54 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 28 



and the element tun. Thus in the hieroglyph of the god of hunting, v, 

 who.se distinguishing characteristic usually is that he bears on his 

 diadem an eye or the element tun, that is, a "jewel". The hiero- 

 glyph of this god is sometimes written in the form shown at t; some- 

 times in that of u. And that the element substituted in u for the 

 element Cauac is actually to lie conceived of here as tun or ''stone", 

 "precious stone", follows, on the one hand, from its use as a precious 

 stone in the head ornament (tun, "stone", "precious stone''), and, on 

 the other hand, from its being the basis for the post on which Mam, 

 the Uuayayab demon, is set in the xma kaba kin (Dresden codex, page 

 25c). Now, it is surely quite safe to assume a connection of ideas 

 between clouds, rain, and stone, for in those regions every rain is a 

 thunderstorm. Nevertheless, it will \w plain that an army of doubts 

 was routed when I hit upon the fact in the course of my Zapotec 

 studies that the ver}^ same word, that is, quia, quie, is used in Zapotec 

 for "rain" and "stone". 



For the last day sign we find in the Zapotec calendar the name lao 

 or loo, and this means "eye", "face", "front.'' This again does not 

 agree directly with the Mexican Xochitl, "flower", but with the form 

 of the Maya hieroglyph [y and z), which imdoubtedly represents a 

 face. The name of the Ma^^a sign Ahau, "leader", also agrees. 

 There is also undoubted}}^ a connection of ideas between "eye" and 

 "flower". To ])e sure, I can not now actually prove it from the 

 Zapotec tongue. But I showed the metamorphosis of the eye into 

 the flower in the Zapotec figures which 1 described and copied in 

 Veroft'entlichungen aus dem Koniglichen Museum fiir Volkerkunde, 

 volume 1, parts 1 to 4. And indeed the Zapotec word for flower may 

 explain some singular resemblances of the hieroglyph Ahau. In 

 Zapotec, for instance, "flower" is quije, which is very much like the 

 word quie, "rain", and "stone". The i, as is stated in a gram- 

 mar, was pronounced with stronger emphasis ("for this ij is empha- 

 sized more than to signify the stone"). Now, it is indeed a striking 

 fact that the element Ahau (Mexican xochitl, "flower") in some 

 hieroglyphs seems to be homologous with the element Cauac (Mexican 

 quiauitl, "rain"). If this were a single instance, I should not lay 

 much stress upon it. But as the above researches as to the meaning 

 of the Zapotec day signs have in almost every instance shown that the 

 Zapotec names formed the connecting link for apparently irreconcil- 

 able diflerences in the Mexican and Maya names and designations, I 

 believe that I may also add this coincidence to the rest. 



It is obvious from its situation and it is also historically proved that 

 the country of the Zapotecs was the region above all others in which 

 an interchange was effected of cultural influences which spread from 

 the Mexican region to that of the Maya races and vice versa. But 



