xxii INTRODUCTION. 



in 1596, and, later, dean of the chapter of the cathedral at Merida. His 

 book, too, is extremely scarce, and I have never seen a copy; but I have 

 copious extracts from it, made by the late Dr. C. Hermann Berendt from a 

 copy in Yucatan. Aguilar writes of the Mayas : 



"They had books made from the bark of trees, coated with a white 

 and durable varnish. They were ten or twelve yards long, and were gath- 

 ered together in folds, like a palm leaf. On these they painted in colors the 

 reckoning of their years, wars, pestilences, hurricanes, inundations, famines, 

 and other events. From one of these books, which I myself took from 

 some of these idolaters, I saw and learned that to one pestilence they gave 

 the name Mayacimil, and to another Ocnakuchil, which mean 'sudden deaths' 

 and 'times when the crows enter the houses to eat the corpses.' And the 

 inundation they called Himyecil, the submersion of trees." ^ 



The writer leaves it uncertain whether he learr^ed these words directly 

 from the characters of the book or through the explanations of some native. 



It has sometimes been said that the early Spanish writers drew a broad 

 line between the picture-writing that they found in America and an aljjha- 

 betic script. This may be true of other parts, but is not so of Yucatan. 

 These signs, or some of them, are repeatedly referred to as "letters," letras. 



This is pointedly the case with Father Gabriel de San Buenaventura, 

 a French Fi-anciscan who served in Yucatan about 1670-80. He pub- 

 lished one of the earliest grammai's of the language, and also composed 

 a dictionary in three large volumes, which was not printed. Father Beltran 

 de Santa Rosa quotes from it an interesting tradition preserved by Buena- 

 ventura, that among the inventions of the mythical hero-god of the natives, 

 Itzamna, or Kinich aliau, was that of "the letters of the Maya language," 

 with which letters they wrote their books.^ Itzamna, of course, dates back 

 to a misty antiquity, but the legend is of value, as showing that the char- 

 acters used by the natives did, in the opinion of the early missionaries, 

 deserve the name of letters. 



' Pedro Sanchez de Aguilar, Informe contra Idolorum cultores del Obispado de Yucatan. 4to. Madrid, 

 1G:>9, ff. 124. 



-"El primero qnchall6 las letras de la lengua Maya61iiz6 el c6nipiito de los auos, nieses y edadcs, 

 y lo euseuo todo a los Indios de esta Provincia, fii6 un ludio \\an\a,Ao Kinchahau, y jior otro nomine 

 Tzauiiia." Fr. Pedro Bcltrau do Santa Rosa Maria, Arte del Idioma J/a^a, p. IG (•^led., M6rida do Yuca- 

 tan, 1859). 



