Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Transcriber's Note A number of typographical errors have been maintained in this version of this book. They have been marked with a [TN-#], which refers to a description in the complete list found at the end of the text. The following codes are used for characters not available in the character set used for this book: + dagger ++ double dagger THE BOOKS OF CHILAN BALAM, The Prophetic and Historic Records of the Mayas of Yucatan. By DANIEL G. BRINTON, M. D. VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA; MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY; THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY; DELEGUE OF THE INSTITUTION ETHNOGRAPHIQUE, ETC., ETC. [Illustration] EDWARD STERN & CO., PHILADELPHIA. PREFATORY NOTE. The substance of the present pamphlet was presented as an address to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, at its meeting in January, 1882, and was printed in the _Penn Monthly_, March, 1882. As the subject is one quite new in the field of American archaeology and linguistics, it is believed that a republication in the present form will be welcomed by students of these branches. THE BOOKS OF CHILAN BALAM.[5-*] Civilization in ancient America rose to its highest level among the Mayas of Yucatan. Not to speak of the architectural monuments which still remain to attest this, we have the evidence of the earliest missionaries to the fact that they alone, of all the natives of the New World, possessed a literature written in "letters and characters," preserved in volumes neatly bound, the paper manufactured from the bark of a tree and sized with a durable white varnish.[5-+] A few of these books still remain, preserved to us by accident in the great European libraries; but most of them were destroyed by the monks. Their contents were found to relate chiefly to the pagan ritual, to traditions of the heathen times, to astrological superstitions, and the like. Hence, they were considered deleterious, and were burned wherever discovered.