An Outline Dictionary of Maya Glyphs

226 Pages·1931·20.915 MB·English

by  William Edmond Gates

4
* a"cii r:
AN OUTLINE DICTIONARY
OF MAYA GLYPHS
William Gates
With the author's' 'Glyph Studies"r eprinted
from The Maya Society Quarterly
; VI
2|221'G
•IIS :IIE :S,IIE
;il:l!S
I ^lill^J
•iieiii
:iig';is
?!;!^
IS
lira
;©CSO
eztin •
U U U* *
#4^
AN OUTLINE DICTIONARY
OF
MAYA GLYPHS
With a Concordance and Analysis of
Their Relationships
, A
' B Y
WILLIAM GATES
With the author's "Glyph Studies" reprinted from
The Maya Society Quarterly
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
NEW YORK
2Z2U
Published in Canada by General Publishing Com
pany, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto,
Ontario.
This Dover edition, first published in 1978, is an
unabridged republication of the work first pub
lished by The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, in
1931. The plates on pages 77 and 78 originally
appeared in color. "Glyph Studies" by William
Gates (from The Maya Society Quarterly, Vol 1
No. 4, September, 1932) has been added to this
edition.
International Standard Book Number: 0-486-23618-8
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-92481
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc.
180 Varick Street
New York, N.Y. 10014
INTRODUCTION
The first question one is always asked is: Whether the Maya
writing is phonetic? The shortest way to answer that and at the
same time give an introduction to the present work, will be to
start with the fundamentals.
To communicate our ideas to other persons we have two separate
systems at our employ—by signs or by sounds, one received by the
eye the other by the ear. These two methods correspond each to
the idea and also to each other; are used together or separately,
yet are mutually independent; nor does either need the other.
Of signs there are many kinds: pictures of natural things, sym
bols of actions or of abstract ideas; and even gestures. Each
branch of science has its symbols, chemical, algebraic, etc. So
has the business world. Among these is the special science of
phonetics, which deals with the coordination and use of the hun
dred or more recognizably distinct vocal elements of speech, as
well as with qualifying elements such ^ tones, accent, etc.; each
of these has a specific sign, which we call a letter or diacritic, each
allotted to one of the distinct separate products of the vocal or
gans, and known to, usable by, those who have been taught that
representative character. These conventional signs are used to
fo^ written words, and convey their vronunaahon; but they
have no relation to the of the words so produced. In
^^As Ts the cSe wR^tfe''sets'" of phonetic symbols, so with all
other systems for
Each has its sta discrete elements, used in sjmthesis, in
and consists of ^
definite ways and symphony they carry. Many symbols
different things mathe
matics LmXe,f In
of that letter, nor haa that sound any
part in its "uch artificiaUy adopted signs, and per-
With the . 1 religious symbols, such as the Tau or
haps some philosopn „ symbols go back to an original
the Svastika, it is probable Jy far back of any
pictograph of some be not only unrecognizable
ai rCatlSiSi -), -1.»<'m,m
effect or value in the current usage.
vi INTRODUCTION
Before writing existed among any particular people, they spoke
words to convey their ideas. And each such spoken word was
the name of some material or immaterial thing. Every 'thing' of
either class has its 'name,' represented on the one hand by the
complex of spoken vocal sounds (varying with each language);
and on the other hand by its picture or symbol (ideograph), when
these latter came into use, the symbol always very far after the
'savage' picture. Pictures may convey meanings, but they are
not language; only syntax can supply that.
Every thing has therefore three incidents: its name, or Word,
with it from the beginning, and without which connected thought
is impossible to men; next the complex of voice elements used by
those of any language to utter that name, and passed from tongue
to ear; and then the symbol received and apprehended through the
eye. These two representatives of the idea are wholly separate,
appeal to different senses, and must be learned each for itself.
Green and tree are two 'ideas.' The painted color or the
sketched tree will be recognized by all, and called, vocally, differ
ently. The Maya symbol will be called yax,* green, verde,
lii, by a Maya, Englishman, Spaniard or Chinese; neither one
will be thinking of the three, five or two vocal elements represented
by the separate letters. The fact that two spoken words can be
joined to give a double idea does not involve phoneticism as the
base of the corresponding script. It has been repeatedly urged
that the union of the two signs for yax-kin, green or new, and sun,
into the month name Yaxkin, evidences a "phonetic use of the
glyphs." It does not. No one will deny that Chinese is purely
ideographic; yet their words are pronounced, and similarly joined
—both in speech and as characters.
Let us, to illustrate, take the English compound word Green
fields. This may either be a personal proper name, or that of an
estate. It may be rendered into Chinese characters in two dis
tinct ways: two characters approximating in sound to the English
word may be taken, which to the Chinese reader will indicate the
sound of the man's name—only. Or the two characters for green
and field may be taken, which will give a translation of the idea
behind the name of the estate—and that only.
