NOTES.
[Maya]
[English]1. The introductory paragraph is not less obscure in construction than it is important in its historical statements, and I shall give it, therefore, a particularly careful analysis.
I have already explained the term u tzolan katun; lukci is the aorist of lukul, which forms regularly luki, but the mutation to ci is used when the meaning since or after that is to be conveyed; as Beltran says, “cuando el verbo trae estos romances, despues que ò desde que, como este romance; despues que murio mi padre, estoy triste: cimci in yume, okomuol” (Arte del Idioma Maya, p. 61). cab means country or place, in the sense of residence, whereas luum, used in the same paragraph, is land or earth, in the general sense. The Dicc. de Motul says: “cab, pueblo ò region; in cab, mi pueblo, donde yo soy natural.” yotoch is a compound of the possessive pronoun u, his or their, and otoch, the word for house when it is indicated whose house it is; otherwise na is used; otoch is probably allied to och a verbal root signifying to give food to, the house being looked upon as specifically the place where meals are prepared.
The word cante is translated by Perez and Brasseur as four, and applied to the Tutulxiu, while the intervening word anilo is not translated by either: cante is no doubt the numeral four with the numeral particle te suffixed. But here a serious difficulty arises. According to all the grammars and dictionaries the particle te is never used for counting persons, but only “years, months, days (periods of time), leagues, cacao, eggs and gourds.” Moreover, what is anilo? We have, indeed, the form tenilo, I am that one, from the particle i (Buenaventura, Arte de la Lengua Maya, fol. 27, verso); and we might have yanilo, they are those. But this necessitates a change in the text, and if that has to be done I should prefer to suppose that anilo was a mistake of the copyist, and that we should read katun or katunile. This would reconcile the numeral particle and would do away with the four Tutulxius, of whom we hear nothing afterwards.
chikin, the West, literally, that which bites or eats the sun, from chi, the mouth, and, as a verb, to bite. An eclipse is called in Maya chibal kin, the sun bitten; ti chikin, toward the West.
talelob, plural form of tal or talel, to come to, to go from.
chiconahthan is not translated by either Pio Perez or Brasseur, nor in that precise form has it any meaning. I take it, however, to be a faulty orthography for chichcunahthan which means to support that which another says, hence, to agree with, to act in concert with; “chichcunah u thanil, having renewed the agreement” (Diccionario de Ticul). It refers to an agreement entered into by the different leaders who were about to undertake the migration into unknown lands. Possibly, however, this is not a Maya word, but another echo of Aztec legend. Chiconauhtlan, “the place of the Nine,” was a village and mountain north of the lake of Tezcuco and close to the sacred spot Teotiuacan, where, in Aztec myth, the gods assembled to create the sun and moon (Sahagun, Historia de Nueva España, Lib VII, cap. II). Tulapan Chiconauhtlan would thus become a compound local name.
It will be seen from the above that the translation which I have given of this paragraph does not satisfy me as certainly correct. I shall now give the original with an interlinear translation, and also those of Pio Perez and Brasseur, adding a free rendering which I am inclined to prefer, although it modifies the text somewhat.
Interlinear Translation.