281 
reiiuukcible analogies with tlie yougs and the 
calpas of the Hindoos: and on the ingenious me- 
thod employed by the Muysca Indians, a nation 
of mountaineers of New Grenada, to correct 
their lunar years by the intercalation of a thirty^ 
seventh moon, called deaf or cuhupqua. It is 
by collecting and comparing the different sys- 
tems of American chronology, that we can judge 
of the communications, which appear to have 
existed, in very remote times, between the na- 
tions of India and Tartarv, and those of the 
New Continent. 
^ The civil year of the Aztech s was a solar year 
of three hundred and sixty-five days, and was 
divided into eighteen months, each of twenty 
days. After these eigiiteen months, or three 
hundred and sixty days, five complementary 
days were added, and the year began anew. 
The names of Tonalpohualli or Cempohualilhidtl, 
which distinguished this civil calendar from the" 
ritual calendar, sufficiently indicated its principal 
characters. The first of these names signifies 
reckoning of the Sun, in opposition to the ritual 
calendar, called rechojihig of the Moon, or Met%- 
lapohualli : the second denomination is derived 
from cempohuaUi, twenty, and ilhuitl, festival ; 
and it alludes, either to the twenty days con- 
tained in each month, or the twenty solemn fes- 
tivals celebrated during the course of a civil 
year, in the tcocallis, or houses of the gods. 
