SYNOPTIC CONSIDERATION OF THE MEANING AND 

 OCCURRENCE OF ANIMAL FORMS 



Before taking up the different animals in the codices it 

 may be well to consider some of the more common ways in 

 which the figures occur and their connection with the surround- 

 ing figures. 



Manner of representation. The entire body of the 

 animal may be represented reahstically or the head alone may 

 be shown. The animal head is frequently attached to a human 

 body. The animal may appear conventionaHzed to a greater 

 or less extent and the head in turn may change in the same way 

 until only a single characteristic of the animal remains by which 

 to identify it as, for example, the spots of the jaguar or the 

 feathering around the eye of the macaw. In the case of the 

 glyphs, a term employed to designate the regular and usually 

 square characters appearing in lines or columns throughout the 

 codices and inscriptions, we find both the reahstic drawing and 

 that where conventionahsm has come in. 



The Tonalamatl. The Maya codices are made up, for 

 the most part, of the records of the sacred period of two hun- 

 dred and sixty days, a period called in Nahuatl, tonalamatl, 

 and other numerical calculations. The tonalamatl was used 

 for purposes of divination in order to find out whether good 

 or bad fortune was in store for an individual. It is not neces- 

 sary at this place to go into the different means taken to record 

 this period of time or its methods of use. It may be well, how- 

 ever, to explain the usual distribution of the pictures in the 

 codices, including those of animals, in connection with the re- 

 presentation of the tonalamatl. A normal period is shown in 



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