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258 seen that the third year would commence with 3 Ix, the fourth year with 4 Cauac, the fifth year with 5 Kan, and so on through fifty-two years, and the fifty-third year would commence with 1 Kan again. From this it will be seen that the Maya year could commence on four only out of the twenty days of the month, and these four days are commonly called the "year-bearers."

In the Annual Calendar given above, which begins with 1 Kan, the first day of the month Pop, it will be noticed that after a period of thirteen months the next month again commences with 1 Kan, but in this case 1 Kan falls on the first day of the 14th month Kankin.

This period of 260 days (20 × 13), that is to say the period of time which must elapse before a day can recur in the same position in the month with the same day-numeral attached to it, appears to have been of special importance in the arrangement of the religious ritual, but how far this period of 260 days enters into the actual computation of time is at present difficult to determine.

It is also claimed for the Mayas by some writers that they had an almost exact knowledge of the length of the solar year, and that there was some arrangement of their calendar by which leap years could be counted.

The foregoing account of the Maya calendar has been derived from the writings of students who, after making a careful examination of the early Spanish writers, have devoted their attention almost exclusively to the study of the codices. All mention has been avoided of Katuns and Ahaukatuns (the longer time-periods spoken of by Landa and others), about the length of which there has been much disputation, as I have wished to confine myself to statements which are generally accepted as correct.

In the concluding pages of this chapter I propose to give some examples of the inscriptions carved on the Monolithic Stelæ and on the walls of the ancient temples, and then to examine them, and to some extent explain them, with the aid of the notes and tables prepared by my friend Mr. J. T. Goodman, of California, whose essay on the subject has been published as an Appendix to the Archæological Section of the 'Biologia Centrali-Americana.'

As the subject is one about which controversy is already rife, it is not likely that Mr. Goodman's methods will escape hostile criticism, and however favourable my own views may be of their merits, his method is applied here not with a view of claiming for it either priority or exclusive originality, but (as it is the method with which I am most familiar) as a means of showing to the general reader the way in which such a difficult problem has been attacked and to some extent conquered.