At that time it will be well to know the tidings,
Of the Lord, the ruler of the world.
After four katuns,
Then will occur the bringing of the truth.
At that time one who is a god by his name,
I deliver to you as a lord.
Be your eyes on the road for your guest, Men of Itza,
When the lord of the earth shall come.
The word of the first lord, Pech, the priest,
At the time of the fourth katun,
At the end of the katun.
The only line in which I have taken much liberty with the text is the fifth, where, after the word kue, one MS. reads: yok taa ba akauba, and another, yok lac kauba, neither of which is intelligible.
If the date assigned in these lines be a correct one, they were delivered by the prophet in 1469. It is not impossible. The words are obscure and the prediction so indistinct that it might quite well have been made by an official augur at that time.
[Maya]
[English]31. Nachi Cocom, head of the ancient and powerful Cocom family, ruled at Zotuta when Montejo made his settlement at Merida, and was a determined enemy of the Spaniards. He was defeated in 1542, in a sanguinary battle, and then accepted terms of peace. I have in my possession the copy of a survey which he made of the lands of the town of Zotuta in 1545, when he was evidently on good terms with the Conquerors.
[Maya]
[English]32. The names Chan, Catzim and Chul belong to well known ancient Yucatecan families, and many who bear them are still found among the natives (Berendt, Nombres Proprios en Lengua Maya, MS.)
The words Zacuholpatal Zacmutixtun are rendered by Avila as proper names, and I have followed his example. I have not found a satisfactory explanation of them.
[Maya]
[English]33. The day One Imix was a day of peculiar sanctity in ancient Yucatan. Landa makes the rather unintelligible assertion that the count of their days, or their calendar, invariably commenced on that day (Relacion, p. 236).
Imix is the 18th day of the month, and it is possibly that it and the two following days were used for intercalary days.
More to the purpose of explaining the prophecy in the text is the statement of Francisco Hernandez, who, as reported by Bishop Las Casas, relates that in the mythology of the Mayas, the god or gods Bacab, those who support the four corners of the heaven and who are identified with the “year bearers” or Dominical days of the calendar, died on the day One Imix, and after three days came to life again. (Las Casas, Historia Apologetica de las Indias Occidentales, cap. CXXIII.) This has reference apparently to the intercalary days Imix, Ik, and Akbal, which were counted so as to allow the next Kin Katun period to begin on I Kan. I have explained this theory fully in a paper, “Notes on the Codex Troano and Maya Chronology,” in the American Naturalist, Sept. 1881. Naturally this was supposed by the Spanish missionaries to be a reference to Christian traditions.
Ca tip u chemob, when the ships were rocking; tipil represents the slipping and sliding movement of a partially submerged or hidden body; thus the beating of the heart and the pulse is tipilac. Ca yumtah banderas ob, when the banners waved; yumtah is to swing to and fro as a hamack or a flag. Piixtahob, from pixitah, to unreel or reel off yarn, etc., from a spindle. I suppose it refers to letting go the anchor.