Brinton.] ^*^ [Oct. 6, 



ratus for the Ma3^an stock. In this respect I am more fortunately 

 situated, having access to a number of unpublished vocabularies 

 in the Library of the American Philosophical Society and in 

 my own collection. These include, for the Maya proj^er, the 

 MS. dictionaries obtained from the convents of Motul and San 

 Francisco, Yucatan, and named from them ; for the Tzental the 

 vocabulary of Father Domingo Lara,* and for the Quiche and 

 Cakchiquol the MS. vocabularies of Fathers Yarea, Goto, Guz- 

 man, Ximenes and Yillacanas. For the Zapotec I have depended 

 on an anonymous vocabulary in MS,, the published works of 

 the licentiate Belmar, the grammar of Father Juan de Cordova 

 and the Vocahulario Hi.<pano-Zapoteco recentl}' issued in the 

 city of Mexico. The Xahuatl is easily accessible through the 

 dictionaries of Molina and Simeon. 



With these at hand, I believe I am able to show beyond ques- 

 tion : 



1. That the day-names in all five of these languages and dia- 

 lects are substantialh^ identical in signification, and therefore 

 must have had one and the same origin. 



2. That in all the Mayan dialects the names belonged already 

 at the time of the Conquest to an archaic form of speech, indi- 

 cating that they were derived from some common ancient stock, 

 not one from the other, and that, with one or two possible ex- 

 ceptions, they belong to the stock and are not borrowed words. 

 On the other hand, none of the Nahuatl day-names are archaic, 

 which appears to indicate that these received the Calendar at a 

 later date. 



3. That the theory of Boturini, subsequently espoused by the 

 Abbe Brasseur and others, that the day-names refer to historic 

 characters, is wholl}' without foundation. 



4. That there is no evidence to connect them with astronom- 

 ical bodies or processes, but that they seem purely divinatory 

 and mythical. 



♦This is the writer called by the Abbi' Brasseur in his Biblioth/quc Mcxico-Guatemali- 

 enne, p. 10, " Ara," and the MSS. he describes are those now in my hands, two in num- 

 ber, copied in Ifiie and 1620. Father Lara was provincial of Chiapas in 1556. See Beristaia 

 y Souza, Btbliolcca Ilispano-Americaiia Sciaitrional, Tom. ii, p. 132. 



