XI.
COMPARISON OF THE SIGNS OF THE MAYA MONTHS (LANDA) WITH THE TABLETS.
We have a set of signs for Maya months and days handed down to us by Landa along with his phonetic alphabet. A priori these are more likely to represent the primitive forms as carved in stone than are the alphabetic hieroglyphs, which may well have been invented by the Spaniards to assist the natives to memorize religious formulæ.[243-*]
Brasseur de Bourbourg has analyzed the signs for the day and month in his publication on the MS. Troano, and the strongest arguments which can be given for their phonetic origin are given by him.
I have made a set of MS. copies of these signs and included them in my card-catalogue, and have carefully compared them with the tablets XXIV and LVI. My results are as follows:
Plate XXIV (our [Fig. 60]).
No. 42 is the Maya month Pop, beginning July 16.
No. 54 is Zip??, beginning August 25.
No. 47 is Tzoz??, beginning September 14.
No. 57 is Tzec? beginning October 4.
No. 44-45 is Mol?, beginning December 3.
No. 39 is Yax, Zac, or Ceh, beginning January 12, February 1, February 21, respectively.
Plate LVI (our [Fig. 48]).
No. 1804 is Uo????
No. 1901 is Zip????
No. 1816 is Tzoz??
No. 1814 is Tzec?
No. 1807 is Mol?
No. 1855 is Yax, Zac, or Ceh.
No. 1844 is Mac?
The only sign about which there is little or no doubt is No. 42, which seems pretty certainly to be the sign of the Maya month Pop, which began July 16.
No. 39, just above it, seems also to be one of the months Yax, Zac, or Ceh, which began on January 12, February 1, and February 21, respectively. Which one of these it corresponds to must be settled by other means than a direct comparison. The signs given by Landa for these three months all contain the same radical as No. 39, but it is impossible to decide with entire certainty to which it corresponds. It, however, most nearly resembles the sign for Zac (February 1); and it is noteworthy that it was precisely in this month that the greatest feast of Tlaloc took place,[244-*] and its presence in this tablet, which relates to Tlaloc, is especially interesting.