THE BTJENEK PEKIOD AND BISSEXTILE COUNT. 



31 



of the year and ahau counts ; but throughout the Maya calendar schemes there is 

 exhibited a fondness approaching perversity for reckoning by period rounds and stages 

 of seventy-three, and the introduction of the burner count gratified this propensity in 

 both regards, the single burner constituting a day round and seventy-three of them a 

 calendar round. Neither 360, the number of days in an ahau, nor 365, the number in 

 a year, is divisible by 260. The first contact of the burner period with the ahaus 

 comes at 4,680 days, the equivalent of 13 ahaus and of 18 burners, and the first 

 contact with the years at 18,980 days, the equivalent of 52 years and of 73 burners; 

 but not until 341,640 is a common multiple of 260, 360, and 365 reached. That is 

 eighteen calendar rounds or 936 years, 949 ahaus or a complete ahau round, and 1314 

 burner periods. So it is probable that a 260-day count ran throughout all the Maya 

 computations of time — not as a sacred year or a mysterious hieratic method of 

 reckoning, but as a mediator between the conflicting calendars and a harmonizer of 

 the bissextile counts. 



But to arrive at its use in the bissextile scheme. The 93,600 bissextiles accruing 

 in the grand period being resolvable into the ahau and katun reckoning, it is likely 

 they were computed in accordance with that plan. To render them more readily 

 comprehensible, I will present the exemplifications of my theory in tabular form: 



Chronological Calendar Bissextile Plan. 



GREAT CYCLES. 



CYCLES. 



KATUNS. 



AHAUS. 



CHUENS. 



BISSEXTILES. 











73 



1 









73 





18 







73 







360=1 ahau. 





73 









7,200=1 katun. 



73 











93,000=13 katuns. 



There is but one inharmony in this plan — the 73 ahaus do not result in a chuen of 

 bissextiles but in only 18. This, however, was one of their cardinal numbers, which 

 multiplied by 20 made the desired 360, and it was in this fashion that they arrived at 

 the ahau count in their chronological bissextile reckoning. 



As already stated, an adjustment of the bissextiles in conformity with the principles 

 of the annual calendar scheme cannot be made upon this plan ; neither can it be made 

 upon any plan leading up to a year of bissextiles, as the total number of bissextiles is 



