NUMERATION AND SIGNS EOR NUMBERS. 37 



In regard to the different series and single characters which I believe to be numerals, 

 I will state that they are not all to be found on the tablets of any one city. While 

 the majority of them and of the other glyphs are common to all the inscriptions, 

 certain of them are to be found only in a particular place. For instance, signs are 

 used at Palenque that are not discoverable at Copan, and at Copan that are not to be 

 found at Quirigua, and at Quirigua that do not occur in either of the former cities. 

 Thus it appears probable tbat, while the same general system prevailed throughout all 

 of these localities, there were differences amounting at least to provincialisms if not to 

 dialects. 



Again, the signs in question are not used indiscriminately with every kind of 

 period, but particular ones are applied to particular classes of counts, some appearing 

 to be applicable to but a single sort of period, while others qualify several of different 

 character. While this is true in a general way of the beginning signs, I think it will 

 be found to be more especially true in respect to the numerals themselves. 



The list of number signs and of characters ordinarily employed in a numeric sense 

 will be found astonishingly large, in my judgment. My reasons for thinking so are 

 not alone the serial appearance of a multitude of signs and the manner in which they 

 are used, but include the still stronger one of the determinative feature that charac- 

 terized Maya and Mexican numeration. An object was seldom mentioned without a 

 suffixed particle indicating the quality or class of the thing enumerated. Dr. Brinton 

 states that Beltran de Santa Rosa gives not less than seventy-two of these determinative 

 particles, and does not exhaust the list at that. I have at hand no satisfactory Maya 

 example of what I desire to explain, and so will make use of a Mexican one given by 

 Bancroft. Polhualli meant twenty, or a score, and was used without any determinative 

 particle for simple numeration; polhualli-pilli, for thin objects packed one above 

 another, as tortillas and sheets of paper; polhualli-quimilli, for articles in large rolls, 

 as cloth ; polhualli-tecpantli, for things ranged in order, as persons, lines, walls ; 

 polhualli -tetl, for round or plump articles, as seeds, eggs, fruit, birds ; and so on to 

 perhaps as many classes as given by Beltran. Now, I believe that these distinctions — 

 or many of them, at least — which in speech and in writing with our characters were 

 made by means of determinative particles, were shown in the native graphic system by 

 the use of different sets of glyphs for numerals. Thus, I think that certain sets were 

 used for the periods of the chronological calendar, others for the year and day counts, 

 and still others for various other kinds of reckoning. What at once induces and 

 justifies this opinion is the persistency with which certain evidently qualifying 

 characters adhere to certain classes of glyphs, some of whicli characters, when found 

 in other connections where their value can be ascertained, are discovered to be 

 numerals. For instance, of the bouquet-like series the simplest form when accom- 

 panying Ahau in a date means that it is the beginning of an ahau, while other forms 

 of it represent 6, 10, 72, 73 and 7,200 ; from which I consider it reasonable to infer 



