Brinton.] ZdO [gept, o, 



Tollan given by Tezozomoc, in his Cronica Mexicana. This 

 writer, thoroughly familiar with his native tongue, conve3^s to 

 us its ancient form and real sense. Speaking of the early 

 Aztecs, he says : " They arrived at the spot called Coatepec, on 

 the borders of Tonalan, the place of the swn,"* 



This name, Tonallan, is still not unusual in Mexico. Busch- 

 mann enumerates four villages so called, besides a mining town, 

 Tonailan.-\ " Place of the sun " is a literal rendering, and it 

 would be equall}^ accurate to translate it " sunny-spot " or 

 " warm place " or " summer-place." There is nothing very 

 peculiar or distinctive about these meanings. The warm, sunny 

 plain at the foot of the Snake-Hill was called, naturally enough, 

 Tonallan, syncopated to Tollan and thus to Tula, J 



But the literal meaning of Tollan — " Place of the Sun " — 

 brought it in later days into intimate connection with many a 

 myth of light and of solar divinities, until this ancient Aztec 

 pueblo became apotheosized, its inhabitants transformed into 

 magicians and demigods, and the corn-fields of Tula stand forth 

 as fruitful plains of Paradise. 



In the historic fragments to which I have alluded there is 

 scant reference to miraculous events, and the gods play no part 

 in the sober chronicle. But in the mythical cyclus we are at 

 once translated into the sphere of the supernal. The Snake- 



* Cronica Mexicana, cap. 1. " Particroii de alii y vinieron .4 la parte que llaman 

 Coatepec, tL>rnilnos de Tonalan, lugar del sol." In Naliuatl tonallan usually means 

 summer, sun-time. It is syncopated from tonalli and tlan; the latter is the locative 

 termination ; tonalli means warmth, siinniness, akin to lonaiiiih, sun ; but it also means 

 soul, spirit, especially when combined with the possessive pronouns, as to-tonal, our soul, 

 our immaterial essence. By a further syncope tonallan was reduced to Tollan or Tullan, 

 and by the elision of the terminal semi-vowel, this again became Tula. This name may 

 therefoi'e mean "the place of souls," an accessory signification which doubtless had its 

 iniiuence on the growth of the myths concerning the locality. 



It may be of some importance to note that Tula or Tollan was not at first the name of 

 the town, l>ut of the locality— that is, of the warm and fertile meadow-lands at tlie foot 

 of the Coatepctl. The town was at first called Xoeotitlan, the place of fruit, from xocotl, 

 fruit, ti, connective, and tlan, locative ending. (See Sahagun, Ilistoria de Niicva Espana, 

 Lib. X, cap. 20, sees. 1 and 12.) This name was also applied to one of the quarters of the 

 city of Mexico when conquered by Cortes, as we learn from the same authority. 



t Buschmann, Ueber die AzteHschen Ortsnamen, ss. 794, 797 (Berlin, 1852). 



t The verbal radical is tona, to warm (hazer calor, Molina, Vocabidario de la Lcngua 

 Mexicana, s. v.); from this root come many words signifying warmth, fertility, abun- 

 dance, the sun, the east, the summer, the day, and others expressing the soul, the vital 

 principle, etc. (Simt'on, Diet, de la Langue Nafumtl, s. v. tonalli.) As in the Algonkin 

 dialects the words for cold, night and death are from the same root, so in Nahuatl are 

 those for warmth, day and life. (Comp. Duponceau, Mcmoire sur Ics Langucs de I'Amcr- 

 ique du Nord, p. 327, Paris, 183G.) 