All communication of ideas, by whatever means, by letters,
pictographs, symbols, musical notes, the colors and brush strokes
of the artist everything beyond the crudest animal gestures or
monosyllables, is by an elaborate complexity of arranged conven-
•^™®rican tongues represents the sound sh, having been so
used m Spanish of the wxteenth century. Also, in Yucatecan Maya C is
always hard, as Clmi like kimi, not siml. j'" v la
vi INTRODUCTION
Before writing existed among any particular people, they spoke
words to convey their ideas. And each such spoken word was
the name of some material or immaterial thing. Every 'thing' of
either class has its 'name,' represented on the one hand by the
complex of spoken vocal sounds (varying with each language);
and on the other hand by its picture or symbol (ideograph), when
these latter came into use, the symbol always very far after the
'savage' picture. Pictures may convey meanings, but they are
not language; only syntax can supply that.
Every thing has therefore three incidents: its name, or Word,
with it from the beginning, and without which connected thought
is impossible to men; next the complex of voice elements used by
those of any language to utter that name, and passed from tongue
to ear; and then the symbol received and apprehended through the
eye. These two representatives of the idea are wholly separate,
appeal to different senses, and must be learned each for itself.
Green and tree are two 'ideas.' The painted color or the
sketched tree will be recognized by all, and called, vocally, differ
ently. The Maya symbol will be called yax,* green, verde,
Iti, by a Maya, Englishman, Spaniard or Chinese; neither one
will be thinking of the three, five or two vocal elements represented
by the separate letters. The fact that two spoken words can be
joined to give a double idea does not involve phoneticism as the
base of the corresponding script. It has been repeatedly urged
that the union of the two signs for yax-kin, green or new, and sun
into the month name Yaxkin, evidences a "phonetic use of the
glyphs." It does not. No one will deny that Chinese is purely
ideographic; yet their words are pronounced, and similarly joined
—both in speech and as characters.
Let us, to illustrate, take the English compound word Green
fields. This may either be a personal proper name, or that of an
estate. It may be rendered into Chinese characters in two dis
tinct ways: two characters approximating in sound to the English
word may be taken, which to the Chinese reader will indicate the
sound of the man's name—only. Or the two characters for green
and field may be taken, which will give a translation of the idea
behind the name of the estate—and that only.
AU communication of ideas, by whatever means, by letters
pictographa, symbols, musical notes, the colors and brush strokes
of the artist—everything beyond the crudest animal gestures or
monosyllables, is by an elaborate complexity of arranged conven-
*-^6 sound having been so
Bm>TECADECBims
INTRODUCTION vii
tional elements. A comprehensive mathematical formula con
veys a 'unit idea' to its users; so do our words, whether spoken or
written. Everything used, therefore, for the purpose of language
is a symbol, of one or another kind; it either is a symbol of one of
the hundred or more distinguishable vocal sounds, in which case
we call the symbol a letter—a phonetic sjmibol. Or else the sym
bol represents the idea directly.
SpeUing and its companion, its set of separate phonetic symbols,
are very late developments in language. Unlettered people,
savage or modern, ignore them. Pictures and sjunbols far ante-
ceded them. First came the picture; then the ideograph; with
each, their words. Those words, to make up language, are first
main elements, names of things or actions—nouns and verbs.
Then come minor elements, in two main classes, either descriptive
and modifying the main ideas, or else connective and relational.
When we have these we have language; the character of the syntax
will follow the basic mode of expression, of the people.
Alphabetic, or properly called phonetic writing, is the latest of
all, hnd results from a double process. The original pictograph
is worn to a fragment, and then adapted exactly as Greek letters
are for formulae. People can go a long and highly cultured road
and never need phonetic symbols, or a specific phonetic science.
We have two historically preserved cases of such a development,i n
Egyptian and in the transfer of Chinese literature and culture to
Japan. As is well known, the Japanese read the Chinese books,
without being able to talk Chinese, but giving their own names to
the characters, as yama for mountain, instead of san. The cul
tured Japanese will say either Fuji-no-yama, or Fuji-san. To
enable the less cultured reader of a Japanese newspaper to pro
nounce unusual Chinese characters introduced, one sees the
katakana of 50 syllabic 'letters' run down the side of the character,
exactly as we here add the latters y-a-x to give the sound of the
Maya character for green. But we do not add a particle to our
knowledge of the meaning of the passage or compound by thus
giving the sounds.
Throughout the following work I have quite often rendered a
glyph into the modern Maya that interprets it; but it is only to
add a fuller Maya flavor to the work, and to stimulate and show
the value and necessity of Comparative Mayance linguistics if
we are to advance.
