chiquels was Chamalcan, and his image was a bat."[1] Brasseur endeavored to trace this to a Nahuatl etymology,[2] but there is little doubt it refers, as do so many of the Cakchiquel proper names, to their calendar. Can is the fifth day of their week, and its sign was a serpent;[3] chamal is a slightly abbreviated form of chaomal, which the lexicons translate "beauty" and "fruitfulness," connected with chaomar, to yield abundantly. He was the serpent god of fruitfulness, and by this type suggests relations to the lightning and the showers. The bat, Zotz, was the totem of the Zotzils, the ruling family of the Cakchiquels; and from the extract quoted, they seem to have set it up as the image of Chamalcan.
The generic term for their divinities, employed by Xahila, and also frequently in the Popol Vuh, is ꜭabuyl, which I have elsewhere derived from the Maya chab, to create, to form. It is closely allied to the epithets applied in both works to the Deity, ꜯakol, the maker, especially he who makes something from earth or clay; bitol, the former, or fashioner; ꜭaholom, the begetter of sons; alom, the bearer of children; these latter words intimating the bi–sexual nature of the principal divinity, as we also find in the Aztec mythology and elsewhere. The name ꜬaxtoꜮ, the liar, from the verb ꜭaxtoꜭoh, to lie, also frequently used by Xahila with reference to the
- ↑ "Chamalcan u bi qui gabauil Cakchequeleb, xa Zotz u vachibal."—Popol Vuh, p. 224.
- ↑ Hist, des Nations Civ. du Mexique, Tom. II, p. 173.
- ↑ "El qiiinto Cam, esto es; amarillo, pero su significado es culebra."—Ximenez, Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de Guatemala, p. 215. There are two errors in this extract. The name is not Cam, but Can, and it does not mean yellow, which is Ꜫan.
