Be this as it may, there is nothing in Maya history or the calendar which makes it necessary that the grand cycle should commence with the XIIIth Ahau. As suggested by Perez and Dr. Valentini, this number of the series may have been selected as the one with which to begin their count because of some notable event in their history occurring in it. The serious objection to the plan of Table XXII is that it requires the XIIIth Ahau to begin with the last year of a grand cycle, which, I think, is sufficient to condemn it.
Perez's statement bearing on this subject is as follows:
"As the Indians considered the number 13 as the initial number, it is probable that some remarkable event had happened in that year, because, when the Spaniards arrived in the Peninsula, the Indians then counted the 8th as the 1st, that being the date at which their ancestors came to settle there; and an Indian writer proposed that they should abandon that order also, and begin counting from the 1 1th, solely because the conquest had happened in that Ahau." (Cron. Antig., § IX, Valentini's Trans.)[1]
I have already quoted from Perez, as pertaining to the calendar, the statement in reference to what he believes to be another kind of cycle or method of computation. I called attention to the fact that the numbers given might be found by running up the columns of our table of years. I will now explain what I believe to have been the object and use of these numbers.
"They had another number which they called Ua Katun, which served them as a key by which to adjust and find the Katunes, and following the order of their march, it falls on the two[2] days of Uayeb haab and revolves to the end of certain years; Katunes 13, 9, 5, 1, 10, 6, 2, 11, 7, 3, 12, 8, 4."
Perez quotes this, as he states, in the exact words of his authority (unfortunately not given). As Bancroft's translation omits the "two" before "days," I have given here a translation of the original as found in Perez's Cronologie Antigua."
- ↑ As neither Valentini's nor Brasseurs' translation is literal, I will give the original:
"Es probable que principio en el numero 13 por haber acontecido en el algun suceso notable pues despues se contaban por el 8; y acabada la conquista de esta peninsula propúso un escritor indio comenzasen á contar en lo suoesivo estas épocas por el 11 Ahau por que en el se verificó aquella."
- ↑ Not the "second day of the Uayeb haab" as Perez seems, as appears from his comment, to have understood the expression. It is strange that he should have so perversely misinterpreted his own manuscripts.
