30 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



IBI'LL. 57 



^'Miile admitting tills restricted use of })hoiietic composition by the 

 Maya, Professor Seler refuses to recognize its further extension : 



Certainly there existed in the Maya writing compound hieroglyphs giving the name 

 of a deity, person, or a locality, whose elements united on the phonetic principle. 

 But as yet it is not proved that they wrote texts. And without doubt the greater 

 part of the Maya hieroglyjihics were conventional symbols built up on the ideographic 

 principle. 



Doctor Foi-stemann also regards the use of phonetic elements as 

 restricted to little more than the above when he says, "Finally the 

 graphic system of the Maya . . . never even achieved the expres- 

 sion of a phrase or even a verb." 



On the other hand, Mr. Bowditch (1910: p. 255) considers the use 

 of phonetic com])Osition extended considerably beyond these limits: 



As far as I am aware, the use of this kind of writing [rebus] 

 was confined, among the Aztecs, to the names of persons and 

 places, while the Mayas, if they used the rebus form at all, 

 used it also for expressing common nouns and possibly ab- 

 stract ideas. The Mayas surely used picture writing and the 

 ideographic system, but I feel confident that a large part of 

 their hieroglyphs will be found to be made u]) of rebus forms 

 and that the true line of research will be found to lie in this 



direction. 

 1<IG. lo. A ztef place names: 



(I, The sign for the town Doctor Bi'inton (1894 b: p. 13) held an opinion 



thTto^AcatzLr'" '°' between these two, perhaps inclining slightly 



toward the former: "The intermediate })Osition 



which I have defended, is that while chiefly ideographic, they [the 



Maya glyphs] are occasionally phonetic, in the same manner as are 



confessedly the Aztec picture-writings." 



These quotations from the most eminent authorities on the sub- 

 ject well illustrate their points of agreement and divergence. All 

 admit the existence of ])honetic elements in the glyj)hs, but disagree 

 as to their extent. And here, indeed, is the crux of the whole ])honetic 

 question. Just how extensively do i)honetic elements enter into the 

 com|)osition of the Maya glyi:)hs ? Without attem})ting to dispose 

 of this ])oint defuiitely one way or the other, the author may say that 

 he believes that as the decipherment of Maya writing progresses, 

 more and more ])honetic elements \\-ill be identified, though the idea 

 conveyed by a glyph will always be found to overshadow its phonetic 

 value. 



The various theories above described have not been })resented for 

 the reader's extended consideration, but only in order to acquaint 

 him with the probable nature of the Maya glyphs. Succass in 

 deciphering, as we shall see, has not come through any of the above 

 mentioned lines of research, which will not be pursued further in this 

 work. 



