492 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



Now, having noted the reading of a few individual words, let us 

 read a short sentence written in Maya hieroglyphs. Figure 3 shows 

 page 38 of the Codex Tro-Cortesianus, and the sentence thereon to 

 be examined in particular is that made by the four sign clusters or 

 glyphs over the second seated figure in section b, the middle of the 

 three horizontal divisions of the page. Figure 4 shows this sentence 

 written on one line, analyzed, transliterated, and translated. As can 

 easily be observed from figure 3, the texts which comment on the 

 pictures, or to put it the other way, which are illustrated by the 

 pictures, are placed over the pictures reading from right to left 

 across the width of the picture and then on the line below similarly ; 

 or they run vertically downward in the cases where there is no pic- 

 ture. This order is easily demonstrated from the parallelism of the 

 writing; we have here plainly a repetition of very similar short sen- 

 tences or clauses. Thus, if we give a letter to each cluster or glyph 

 which is the same, the middle-section text over the first or left-hand 

 picture runs A-B, and then on the line below C-D, next to the right 

 running straight downward we have A-B-E-F, then over the next 

 picture A-B-C-D again, then downward again A-B-G-H. The 

 texts of the top and bottom sections can be seen to run in the same 

 manner, which indeed is general throughout the codices. The texts 

 would seem to be in a style which is common enough in aboriginal 

 American songs, chants, and ceremonies; sets of phrases containing 

 a constant element repeated throughout a set, as when each line of 

 a song stanza begins the same way but then introduces a certain dif- 

 ference. Thus the text which we have just examined consists of 

 lines each beginning A-B and then becoming different. Navaho 

 chants are of course typical cases of this sort of thing. In the top 

 section, dealing, as the pictures show, with hunting by means of the 

 spear, each clause begins with the word loman "speared" that we 

 have already studied. We shall not however pause to analyze this 

 top section in detail, since the limits of this paper do not allow it. 



The middle and bottom sections are very similar to each other, 

 though not identical, and deal with drilling, as can be seen from the 

 pictures. The pictures of the middle section show the using of the 

 drill to make fire, the bottom set show the drilling of an object which 

 appears to be a stone. Each clause in each section begins with the 

 word for drilling or drill, as is evident not only from comparison 

 with these pictures, but also from one of the other Maya books, the 

 Dresden Codex, in which th& same sign cluster accompanies pictures 

 of drilling. This cluster. A, occupies first position, which is the 

 regular position of the predicating word of a clause in Maya of the 

 sixteenth century (if not also today) as shown by the hundreds of 

 short simple sentences in the Motul dictionary. This predicator 



