It is impossible not to recognize from this that, like the Zuñis of to-day, the Quichés “symbolized the terrestrial sphere by referring to the four cardinal points, to the zenith and nadir, the individual himself making the seventh number,” and that Cucumatz, who was evidently the high priest and head of the seven tribes, assumed the totemistic attributes of each of these, in rotation, for periods of seven days each. In this case we have an interesting and suggestive variant of the scheme and it suggests the possibility that, possibly actuated by ambition, Cucumatz had grasped and united in his person the prerogatives of the chiefs or heads of each tribe. On the other hand, it may be that it was the original custom for the high priest to be a sort of animated calendar sign in unison with the separate chiefs of each tribe, who represented, in rotation, the totemistic ancestors of their people.
Having shown how the lords of the Four Quarters were indissolubly linked to the four major calendar-signs which also symbolized the elements, let us examine the data establishing that the capital of each of the four provinces was named a tecpan. From Duran I have already quoted that in the Mexican metropolis there [pg 183] were two tecpans or official houses in which the affairs of the government were attended to and councils held. It is significant that one of these was named “the tecpan of men” and the other “the tecpan of women.” Whilst the metropolis, the seat of the dual government, thus had its two tecpans which were presided over by the two supreme rulers, we have learned from other sources of the four tecpans in Guatemala and that Texcoco, near the city of Mexico, was also termed a tecpan and that its ruler bore as a title one of the four major calendar-signs. These facts explain his position and the reason why the “lord of Texcoco” was one of four lords who supported Montezuma when he met Cortés in full state. A careful investigation of the derivation and true significance of the word tecpan yields interesting results. Cen-tecpan-tli means, a count of twenty persons; the verb tecpana signifies, “to establish something in concerted order; to establish order amongst people.” The verb tecpancapoa means, to count something in regular order.
The Maya verb tepal=to govern or reign, or to be “one who mediates,” appears to be allied to the above Nahuatl words and it is not unlikely that the employment of the flint-knife or tecpatl as an emblem of office had been suggested by the fact that its Nahuatl name resembles, in sound, the above words formed with tecpan, and also the Maya verb tepal. It thus constituted a bilingual rebus, expressing the sense=to govern, to rule, to regulate, etc., and, employed as the symbol of the North and Polaris, it conveyed the idea that the latter was not only the producer of life but the regulator of the Universe.
From the fact that a tecpan constituted a minor integral whole and comprised the rule over twenty classes of people, we see that whilst the four provincial tecpans were in themselves miniature reproductions of the metropolis, they but filled the same position in relation to this as the four limbs to the body of a man or quadruped. A final proof of how completely this analogy was recognized by the native rulers is furnished by the Maya titles which embody the word kab=arm and hand.
It has already been mentioned in the preceding pages that the rulers of the four quarters were entitled Ba-cab and that in the Dresden Codex an image of the four quarters was figured by four bones. The word for bone being bac and for arm being kab, it is obvious that the arm-bone or humerus would furnish a rebus, expressing [pg 184] the title of the four Bacabs—a conclusion which throws light upon the signification of the cross-bones of native pictography and also of the incised and decorated human arm and leg bones which have been found in Mexico and Yucatan.
At the same time the word kab also recurs in the title Ah-Cuch-Cab which signifies “the ruler or chief of a town or place,” Cuchil being the name of the latter. Both of these words so closely resemble cuxabal and cuxtal, the word for “life,” that it is not impossible that the native mind often associated the town as a centre of life, and thought of their chief as one whose symbol was a “life-dispensing hand.” In order to grasp the full significance of the symbol of the hand in Maya sculptured and written records it is necessary to bear these facts in mind.
In 1895 Mr. Teobert Maler unearthed in the centre of the public square at “El Seibal,” Guatemala, a sculptured stela exhibiting the figures of a chieftain over whose head an open hand was carved. It is impossible not to interpret this as a mark that the chieftain had once been the ruler of a town and that this, in turn, was one of four minor capitals belonging to a central metropolis. A hand, enclosed in quadrangular lines and represented on the garment of a chieftain, was found by Dr. Le Plongeon at Uxmal, and I believe that this should be interpreted in the same manner.
In my essay on Ancient Mexican Shields (Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, band v, 1892) I reproduced two interesting instances of the employment, as the name-sign of a ruler in native pictography, of a hand on the palm of which an eye is depicted. The effigy of a hand, the sacred Kab-ul, which was kept in a place in Yucatan to which people from all quarters resorted regularly in great numbers, resolves itself into the symbol of an ancient capital to which great high-roads led from the cardinal points. But important as this capital may have been, its connection with the hand-symbol proves that it was originally one of four minor centres and formed but a part of a greater whole. It would correspond to the image, in one of the native Codices, of a subdivided circle with an arm and hand standing in its middle, and its Bacab would undoubtedly have carried a sceptre in the shape of an open hand, such as depicted in the Codices as a staff of office.
While we thus find the human figure distinctly associated with the lords of the four quarters of the Above we find the four lords of the Below, entitled Chac, symbolized by the quadruped figure [pg 185] of the native jaguar=chacoh, associated with the color red=chac and with rain, storms, thunder and lightning, all of which phenomena were, singly and collectively, termed Chác.
If ever there has been an instance where language or the resemblance in sound of certain words has caused certain symbols to amalgamate with a name or title, it is surely this, and light is thereby thrown upon the development of symbolism and associations of thought amongst primitive people.