_Nayanii_, the superior reason of man. _Nayaa_, } superiority, a superior man (gentileza, gentil hombre). _Naguii_, } _From the Nahuatl, of Mexico_. _Naua_, to dance, holding each other by the hands. _Naualli_, a sorcerer, magician, enchanter. _Nauallotl_, magic, enchantment, witchcraft. _Nauatl_, or _nahuatl_, skillful, astute, smart; hence, superior; applied to language, clear, well-sounding, whence (perhaps) the name of the tongue. _Nauati_, to speak clearly and distinctly. _Nauatlato_, an interpreter. =38.= I believe that no one can carefully examine these lists of words, all taken from authorities well acquainted with the several tongues, and writing when they still retained their original purity, without acknowledging that the same radical or syllable underlies them all; and further, that from the primitive form and rich development of this radical in the Zapotec, it looks as if we must turn to it to recognize the origin of all these expressions, both in the Nahuatl and the Maya linguistic stocks. The root _na_, to know, is the primitive monosyllabic stem to which we trace all of them. _Nahual_ means knowledge, especially mystic knowledge, the Gnosis, the knowledge of the hidden and secret things of nature; easily enough confounded in uncultivated minds with sorcery and magic.[57-*] It is very significant that neither the radical _na_ nor any of its derivatives are found in the Huasteca dialect of the Mayan tongue, which was spoken about Tampico, far removed from other members of the stock. The inference is that in the southern dialects it was a borrowed stem. Nor in the Nahuatl language--although its very name is derived from it[58-*]--does the radical _na_ appear in its simplicity and true significance. To the Nahuas, also, it must have been a loan. It is true that de la Serna derives the Mexican _naualli_, a sorcerer, from the verb _nahualtia_, to mask or disguise oneself, “because a _naualli_ is one who masks or disguises himself under the form of some lower animal, which is his _nagual_;”[58-†] but it is altogether likely that _nahualtia_ derived its meaning from the custom of the medicine men to wear masks during their ceremonies. Therefore, if the term _nagual_, and many of its associates and derivatives, were at first borrowed from the Zapotec language, a necessary corrollary[TN-6] of this conclusion is, that along with these terms came most of the superstitions, rites and beliefs to which they allude; which thus became grafted on the general tendency to such superstitions existing everywhere and at all times in the human mind. Along with the names of the days and the hieroglyphs which mark them, and the complicated arithmetical methods by means of which they were employed, were carried most of the doctrines of the Nagualists, and the name by which they in time became known from central Mexico quite to Nicaragua and beyond.