CHAPTER X—THE MAYA: THE CALENDAR, CALENDRICAL FEASTS AND MINOR RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES
BEFORE proceeding further with the account of Maya religion, it will be necessary to give a short description of the calendrical system. This was very similar to that of the Mexicans, but was more elaborate, and enabled the Maya to deal with longer periods of time. Throughout the Maya country a series of twenty day-signs was current, which, combined with the numerals one to thirteen, as described on p. 61, gave a period of 260 days, the Mexican tonalamatl, before the same day-sign recurred with the same numeral. The tonalamatl however did not occupy nearly so prominent a place in Maya ritual as in Mexican, though certain portions of the manuscripts seem to be devoted to it.
Some of the Maya day-signs show a close accordance with the corresponding Mexican signs, others seem at first sight quite different. But Seler has shown, by a careful comparison with the day-names current in the Zapotec country, that most of these differences can be reconciled. He calls attention to the fact that the Zapotec name is in most cases equivocal and can be transited to suit either the Mexican or the Maya sign. The Zapotec themselves used the Mexican signs, to judge from the remains in their country, but they carved them in Maya fashion, i.e. surrounded by a "cartouche" which does not appear in the glyphs of the Aztec period. The use of the cartouche, however, is found extending up through the Cuernavaca region to
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