SCIENCE 



NEW YORK. MARCH 10, 1893. 



THE BOTURTNt-AUBIN-GOUPIL COLLECTION OF MEXI- 

 CAN A.' 



BY D. G BRINTON, M.D., LL.D., PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



In the year 1736, an Italian of lono- lineage but light piiisp 

 landed at Vera Cruz His name was Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci, 

 and the business which took him to Mexico was the collection of 

 the arrears of a pension due some of the descendants of Monte- 

 zuma who then resided in Portugal. This naturally led him to a 

 study of the native history of Mexico, a pastime which soon grew 

 to an enthusiasm, when he learned that the Blessed Virgin lier- 

 self had appeared and tallied with a poor Indian on the hill of 

 Guadalupe. Fired by a noble frenzy, he decided to devote his 

 whole life to these two objects, — the collection of every docu- 

 ment which would throw light on the ancient history of the in- 

 digenous population, and the vindication of the apparition of Our 

 Lady of Guadalupe. 



To tiiese aims he gave up nine consecutive years, and all the 

 money that he could borrow or beg; for his own supply of that 

 useful article was uncomfortably limited. But a foreigner, a 

 begging foreigner, and that foreigner an archseologist, was a com- 

 bination too repugnant to the Spanish constitution to be stomached 

 long; so, in 1745, the vice-regal government seized Boturini, 

 threw him into prison, and sequestrated his collections of books 

 and manuscripts, so precious in his eyes, as he pathetically wrote. 

 "That I would not exchange them for gold, nor silver, nor 

 diamonds, nor pearls." How the true spirit of the collector 

 breathes in those lines ! But, alas ! he was destined never to see 

 them again. Removed from prison, he was sent to Spain for 

 trial, where he died in 1749. His priceless collection was pre- 

 sented by the viceroy to the University of Mexico, whence it was 

 scattered to different private and public owners. 



Boturini was born in 1703. Precisely a century later, J. M. A. 

 Aubin was christened, in a little town in the south of France. 

 He was destined to partake of the same divine antiquarian fervor, 

 and to re-collect for all posterity the scattered jewels of his 

 predecessor's cabinet. With a liberal fortune and the best of in- 

 troductions, he resided in Mexico from 1830 to 1840, and with 

 singular tact and energy succeeded in securing a large part, and 

 the best part, of the documents gathered with such toil by the 

 Italian antiquary. He brought them to Paris, where he lived 

 surrounded by them for fifty years, making very little use of 

 them himself, and never permitting a single student so much as 

 to look at them. Why this misanthropic narrowness ? The reply 

 should be guarded. A cloud hung over Aubin's lonely life. He, 

 too, was imprisoned ; as he claimed, by malignant enemies; but 

 on a charge which forever blasts a life. I even heard indignant 

 protests at his mere presence, when poor, oid, and senile, he 

 was led into the hall of the Congress of Americanists, in 1890, at 

 Paris. 



Enough of this sad subject. At any rate, M. Aubin merits the 

 lasting gratitude of investigators that he preserved with scrupu- 

 lous care his wonderful collection. When I saw him in 1890, it 

 was no longer his. Financially ruined by investments in " Pan- 

 ama," he had accepted an offer for the whole of it from M. 

 Eugene Goupil, a native of Mexico, French on the paternal side, 

 tinctured with the blood of the native race through his mother. 

 He bought it, not as an antiquary, but as an enlightened lover of 

 his country and an intelligent patron of antiquarian studies. He 

 placed the manuscripts in native tongues, Spanish or Latin, the 

 wondrous colored pictographic scrolls on maguey paper, or on 



^ Read before tiie Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Phlladelpbla, 

 March S, 1893. 



skins of animals, the ancient Codices, maps, and titles, in the 

 hands of M Eugene Bohan, a distinguished antiquary, well known 

 in the cities of Mexico, New York, and Paris, from his long resi- 

 dence in them all. To his kindness I owe the privilege, enjoyed 

 by few, of a leisurely inspection of this wholly unrivalled collec- 

 tion of Mexicana. 



M. Boban's task was to make an analytical catalogue of the 

 three hundred and seventy-two pieces of which the collection 

 consists. He has completed that task in a manner in (he highest 

 degree creditable to his own scholarship and to the discriminating 

 liberality of M. Goupil. His work is comprised in two very large 

 quarto volumes of text, together of more than a thousand pages; 

 and a third thick volume or atlas, containing photographic re- 

 productions of some of the most remarkable documents. Yet this 

 huge publication is but the mere beginning of the labor which 

 must be expended on this mass of material before its value is 

 extracted. As for myself, after seeing what it contains, I made 

 up my mind that all that has yet been written about Mexico pre- 

 vious to the conquest has no more importance than have the his- 

 tories and descriptions of ancient Egypt which were composed 

 before the method of hieroglyphic interpretation was discovered. 



The title of M. Boban's work is: — 



"Documents pour servir a I'Histoire du Mexique. Catalogue 

 Raisonne de la Collection de jM. E. Eugene Goupil (Ancienne Col- 

 lection J. M. A. Aubin)." Paris, Ernest Leroux, Edileur, 1890. 

 Price, 180 francs. 



The first volume begins the catalogue with the celebrated His- 

 toria ChicJiimeca, an ancient Code.'i on agave paper. ] ainted in 

 blue, green, and brown, and giving in hieroglyphic characters 

 the history of pre-Columbian Mexico, from A.D. 963 to 1428. It 

 was translated by the early native chronicler, Ixtlilxochitl, and 

 for that reason all the ten leaves of which it consists are repro- 

 duced in phototype with the explanations. Following I his, a full 

 description is given of what are called the "Maps"' of Tlotzin, 

 Quinatzin, and Tepechpan, long pictorial scrolls, partly published 

 by M. Aubin, relating the migrations and traditional history of 

 the Nahuas. Next comes the curious Codex Criiciformis an 

 original, painted, figurative manuscript relating to Tezcuco and 

 Tenochtitlan. It is painted in four quarters, of thirteen com- 

 partments each, somewhat like a Maltese cross, whence the name 

 given it. 



The famous Tonalamatl, or " Book of Days," is then taken up. 

 This is an original, hieroglyphic book of eighteen leaves, mag- 

 nificently colored in red, black, green, and brown. Its purpose 

 is that of a religious and divinatory calendar, serving at once as 

 a ritual and as the basis for astrological prognostics. None of 

 the documents in the collection presents to the eye a more strik- 

 ing appearance than this venerable pictograph, concealing under 

 its strange and vivid coloring the dark wisdom of the Aztec di- 

 viners. 



Relating to the same subject, j)erhaps, is a remarkable painting 

 on a tanned deer-skin, representing a disk with fifty-two points, 

 that being the number of years in a Mexican cycle. A phototype 

 is given of this, and M. Boban thinks it is intended to prescribe 

 days for the worship of the sun, Tonatiuh ; but it is more likely 

 to be simply the computation of a calendar. 



Another historical pictograph is the Codex Mexicanvs, an 

 original, of forty-seven leaves, narrating the history of the Mexi- 

 cans from their departure from the mysterious land of Aztlan 

 down to the year 1590. This is native work, though late in the 

 sixteenth century. The Codex de Vergara is another figurative 

 document, defining boundaries and titles, whose date is 1528. 

 Like many of these title deeds, it contains valuable hints as to tlie 

 nature of the Mexican pictographic system. 



The collection is peculiarly rich in books written in the Nahuat 

 language. There are the Historia Tolteco-Chichimeca, the His 



