486 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



sealed in its envelope, or like No. 6.^ The nipple (im) sign for i 

 appears in the codices usually with three nipples, which leads me to 

 think that the teats of a deer or other animal may have been one of 

 the original forms; sometimes it appears with two; Landa shows it 

 with two, and the sign of the day Ik (^^') may be based on an original 

 human breast form with only one. No. 8 probably represents a kat, 

 an earthen, basketry, or wooden pan, tray, or low flat tub, often 

 boat-shaped; it was also called a cem or boat (see Motul, chem Udl 

 ppo and chem che), and conversely a boat may have been called a 

 kat. The comblike lines may be the conventionalization of a fluted 

 rim or of projecting basketry withes, or may represent people in a 

 kat in the meaning boat. No. 10 is an example of the many perspec- 

 tive drawings found in both Maya art and the writing symbols — a 

 rounded, flattened pot, basket, or calabash with a k^al, a tied-on or 

 clasped lid or cover. The Maya, as is well known, drew in per- 

 spective from very early times. No. 11 is a k^uk^um, feather or 

 plume, and in this word k^u77i was probably felt to be the true initial 

 form of the stem and k^u- a reduplication, wliich may not have been 

 historically the case, but which would be felt analogically in a 

 language like Maya in which initial reduplication is a derivational 

 process in wide use. Nothing as yet is postulated as to the object 

 source of 16, a profile head with a sort of parrotlike beak; a sugges- 

 tion here would be the parrotlike bird called moan or mvmi. The 

 sign corresponds to the consonantal sequence mn, with any or no 

 vowel intervening, and as a day sign denotes the day Men. No. 23 

 looks very much like a form of No. 1, but it is always upright and 

 placed in front of a sign cluster with its concave side toward the 

 cluster, while No. 1 is not placed in front of a cluster and is usually 

 horizontal. No. 23 corresponds to initial i* of a word or to w as a 

 separate word or as a prefix. 



■• As may be inferred from this, I regard the previous theories about what No. 6 repre- 

 sents, one of which calls it a kernel of maize (to which it has no resemblance), as fanciful. 

 The fact that in some Maya pictures corn plants may sprout from characters of writing, 

 and characters may take part in the scenes like persons or objects, is secondary symbolism, 

 not the original logic from which the character arose. AH this elaborate secondary sym- 

 bolism, perhaps religious and magical in large degree, has nothing whatever to do with 

 the reading of the characters in their capacity of symbols of writing, any more than the 

 elaborate symbolism and numerology that grew up around the Hebrew letters in rabbinical 

 tradition affects the reading of the Hebrew texts by one jot. This secondary symbolism 

 may eventually become a matter of philological literary study, wherein it will very likely 

 prove important. At present, and from a linguistic standpoint, clearing away all this sort 

 of symbolism is essential to understanding the proper symbolism and function of the Maya 

 signs in writing. The use of No. 6 to denote the day Kan is a writing of the original name 

 of the day Hu — i. e., lizard, iguana (cf. Aztec Cuetzpalin, lizard, for the same day). All 

 the original names of the days, except for Ik, Cimi, Caban, and perhaps Manik, Cauac, and 

 Eznab, and one or two more, became changed under the Maya culture subsequently to the 

 establishment of the writing system. Some of the days continued to be represented by the 

 initial letter or character of their original names, much as Ave write "lb." for "libra," but 

 read it "pound." The voluminous speculations of Seler concerning the day symbols are to 

 be taken with a great deal of caution, if they are not indeed stumbling blocks of the worst 

 kind. 



