[38]. Ahau translated means: sovereign, king, august, principal. See page 3 of Juan Pio Perez’s “Diccionario de la lengua Maya,” published in Mérida in 1877, by the friends and faithful executors of the last will of the defunct scholar. This valuable work comprises the whole of the linguistical stock of the Maya language, the words collected exceeding the number of 20,000, on 437 pages, quarto. It may be purchased from Dr. George E. Shiels, 896 Broadway, New York.
[39]. Proceedings of Am. Antiq. Society, April 24, 1878, page 16, in an article on the Mexican Calendar Stone, by Ph. J. J. Valentini, in which mention was made of this singular kind of notation from the right to the left hand. A. v. Humboldt, in “Vue des Cordilléres,” page 186, remarks: “Le cercle intérieur offre les vingt signes du jour: en se souvenant que Cipactli est le premier et Xochitl le dernier, on voit qu’gu’ici, comme partout ailleurs, les Mexicains ont rangé les hiéroglyphes de droite à gauche.” The great scholar has clothed in the form of a proven statement that which at the beginning of this century was an opinion generally prevalent among Americanists, and which does not bear the test, when the numerous copies existing of the Mexican calendar days are examined. They all show the arrangement of the days from the left to the right. The sculptured calendar is the only exception.
[40]. Historia de Yucatan; by Eligio Ancona, Mérida, 1879, Vol. I., page 159.
[41]. Remarks on the Centres of Ancient Civilization in Central America. Address read before the Amer. Geogr. Society, New York, July 10, 1876, by Dr. C. Hermann Berendt.
[42]. Herrera, Decade IV., Lib. X., Chapt. 2, 3 and 4. These three chapters are a compilation of data concerning the ancient history of Yucatan, and the adventurous career of the Itza race, which appear to be drawn from sources unknown at this day, and which are independent of what we can learn from Landa, from the author of the Maya Manuscript, and from Cogolludo.
[43]. Traces of such a migration and succeeding halting places can be discovered in the Quiché annals, edited by Brasseur de Bourbourg, with the title of Popol Vuh. “Popol Vuh, le livre sacré et les mythes de l’antiquité centro-Américaine,” Paris, 1861, on pages 83, 235, 241, and pages 215, 217, 236, in which names are quoted and regions described which give evidence of a course of migration from northern to southern Mexico.
[44]. E. Ancona, Historia de Yucatan, Vol. I., page 34. Mérida, 1879.—“The word Chacnovitan or Chacnouitan first appeared in the Maya MSS. or series of Maya epochs. Upon examining this document, and observing that the tribe wandered from Tulapan to Chacnouitan and later to Bakhalal and from there to Chichen-Itza, etc., it will be understood that the name in question was given to no other portion of our peninsula than to that which lies at the south. Brasseur de Bourbourg supposes, and we think not without reason, that Chacnouitan lay between Bakhalal and Acallan, s. e. of the Laguna de los Terminos.—See Brasseur de Bourbourg, Archives de la comission scientifica, Tomo. I, page 422, note 2.”
[45]. Señor Perez in his commentary makes his calculation that 1496 was the year of the death of Chief Ajpulà, and succeeds in giving it a plausible appearance of correctness. But we observe that in order to reach this date he was not aware of having altered the words of the Maya text, and those of his own translation. This translation said correctly: “There were still six years wanting before the completion of the 13th Ahau.” In the text of the commentary, however, we find him starting his count on the supposition that the original text was the sixth year of the 13th Ahau. Though this change is by no means allowable, he succeeds, ingeniously enough, in arriving at the year above quoted, and in stating also the dates of the day and month, precisely as the annalist had set them down.
[46]. Eligio Ancona, Historia de Yucatan, Mérida, 1879, Vol. I., page 333.
[47]. With reference to the Mayas, consult the Quiché traditions in Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Popol Vuh, pages 215, 217 and 236, and Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Memorial of Tecpan Atitlan, page 170, note 3. For the Nahuatl race, Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique, Vol. I., Appendix, page 428, in extracts made from the Codex Chimalpopoca.