28 



THE BURNER PERIOD AND BISSEXTILE 



COUNT. 



The theory I am about to advance is almost a purely hypothetical one. For its 

 support I have little to offer beyond the firm hold it has taken on my own mind, the 

 intelligible relative data of the inscriptions being wholly insufficient to conclusively 

 establish it ; yet I present it with entire confidence that future discovery will prove it 

 to be substantially true. It is not a solid basis for an important superstructure, but 

 necessity compels us at times to build, tentatively at least, on very uncertain foundations. 

 In this instance the necessity of some scheme for keeping an account of the bissextiles 

 renders it imperative to discover a simple and harmonious plan by which they can be 

 computed ; for, though unnoticed by both the year and the ahau count, it is not for a 

 moment to be supposed they were totally ignored. They must have been taken 

 account of in some way, otherwise all Maya time reckoning was imperfect — which is 

 an absurdity. It is impossible to incorporate them, singly or in aggregates of what 

 number soever, with either the annual or the chronological calendar, without 

 disturbing its regularity and thereby nullifying it at once ; hence, there must be some 

 method of taking cognizance of them apart from both calendars. What that method 

 was, has been a perplexing question. I am going to offer what appears to me the 

 most practical solution of it. 



There being two methods of computing time, it is a logical inference that there are 

 also two corresponding methods of computing the bissextiles. The total number of 

 bissextiles in the grand period of 374,400 years, reckoned according to the Julian 

 plan, is 93,600. That number of days makes exactly 13 katuns ; hence, the bissextile 

 count corresponding with the chronological calendar could be reckoned by ahaus and 

 katuns, the same as the calendar itself. But when it is attempted to arrange a 

 bissextile count in accord with the annual calendar, it will be discovered that the 

 93,600 bissextiles of the grand period do not fall evenly into years but leave some 

 remaining days — the exact numbers being 256 years and 160 days. Here is one of 

 the two instances throughout their whole range in which the Maya calendars fail to 

 work harmoniously, the other being the indivisibility of 1460, the number of days in a 

 four-year period, by any of the lesser periods of days. Had the total of bissextiles 

 been evenly divisible into years, we should undoubtedly have found a period of 1460 



