Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/133

Rh in their ancient mythology, theology, and ritual. To acquire such knowledge, he lived among the natives of Texcoco for several years, and mastered their language and their hieroglyphic writings to such an extent that his own work was originally written in the Mexican tongue.

His superiors did not give unqualified approval to the publication of his MSS., the tendency being rather to obliterate as far as possible all knowledge of ancient Aztec beliefs, with a view to detaching the Indians entirely from the traditions of their ancestors. Starting thus with a tabula rasa as it were, it was thought that the work of conversion would progress more rapidly. Fortunately this mistaken conception did not lead to the destruction of the mass of unique information which Fray Bernardino had accumulated, although his manuscripts were widely scattered through various convents of the Order.

Sahagun sent a statement of the nature and extent of his labours to Spain, where it attracted the attention of the President of the Royal Council for the Indies, at that time Don Juan de Ovando, who fortunately perceived its value, and caused the scattered manuscripts to be collected and restored to their owner, at the same time directing that he should return to Spain, and forthwith translate them into Spanish. Sahagun was nearly eighty years of age at this time, but he set diligently to work, and completed the translation, which was placed side by side with the original, and the whole illustrated with an Aztec vocabulary. The entire work, contained in two large folio volumes, was sent to Madrid, from which time it completely disappeared, not to be seen again for more than two hundred years, when the cosmographer Don Juan Bautista Muñoz unearthed it in the Franciscan Library at Tolosa in Navarre.

The first publication, dedicated to Pope Pius VIII. and edited by Carlos Maria de Bustamente, deputy for the state of Oaxaca, appeared in Mexico at the cost of the national treasury. One year later Lord Kingsborough introduced it into the 6th volume of his magnificent work, under the natural impression that he was giving it for the first time to the public.