Brinlon.] ^t) [Jan. 5, 



It is very significant that neither the radical na nor any of its 

 derivatives are found in the Huasteca dialect of the Mayan 

 tongue, which was spoken about Tampico, far removed from 

 other members of the stock. The inference is that in the south- 

 ern dialects it was a borrowed stem. 



Nor in the Nahuatl language — although its very name is de- 

 rived fi-om it * — does the radical na appear in its simplicity and 

 true significance. To the Nahuas, also, it must have been a 

 loan. 



It is true that de la Serna derives the Mexican naualli, a 

 sorcerer, from the verb nahualtia, to mask or disguise oneself, 

 " because a naualli is one who masks or disguises himself under 

 the form of some lower animal, which is his nagual ;''^ ■\ but it is 

 altogether likely that nahualtia derived its meaning from the 

 custom of the medicine men to wear masks during their cere- 

 monies. 



Therefore, if the term nagual^ and many of its associates 

 and derivatives, were at first borrowed from the Zapotec lan- 

 guage, a necessary corrollary of this conclusion is, that along 

 with these terms came most of the superstitions, rites and 

 beliefs to which they allude ; which thus became grafted on the 

 general tendency to such superstitions existing ever^'where and 

 at all times in the human mind. 



Along with the names of the days and the hieroglyphs which 

 mark them, and the complicated arithmetical methods by means 

 of which they were employed, were carried most of the doc- 

 trines of the Nagualists, and the name by which they in time 

 became known from central Mexico quite to Nicaragua and 

 beyond. 



The mysterious words have now, indeed, lost much of their 

 ancient significance. In a recent dictionary of the Spanish of 

 Mexico nagual is defined as " a witch ; a word used to frighten 

 children and make them behave, "[j: while in Nicaragua, where the 

 former Nahuatl population has left so many traces of its pres- 

 ence in the language of to-day, the word nagual no longer means 

 an actor in the black art, or a knowledge of it, but his or her 



* See an article by me, entitled "On the Words ' Anahuac ' and ' Nahuatl,' " in the 

 American Antiquarian, for November, 1893. 

 t Manual dc Mlni&lros, p. 50. 

 X .k'sus Sanchez, Glosario dc Voces CastelUmas derivadas del Idioma Nahnatl, sub voce. 



