NOTES AND EMENDATIONS BY DR EDUARD SELER 



Owing to the absence of Doctor Seler on an expedition to Mexico 

 and Central America during the period in which his papers were 

 going through the press, the proofs could not be placed in his hands. 

 On his return to Berlin, however, he kindly consented to prepare the 

 accompanying notes, in which are incorporated such corrections and 

 additions as he deemed most important : 



1 (page 22, line 4). My suiiposition that the Jesuit astronomer Don Carlos 

 Siguenza y Gongora was the first who brought up the theory of an intercalation 

 of thirteen days at the end of each period of fifty-two years was an erroneous 

 one. The same opinion had been stated before him by Jacinto de la Serna, the 

 author of Manual de Ministros de Indies, who, too, relied on former authorities. 

 It is quite probable that these were the same as those consulted by Siguenza. 

 Nevertheless I have not been able to find a trace of a similar explanation from 

 the contemporaries of Father Sahagun and his immediate successors. 



2 (page .34, line ?> from the bottom). 1 have lately changed my opinion in 

 regard to the correspondence of colors and directions. I believe now that the 

 correspondence given by Landa^that is to say, that yellow, red, white, and 

 black represent, resi:)ectively, south, east, north, and west — was the generally 

 accepted one, but that Landa did not connect in the right way the colors and 

 their directions with the different years. He ascribed the colors and the direc- 

 tions to the yeai's next following their respective years, because in the last five 

 days of a certain year the u-uuyeyab, or evil demon, of this year was taken to 

 the plaza of the village, and, after certain i)erformances had taken place 

 over him, was thrown out of the village in the direction appropriated to the 

 new year. Thus, for instance, the yellow demon of the south was set up in the 

 last five days of the Cauac, or soutliern, years, and thrown out of the village in 

 the direction east, appropriated to the new year, viz, the Kan year. Tlie pages 

 30b and 29b, .Sid and .30d of the Troano codex, adduced by me in support of tlie 

 theory I presented in my former paper, admit a different explanation. On the 

 other hand, the very name given by Landa as designating the Ekel Ba<ab. or 

 black Bacab — Ilozan ek — is a pi-oof that this Bacab and his coior are to be 

 ascribed, as is done by Landa, to the western sky ; for Ilozan ek rs the name of 

 the evening star. 



.3 (page 35, line G). In the later edition of this paper, reprinted in the first 

 volume of my (lesammelte Abhandlungen zur amerikauLschen Sprach- und 

 Alterthumskunde, page .530, and in another paper published in tJ»e same volume. 

 pages 3G7 to .389, I pointed out that not only the two signs of north and south, 

 represented on pages 2(> and 2S of the Dresden codex, but the whole lower parts 

 of these two pages, with the signs of north and south they contain, must be 

 changed, 



667 



