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.