IKTEODUCTION. 3 



The year consists of 366 days. It follows necessarily that there must be ten 

 dominical days instead of four, and that it requires 130 instead of 52 years to complete 

 the calendar. The chronological year (so called, though undoubtedly both that and 

 the so-called cycle were otherwise designated) consists of 400 days, divided into 20 

 periods of 20 days each. Twenty of these years make a cycle. There is nothing in 

 the chronicle to indicate the character or length of periods greater than that. 



The year consisting of 366 days it necessarily results that its beginning can have no 

 fixed date relative to solar or terrestrial phenomena, but must revolve regularly 

 through the seasons. This accounts for the diversity among the old writers as to the 

 time the Cakchiquel year began. Each gives a different date. It will no longer be 

 necessary to attempt to discredit or reconcile their statements, for the year at some 

 time began not only with the various dates alleged by them but with every other one 

 of the 366 days. The only interest which can hereafter attach to their statements will 

 be that they reveal the dates at which the respective writers obtained their 

 information. 



With a revolving New Year no bissextiles were required to keep the calendar 

 adjusted to the annual solar recurrences. The count of days ran on regularly without 

 any intercalations or excisions. The year might begin at the summer or winter 

 solstice, at the vernal or autumnal equinox, or at any other period ; yet two things 

 about it were fixed — it always had 366 days, and it always began with the first day of 

 the month Tacaxepual. Its fixity in these regards enabled me to discover its true 

 character ; hence I have a respect for even that small amount of stability in it. 



THE CODICES. 



The Dresden codex pertains to the Archaic system in the main, though reckoning 

 twenty cycles to the great cycle ; the Troano and Cortesianus to the Yucatec ; the 

 Peresianus — though too mutilated and fragmentary to base a definitive opinion upon — 

 most likely to an older Tzental form, which had a considerable affinity to the Archaic. 

 None of them, however, can be of much assistance in solving Maya historical problems, 

 as they are all merely text-books explaining the meaning of signs, the elementary 

 principles of their respective calendars, and certain phases of lunar, solar, and, in a few 

 places, bissextilic and chronological reckoning. I believe the figures usually supposed 

 to represent deities to be only personifications of different periods or phases of time, 

 and that most of the glyphs are merely numerals, or symbols used for the occasion in 

 their numerative sense only. This belief will appear less extravagant after an 

 examination of the face numerals, and other series, given farther on. 



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