the Sanscrit consonants, many of them must be compared with the nearest Aztec sounds, as:

SANSCRIT, t, th, d, dh, &c.		AZTEC, t.
SANSCRIT, k, kh, g, gh, &c.		AZTEC c. q.
SANSCRIT, l, r.		AZTEC, l.
SANSCRIT, b, bh, v.		AZTEC, v. or u.