[1] The most convincing modern writers on the tonalamatl are Morley, Bowditch, De Jonghe, and Seler. A bibliography of works on the subject will be found at the end of this appendix. [↑]
[2] We speak of “numbers.” More accurately, the numbers employed by the Mexicans were merely simple dots. Thus a single dot represented our numeral 1, and thirteen dots our numeral 13. [↑]
[3] It will be seen that, although the first ten day-gods take the first ten week-signs, these signs are, naturally, not in the same order as the day-signs, as has been pointed out, therefore these gods could not take precisely the same sign as in the day-signs, but only the same place. [↑]
[4] For Seler’s point of view on this question see his Commentary on the Aubin Tonalamatl, London and Berlin, 1900–1, pp. 197–228.
De Jonghe, Le Calendrier Mexicain (Journal of the Americanist Society of Paris, New Series, vol. iii, 1906, pp. 197–228), believes that the “Lords of the Night” are connected with the days of the tonalamatl. He states that the combination of these “Lords of the Night” with the day-names sufficed to distinguish the days of the year which by the tonalamatl reckoning would take the same numeral and sign. Thus if the year began with 1 acatl, the 261st day would also be 1 acatl, but would have a different “Lord of the Night.” This is denied by Seler. [↑]
[5] These are depicted in the Aubin tonalamatl along with their thirteen bird-disguises in the second and first vertical rows of the upper and the second, and first cross-rows of the lower half of the sheets, and are displayed in a similar manner in Codex Borbonicus. There are discrepancies between the two MSS., but these are by no means irreconcilable. Thus in the seventh place Codex Borbonicus has the Maize-god Cinteotl and the Aubin tonalamatl Macuilxochitl or Xochipilli, who, however, in one of the songs to the gods, is addressed as “Cinteotl,” and so forth. [↑]
[6] This, however, clashes with Seler’s enumeration of the day and night hours elsewhere. [↑]
[7] Sahagun, bk. ii, c. xix. [↑]
[8] These month-names bear a striking resemblance to those of certain North American Indian tribes, and are certainly seasonal in their origin. [↑]