XXViii INTEODUCTILN. 



of "to write," zabac is no longer found in the language, and instead of its 

 old meaning it now refers to ordinary ink. 



The word for letter or character is uooli. This is a primitive root 

 found with the same or a closely allied meaning in other branches of this 

 linguistic stock, as, for instance, in the Kiche and Cakchiquel. As a verb, 

 pret. uootah, fut. noote, it also means to form letters, to write; and from tlie 

 passive form, uooJial, we have the participial noun, uoohaii, something writ- 

 ten,- a manuscript. 



The ordinary word for book, paper, or letter, is Juhdi, in which the 

 asjiirate is almost mute, and is dropped in the forms denoting possession, as 

 u uun, my book, yuunil Bios, the book of God, il being the so-called "de- 

 terminative" ending. It occurs to me as not unlikely that mm, book, is a 

 syncopated form of uooJian, something written, given above. To read a 

 book is xochun, literally to count a book. 



According to Villagutierre Soto-Mayor, the name of the sacred books 

 of the Itzas was analte. In the printed Diccionario de la Lengua Mai/a, by 

 Don Juan Pio Perez, this is spelled anahfe, which seems to be a later form. 



The term is not found in several early Maya dictionaries in my pos- 

 session, of dates previous to 1700. The Abbd Brasseur, indeed, in a note 

 to Landa, explains it to mean "a book of wood," but it can have no such 

 signification. Perhaps it should read hunilte, this being composed of Imnil, 

 the "determinative" form of huun, a book, and the termination te, which, 

 added to nouns, gives them a specific sense, e. g. ainagte, a square figure, 

 from amay, an angle; tzucubtt, a province, from fsuc, a portion separated 

 from the rest. It would mean especiall)^ the sacred or national books. 



The particular class of books which were occupied with the calendar 

 and the ritual were called izolante, which is a participial noun from the verb 

 tzol, passive tsolal, to set in order, to arrange, with the suffix fe. By these 

 books were set in order and arranged the various festivals and fasts. 



When the conquest was an accomplished fact and the priests had got 

 the upper hand, the natives did not dare use their ancient characters. Tliey 

 exposed themselves to the suspicion of heresy and the risk of being burnt 

 alive, as more than once happened But tlieir strong passion for literature 

 remained, and they grartified it as far as tlicy dared b}' writing in their own 



