1881.] Notes on the Codex Troano, and Maya Chronology. 723 
It is known to all students of the subject that there is no ac- 
count of the plan adopted by the Mayas to arrange their inter- 
calary days. That they did allow for these days is asserted by 
all authorities ; if they had not done so, they would, as Gallatin 
observes, have been out of their reckoning twenty days every 
eighty years; whereas we know that they were only forty-eight 
hours astray in the time of the transit of the sun by the zenith at 
the time of the Conquest (Pio Perez). 
Their method of intercalating is, I believe, illustrated by the 
Codex Troano, One of the most instructive pages of that manu- 
Script, is the title page. Were it fully deciphered, we should 
doubtless have a key to the whole work. It is composed of 
eleven lines across the page, each presenting either seven num- 
bers or seven figures. The first row from the top of the page is 
partly erased, but may readily be restored It represents the 
hieratic signs of the seven days: 
Ymix, Ix, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi, Manik. 
Below them stand the numbers : 
i, <2 3 +i 6, Va 
Now of these days, the first three named—Ymix, Ix, Akbal— 
are the /ast of the series of 20 which make up the Maya month, 
while the remaining four are in their order, the frst of the 
month. 
This serves to identify the kind of book the Codex is, for 
Landa has, among his other obscurities about the Maya calendar, 
this particularly obscure passage : 
“Tt is curious to note how the dominical letter [of the year] 
always comes up at the beginning of its year, without mistake or 
also used this method of counting in order to derive from cer- 
tain letters a method of counting their epochs and other things, 
which, though interesting to them, does not concern us much 
here. It is enough to say that the character or letter with which 
they begin their computation of the days or their calendar is 
{ 
Sign | : 
called One Ymix which is this | et | which has no certain 
; Gay. | 
Nor fixed day in which it falls. Because each one changes its 
I The reasoning of Professor De Rosny on this point is conclusive. See his 
“ Essai sur le Déchiffrement de l’Ecriture Hiératique de |’Amérique Contras 
Folio, Paris, 1876, p. 26. 
” 
. 
