XXXvi INTEODUCTION. 



which I think is unquestionably the correct one, that the Maya writing is 

 certainly something more than systematized picture-writing, and yet that 

 we cannot expect to find in it anything corresjDOnding to our own alphabet. 



In the same year (1879) Dr. Carl Schultz-Sellack published in the 

 ZeitscJmft fiir Ethnologic, Bd., XI, th eresults of some studies he had made 

 of the Dresden Codex, compared with others published in Kingsborough's 

 work,. especially with reference to the signs of the gods of the cardinal 

 points. He recognized the same signs as De Rosny, but arranged them 

 differently. Many of his comparisons of Maya with Aztec pictographs are 

 suggestive and merit attentive considei'ation; but he speaks a great deal too 

 confidently of their supposed close i-elationship.^ 



Although Dr. Forstemann, in his introductory text to the Dresden 

 Codex (1880), expressly disclaims any intention to set up as an expounder 

 of its contents, he nevertheless compared carefully the three published 

 codices, and offers (pp. 15-17) a number of acute suggestions and striking 

 comparisons, which the futvire student must by no means overlook. 



Finally, the "Studies in American Picture- Writing" of Prof. Edward 

 S.'Holden, published in the "First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnol- 

 ogy, 1881," are to be included in the list. He devotes his attention princi- 

 pally to the mural inscriptions, and only incidentally to the Manuscripts. 

 The method he adopts is the mathematical one employed in unriddling 

 crj^ptography. By its application he is convinced that the writing is from 

 left to right, and from above downward; that the signs used at Copan and 

 Palenque were the same, and had the same meaning; that in proper names, 

 at least, the picture-writing was not phonetic; and that in all probability it 

 had no phonetic elements in it whatever. 



As Professor Holden states that he is entirely unacquainted with the 

 Maya language, and but slightly with the literature of the subject; as his 

 method would confessedly not apply to the characters, if phonetic, without 

 a knowledge of the Maya; and as he assumes throughout his article that 

 the mythology and attributes of the Maya divinities were the same as those 

 of the Aztec, for which the evidence is very far from sufiicient, we must 



' Dr. Schultz-Sellack'8 article is entitled " Die Amcrikaniachen Goiter der Vier Weligegenden und 

 Hire Tempel in Palenque." 



