Page:A Study of the Manuscript Troano.djvu/206

140 other purposes the two divisions are copied entire in Fig. 48. In each division (not counting the day columns) there are four groups, each of four compound characters, the first and second being alike. If we represent them by letters, and arrange the letters in the same order as the characters.

they would stand thus in the middle division (the upper one in our figure). We see by this that the first and third columns being shortened are changed into two lines, just as the first and last in Fig. 47, so that what followed downwards in the column follow from left to right in the lines. Plates VI*, XI*, XV*, and some others furnish similar examples.

Although we cannot claim that this furnishes absolute proof of the direction in which these lines and columns are to be read, yet it will probably satisfy any reasonable mind that the columns are to be read from the top downwards, following each other from left to right, and that the lines are to be read from left to right, following each other from the top downwards; also that the usual method is in columns.

THE ORDER IN WHICH THE PARTS OF COMPOUND CHARACTERS ARE TO BE TAKEN.

This and the other question, "Are these characters in any sense phonetic?" are so intimately connected that I will not attempt to discuss them separately.

The day and numeral characters have already been given, and so often referred to that by this time the reader must be familiar with them. The characters for the months, as found in Landa's work, have also been given, and it only remains for us, therefore, to present Landa's hieroglyphics of the Maya letters (Fig. 49) in order that the reader may have before him the entire key with which we have to work in our attempt to decipher the Maya manuscripts.

A comparison of the three groups of characters (days, months, and