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
As _chi_, _chii_, signifies not only mouth, but also "limit, border,
margin, shore," and especially the "skirt or loose edge of a garment,"
the relation of the symbol to the name of the day is obvious. It is used
here for its phonetic value--_chi_. As _chii_ signifies "to bite, prick,
to sting as a serpent," and _chan_ denotes "serpent," the true
explanation of the name of the day would seem to be "the biting or
stinging serpent." This will perhaps justify us in supposing that where
the symbol is found on a serpent it must have reference to this
characteristic.
I had not observed when the above was written that Brasseur had
expressed substantially the same view in regard to the origin of this
symbol.
THE SIXTH DAY
Maya, _cimi_; Tzental, _tox_; Quiche-Cakchiquel, _camey_; Zapotec,
_lana_; Nahuatl, _miquiztli_.
Landa's symbol for this day is shown in plate LXV, 24. The usual form in
the Codex Tro. and Cortesian Codex is given in LXV, 25; it is varied
frequently by an extension of the line from the mouth, somewhat as in
symbol 28 of the same plate, which is the usual form in the Dresden
Codex. A variation of this is seen at 29, which seems to have given rise
to the unusual form shown in 31. A radical variation is that given at
27. The symbol of the Death god, 26 and 30, is sometimes, though rarely,
substituted as the symbol of this day. The closed or dead eye and
prominent teeth, as seen in the usual forms, show very clearly that the
symbol is simply a conventional representation of the naked skull. The
form shown at 27, however, is more difficult to account for; reference
to it will be made farther on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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