The North Americans of Antiquity: Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization consideredShort, John T. (John Thomas)
History
The North Americans of Antiquity: Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization considered
Short, John T. (John Thomas)
Indians -- Origin; Indians of Mexico -- Antiquities; Indians of North America -- Antiquities
In addition to these stone and stucco records, the Mayas had books,
which Bishop Landa describes as written on a large leaf doubled in
folds and enclosed between two boards which they ornamented; they
wrote on both sides of the paper, in columns accommodated to the
folds; the paper they made from the roots of trees, and coated it
with a white varnish on which one could write well. These books were
called _Analtees_, a word which, according to Villagutierre, signifies
the same as history.[599] Bishop Landa confesses to having burned
a great number of the Maya books because they contained nothing in
which were not superstitions and falsities of the devil.[600] Bancroft
has quoted from Peter Martyr a description of these books, which
conveys the additional information that they were written on many
leaves joined together but folded so that when opened two pages are
presented to view.[601] Three of the Maya manuscripts are known to
have escaped the vandalism of the early Fathers. These are, first, the
Mexican MS. No. 2 of the Imperial Library at Paris, called by Rosny
the _Codex Peresianus_, which has been photographed by order of the
French government, but we believe is still unedited. The second, the
_Dresden Codex_, in the Royal Library at Dresden, a complete copy of
which was published by Lord Kingsborough. It is a Maya, and not an
Aztec MS., as is proven by its marked resemblance to the tablets of
Palenque and Copan, a fact pointed out by Mr. Stephens, though at
the date of his exploration everything was pronounced Aztec.[602] The
third, the _Manuscript Troano_, found by Brasseur de Bourbourg at
Madrid in 1865 in the possession of Señor Tro y Ortolano, from whom
it derives its name, is a Maya MS. of unknown origin and history. The
French government and the Commission Scientifique du Mexique reproduced
it in fac-simile by means of chromo-lithography, and Brasseur, with
the expenditure of great labor, attempted to translate part of it,
which he has published; but in a subsequent work he confesses that
he began his reading at the wrong end of the manuscript, which, as
Mr. Bancroft humorously remarks, was a “trifling error perhaps in the
opinion of the enthusiastic Abbé, but a somewhat serious one as it
appears to scientific men.”[603] Mr. Bancroft has reproduced a page
of the MS. Troano in his work, and accompanied it with a condensed
account from the Abbé’s description as follows: “The original is
written on a strip of maguey paper about fourteen feet long and nine
inches wide, the surface of which is covered with a whitish varnish,
on which the figures are painted in black, red, blue and brown. It is
folded fan-like in thirty-five folds, presenting when shut much the
appearance of a modern large octavo volume. The hieroglyphics cover
both sides of the paper, and the writing is consequently divided into
seventy pages, each about five by nine inches, having been apparently
executed after the paper was folded, so that the folding does not
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