There is a wide range of time covered by these Initial Series; indeed, from the earliest 8.6.16.12.0 (on p. 70) to the latest, 10.19.6.1.8 (on p. 51) there elapsed more than a thousand years. Where the difference between the earliest and the latest dates is so great, it is a matter of vital importance to determine the contemporaneous date of the manuscript. If the closing date 10.19.6.1.8 represents the time at which the manuscript was made, then the preceding dates reach back
for more than a thousand years. On the other hand, if 8.6.16.12.0 records the present time of the manuscript, then all the following dates are prophetic. It is a difficult question to answer, and the best authorities have seemed disposed to take a middle course, assigning as the contemporaneous date of the codex a date about the middle of Cycle 9. Says Professor Förstemann (Bulletin 28, p. 402) on the subject:
In my opinion my demonstration also definitely proves that these large numbers [the Initial Series] do not proceed from the future to the past, but from the past, through the present, to the future. Unless I am quite mistaken, the highest numbers among them seem actually to reach into the future, and thus to have a prophetic meaning. Here the question arises, At what point in this series of numbers does the present lie? or, Has the writer in different portions of his work adopted different points of time as the present? If I may venture to express my conjecture, it seems to me that the first large number in the whole manuscript, the 1,366,560 in the second column of page 24 [9.9.16.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, the first Initial Series figured in plate 31], has the greatest claim to be interpreted as the present point of time.
In a later article (Bulletin 28, p. 437) Professor Förstemann says: "But I think it is more probable that the date farthest to the right (1 Ahau, 18 Zip ...) denotes the present, the other two [namely, 9.9.16.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu and 9.9.9.16.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab] alluding to remarkable days in the future." He assigns to this date 1 Ahau 18 Zip the position of 9.7.16.12.0 in the Long Count.
The writer believes this theory to be untenable because it involves a correction in the original text. The date which Professor Förstemann calls 1 Ahau 18 Zip actually reads 1 Ahau 18 Uo, as he himself admits. The month sign he corrects to Zip in spite of the fact that it is very clearly Uo. Compare this form with figure [20], b, c. The date 1 Ahau 18 Uo occurs at 9.8.16.16.0, but the writer sees no reason for believing that this date or the reading suggested by Professor Förstemann indicates the contemporaneous time of this manuscript.
Mr. Bowditch assigns the manuscript to approximately the same period, selecting the second Initial Series in plate [31], that is, 9.9.9.16.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab: "My opinion is that the date 9.9.9.16.0 1 Ahau 18 Kayab is the present time with reference to the time of writing the codex and is the date from which the whole calculation starts."[[262]] The reasons which have led Mr. Bowditch to this conclusion are very convincing and will make for the general acceptance of his hypothesis.
Although the writer has no better suggestion to offer at the present time, he is inclined to believe that both of these dates are far too early for this manuscript and that it is to be ascribed to a very much later period, perhaps to the centuries following immediately the colonization of Yucatan. There can be no doubt that very early dates appear in the Dresden Codex, but rather than accept one so early as 9.9.9.16.0 or 9.9.16.0.0 as the contemporaneous date of the manuscript the writer would prefer to believe, on historical grounds, that the manuscript now known as the Dresden Codex is a copy of an earlier manuscript and that the present copy dates from the later Maya period in Yucatan, though sometime before either Nahuatl or Castilian acculturation had begun.
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGYBULLETIN 57 PLATE 32
