REtEKl MAYA CALENDAR TN HTSTOTtTO CHRONOLOGY 329 



figures attached invariably refer to this normal date as the starting 

 or ending point! The stels© of Copan and Quirigua and the altar 

 slabs of Palenque all have at the top a large glyph followe'd by a date, 

 an ahaii, the initial date or the name of a period of 20X300 days. 

 And these large numerals invariably appear to give the difference 

 l)etween this date and the above-mentioned normal date. Wlien such 

 a distinct fixing of time occurs and when such weight is attached to 

 it that the monuments erected at various periods, without exception, 

 give this determination of the time first, we might well expect that 

 these people were also capable of so ordering the calendar as to reduce 

 the displacements resulting from the insufficient estimate of the 

 length of the year; but hitherto, as I said, we have not succeeded in 

 clearing this matter up. 



The so-called books of Chilam Balam are to be regarded as off- 

 shoots of the Maya manuscripts, most of them originating toward 

 the end of the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth 

 centuries. Thev recite in the characters invented and taught 

 by the monks all the old traditions still lingering in the memory of 

 individuals. It is to be regretted that these valuable sources, which 

 exist in various transcripts in Yucatan, were not published earlier. 

 Copies of them were made by our indefatigable compatriot, Dr Her- 

 mann Behrendt, whose death was a great loss to science, and these 

 copies were bought after his death by Doctor Brinton. I furnished 

 various proofs in the last session but one of the Americanist Congress 

 at Huelva that these books treat in general of matters similar to those 

 given in at least a portion of the hieroglyphic Maya manuscripts, and 

 that a considerable part of the old traditions is still to be found in 

 their pages. 



These books also contain the small amount of historic information 

 regarding antiquity that is preserved by tradition. They have been 

 brought together and published by Brinton in the first volume of his 

 Library of Aboriginal American Literature, under the title, " Maya 

 Chronicles ". They are, in fact, brief chronicles, a recountal of the 

 divisions of time, the periods called katun, which had elapsed since the 

 immigration into the country and of the few memorable events which 

 tradition has preserved. '' This is the series of the katuns ", " this is 

 the enumeration of the katuns ", " this is the account of the katuns ", 

 are the stereotyped forms with Avhich the text of these chronicles 

 begins. 



The periods which are numbered, the katuns, are of considerable 

 length. Their actual extent is still a matter of controversy. A^liile 

 the older Spanish authors, as Bishop Landa and Cogolludo, without 

 exception ascribe to them 20 years, and this length of time also forms 

 the basis of the computations which occur in the text of the books of 

 Chilam Balam, the length of the katun is said to be 24 years in the 



