1893.] -^59 [Brinton. 



and indeed contrary to the evidence. The peculiarities which 

 mark this Calendar belong to itself alone, and differ completely 

 from those on which the time-counts and astronomical measure- 

 ments of the ancient nations of the Old World were based. It is 

 strangely and absolutely independent and American in its ori- 

 gin and development. 



The especial object which I have in view in this essay is to 

 collect the month and day-names of all the nations of the 

 Maya stock within my reach, and subject them to an etj^molog- 

 ical analysis and comparison with their correspondents in the 

 Zapotec and Nahuatl tongues, and to endeavor to reach the sym- 

 bolic significance of the Calendar as a mythical record and method 

 of divination. 



I confine mj'self to the linguistic analysis, and avoid that 

 based on the hieroglj^phic writing, of which so much use has 

 been made by Prof. Cyrus Thomas, Dr. Schellhas, Dr. Seler and 

 others, because I believe it must be brought into requisition with 

 great caution and under strict limitations. The leading princi- 

 ple of this writing is, in my opinion, essentially phonetic, and 

 not representative ; but phonetic according to what I have called 

 the " ikonomatic " method, which means that the glyph or figure 

 is a picture, not of the object, but of the name of the object, as 

 in what is called a •' rebus." * 



The consequence of this is, that it becomes quite misleading 

 to seek the real meaning or derivation of a day -name or other 

 word from the figure which represents it in the hieroglyphic 

 writing. The latter stands usually for a word of an entirel}" dif- 

 ferent meaning, the only connection being a more or less simi- 

 larity in sound. 



This will readily be understood by a few examples of this 

 method of writing in our own tongue. In it, for instance, the 

 pronoun " I " would be represented by the picture of an eye ; a 

 (writing) pen by the picture of a (hog) pen ; " matron " by a 

 mat, and a person running ; and so on. 



It is evident that any attempt to derive from such figures the 

 literal names of the day or month would lead the inquirer wholly 

 astray. Yet in spite of the fact that we have any number of 

 examples proving that this method was constantly in use by the 



* See my JEssays of an Americanist, pp. 213-229 (Philadelphia, 1890), for a full explanation 

 of the ikonomatic method. 