Our first objective is to determine the meaning of the glyphs.
To that their sound-names are of no value whatever, save as a
part of historical linguistic research, into how the different branch
es came to separate from the common tongue, spoken when
viii INTRODUCTION
Latin was, as far back as Latin is behind modern French. And
deductions based on similarities of spelled words have been the
utmost bane of science, bringing all linguistics into disrepute.
See below, under glyph 59, and the three words for moon.
Theory after theory has been propounded, unchecked or veri
fied, been published, and died. Brinton's 'ikonomatic' theory,
seeing in the words of the few known glyphs, phonetic assonances
with some far distant word as an explanation of why the thing was
so named, was carried out in total disregard of dialectic and his
torical differences, and the positive evidence of sound mutations.
Another attempted way of reading, quite often heard of and
put forth without support, always too by those who have not
studied the thing, is that Maya is at least 'in part' rebus writing.
Now first, rebus writing is not written language at all. The es
sence of a rebus is an actual picture of some simple known object,
whose spoken name is the same in sound as some other word of
entirely different meaning. To make a rebus for "Aunt Rose,"
we must make a picture of an ant and a rose, to suggest the sounds,
punningly. No such instances have ever been even brought forth
in illustration, as for Maya.
Those who suggest this, say that it is "likely" that Maya was in
this "somewhat like the Mexican picture or rebus-writing." But
this Mexican itself was not rebus-writing at all; it was a pure picto-
graphic system, in which the abbreviated or partially conven
tionalized pictures of various objects were used to represent,
singly or combined, the objects themselves. Popocatepetl is a
picture of smoke and a mountain to represent that idea, that
particular volcano, and the two words popoca and tepetl, Smoke-
Mountain. Whereas a rebus uses the picture to represent some
thing not the same as the picture.
Incidentally, this very Mexican system, in which the character
represents the thing and not the letters as such (the way our
writing does), is a case of exactly the same ideographic combina
tion of two words we have in Maya Yaxkin, or in Chinese Meng-
tse, Shan-tung. Save that the Mexican are still pictures, while
the others are conventionally advanced symbols, ideo-graphs.
It has seemed necessary to go into the above detail, to clear off
the weeds whose growth has only been possible by the complete
lack of a general instructed (howbeit very greatly interested)]
public, such as the Classicists, the Egyptologists, and others, hay^e
for their work. The Maya problem is coming more and moreiij^i
the foreground, as a result of the really magnificent exploialSdh'
work that has been and is developing; and the question of \W^t
their actual culture, their science, and their wonderful
INTRODUCTION ix
system really are, calls for patient and detailed research into actual
materials (of which a lot does exist), and not for guesswork, eso
teric interpretations of this or that stroke in this or that day-
sign, and imaginative assertions about the most treacherous of all
subjects—^far past origins. He who transcends history invites a
fall.
So what, now, can be said of the Maya system of writing? It is,
first, ideographic. It has system, as those who will study the
concordance in this work, will see. It has main elements, such
as we spoke of above: first names of things, and then quite cer
tainly words of action. In this latter, it quite corresponds to the
known Egyptian method of using characters representing action,
as a man walking, striking, etc. We cannot yet define many
Maya verbs, but when we see a certain glyph always used in the
text above a figure carrying somfething, and usually accompanied
by other glyphs showing the very things so seen carried in the
pictures; or another where fire is being twirled, we are quite safe
in recognizing the act, the meaning, even in our still imperfect
knowledge of the spoken sounds they used. Which latter come
secondary, anyway. To get the latter even well started, we need a
polyglot Mayance vocabulary,s howing what words are everywhere
common (and hence safely archaic); and what vary from region to
region—involving equally interesting tribal or ultra-national
contacts, migrations, and progressions.
With these well-known 'main elements' we next have quite a
number of adjectival glyphs, such as the colors, and then various
others which by their changes, repetitions and placements seem to
be modifiers—and usually prefixed. (Prefix and superfix being
equivalents, also subfix and postfix.) Next we have another set
of still minor elements which we have very good reason for regard
ing as those very necessary parts of written language, determina
tives of class or category. Every language has homophones, and
once that is so, some form of determinative is necessary. We
have three words pronounced tu; a preposition, an adverb, and a
numeral—to, too, two) the extra o and the w are simple determina
tives as above noted. Hieroglyphic Egyptian has such elements;
so has syllabic Tibetan. Where needed in Maya glyph expres
sions, they are very probably subfixes. See later, under Cum.
Of course we have compound glyphs, two main ideas joined;
such exist in all language. Such compounds also approach in
syntax value closely to adjective-noun, or adverb-verb compounds;
the boundaries between are fluctuating, since adjective and verb
are in fact self-substantial ideas.