50 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 28 



xoo, xixooni, temblor de tierra (''carthciuake"); tixoo lay 60, temblar 

 la tierra (""for the earth to shake"); pitiio-xoo, dios de los terremotos 

 (" god of earthquakes "). And it is well known that in Mexican picture- 

 writings on historical subjects, as those in Codex Telleriano-Remensis 

 and Codex Vaticanus A, the sign Olin — usually, to be sure, in connec- 

 tion with the brown and black dotted stripes, v.'hich signify the earth 

 or the tilled field — is generally used to denote a coming earth(|uake, 

 as the verb olini is especially used of earthquakes: auh in tlalli olini 

 (Olmos). 



But if this is the original meaning of olin, we shall likewise have to 

 search for a similar tirst conception for the hieroglyph by which the 

 seventeenth day sign is known in the Maya manuscript. And, in fact, 

 the ver}^ name which the day sign bears in the calendars of the Maya 

 races points to this fundamental conception. The Tzental-Zotzil word 

 chic means "to shake". The Guatemalan word noh means "great", 

 "powerful", answering to the original meaning of the Zapotec xoo. 

 The Maya name caban means "that which is brought down", "that 

 which is below", that is, "earth", "world". The root cab has a still 

 more pregnant meaning: in Charencey's vocabvilary it is translated as 

 terrain volcanique, that is, "earthquake region". In a broader sense 

 it is also used for "earth", "world". And if the same root, cab, also 

 means "excretion" and "honey", miel, colmena, ponzona de insecto, 

 untuosidad de una planta 6 fruta, ("honey", "beehive", "venom 

 insect", "juice of a plant or fruit"), then the intermediate idea is, it 

 seems to me, that of dripping down. 



The forms of the hieroglyph Caban (cr, figure 5) are very nmch alike. 

 But I did not recognize the real meaning in my earlier article. The 

 hieroglyph contains an element which forms the characteristic constit- 

 uent of the gl3^ph of the young goddess Chibirias, or Ixchebelyax, who, 

 as I think I can prove, takes the name Zac Zuhuy, "the white virgin ", 

 a name which we also recognize in Zac Ziui, the Bacab of the Ix year, 

 mentioned by Landa. It is evident in the hieroglpyh of this goddess 

 (J and (\ same figure) that the element which forms the distinguishing 

 constituents of the hieroglyph Caban is meant to represent a part of 

 the dark tuft of hair, with the long, waving, whiplike strands which 

 give the whole figure of the goddess, where she is drawn in full, so 

 characteristic an appearance. According to this we should conceive 

 of the hieroglyph Caban merely as an abbreviation of the hieroglyph 

 of this goddess, and thus recur to the same meaning which I have 

 already derived from the Zapotec word xoo, namely, "the earth"; 

 for Ixchebelyax, the young goddess, is only another form of the earth 

 goddess, who occupies the same position in regard to the old earth 

 mother Ixchel that Xochiquetzal does to Tonantzin among the Mexi- 

 cans. I find a striking proof of the accurac}^ of this conception of the 

 hieroglyph Caban in the fact that this hieroglyph appears homolo- 



