Page:A Study of the Manuscript Troano.djvu/185

Rh have some particular signification especially applicable to what is here symbolized. As some of the cognate words, especially where the aspirate is used, denote "certainty," it is possible that it is used here to signify the certainty of death.

Plates XII* to XVII* undoubtedly relate to the manufacture of idols. In the second division of XII* (see Fig. 34) we see the artists painting them with the slip of yucca or maguey leaf, as described by Colonel Stevenson, and also by Mrs. Stevenson in her admirable little pamphlet on the manners and customs of the Zuni Indians.

In the third division we observe the priests consecrating the implements and the wood out of which their wooden idols are to be made. These plates, I think, refer to the manufacture of both kinds of idols, those of burnt clay and those of wood. The wooden block is here represented by the oblong figure with Cauac characters on it; the implement by the twisted figure on or against the block. My reasons for believing that this is a tool of some kind used in working wood is that in the third division of Plate XXIII*, I see it in the hands of individuals who are evidently doing something to trees. The trees appear to be severed as though cut off by a rude saw of some kind.

The figures in the second division of Plates XIII* and XIV* probably represent the idols in the kilns, or in their positions for baking; what the birds on them signify I am unable to say; possibly they relate to auguries. The figures of bent trees in the third and lower divisions of Plate XIII* may denote the temporary cabins in which they worked.

The figures in the lower division probably represent what Landa alludes to when he says, "where they placed the wood with a great urn (tinaja) for to keep shut up (or inclosed) the idols all the time they were at work upon them." We see here the priests offering incense in a singularly shaped burner (Fig. 1 7) over these unfinished idols.

The wood of which the images were formed was probably placed in