Day Symbols of the Maya Year: Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894-1895, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 199-266.Thomas, Cyrus
Religion
Day Symbols of the Maya Year: Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894-1895, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 199-266.
Thomas, Cyrus
Maya calendar
At the right side of Dres. 72c are the three characters shown in plate
LXIV, 27, 28, and 29, which follow one another downward, as shown in the
figure, the three forming one of the short columns of the series to
which they belong. From the lowest, which is the _ik_ symbol, waving
blue lines, indicating water, extend downward to the bottom of the
division. If these glyphs are considered ideographic and not phonetic,
it is still possible to give them a reasonable interpretation. The
falling water shows that they relate to the rain storm or tempest. The
uppermost character, which appears to be falling over on its side, we
may assume to be the symbol of a house or building of some kind;[215-1]
the dotted lines extending from its surface may well be supposed to
represent rain driven from the roof. There is, however, another possible
interpretation of this character which appears to be consistent with
Mexican and Central American mythology. It is that it indicates a house,
vessel, or region of the heavens which holds the waters of the upper
world. The turning on the side would, in this case, denote the act of
pouring out the water in the form of rain. This supposition (although I
am inclined to adopt the former) appears to be supported by the fact
that this character is used in the Dresden Codex as one of the cloud or
heaven symbols, as, for example, on plates 66 and 68. According to
Ramirez, the Mexican wind and rain gods occupy a large mansion in the
heavens, which is divided into four apartments, with a court in the
middle. In this court stand four enormous vases of water, and an
infinite number of very small slaves (the rain drops) stand ready to dip
out the water from one or the other of these vases and pour it on the
earth in showers.[216-1] As the lowest character in the group mentioned
is the _ik_ symbol, its appropriate rendering here is beyond question
"wind;" therefore, as two out of the three characters, and the rain sign
below, indicate the rain storm, we may take for granted that the middle
character probably refers to lightning or thunder.
Additional reasons for this interpretation are given in a previous
paper[216-2] and need not be repeated here, as the only object now in
view in referring to them is to show that the _ik_ symbol is there used
to denote wind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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