Conflicting Essays in scholarship which have been the most engaging research job I have ever done. I have also added, over the years, queries about our "dated" geology with their "computerized" confirmations together with climate changes denied since 1963. The Ten-O'clock News have been telling us to change our clocks for DSL and back again BUT no one as noticed it has been changed, more than a few years ago, from March 31 and October 31, to a week or so earlier or even a week or so later.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Maya - Aztec Vocabularies



     The Popol Vuh has some very interesting names for the gods who are roaming the earth as people.

     A while back I made two notes on my computer and did not look at them again until tonight. One was for Maya and the other was a manuscript from an Aztec Codex. The spelling of the two names were not the same. One could not do a comparison of them using a dictionary in any of the Maya dictionaries, and look them up in a Nahuatl dictionary.

     Yet, when the two are put together, as Zipacna and Çipaqli, or Cipacuatli, it does not take a genius to see that the two languages are speaking about the same entity. 

     CHAPTER  2. Of how the World was created and by whom. begins on page 617 and Chapter 3 does not begin until page 619  So the entity  Çipaqli, or Cipacuatli =  alligator, fish or earth" is mentioned after the quote below but more information about the creation is also mentioned in the first part, especially the presence of the comet that shone brighter than the noonday sun and overshadowied its journey to the west: 
"When this was done all the four deities took notice that the half sun which they had created gave but very little light, so they resolved to make another half sun, so that it should illumine the whole earth. When Tezcatlipuca saw this he became himself a sun in order to give light, as we represent him in painting, and they say that what we see is only the brightness of the sun and not the sun himself, because the sun rises in the morning, traverses till midday, and then returns to the east in order to start again next day, and that which is visible from noon till sunset is its brightness, and not the sun itself, and that at night it neither shows itself nor has motion. So from being a god Tezcatlipuca made himself a sun, and then all the other deities created giants, who were very large men, and of such extreme strength that they could tear up trees with their hands, and they lived on the acorns of evergreen oak trees, and nothing else…"
      The above quotes are straight out of the Dennis Tedlock's story line in the Popol Vuh, [except for the minor detail that anyone who knows about oak trees, know that they are never EVERGREEN]. The bolded version is the part that can be found on page 73, but the rest of the two italicized sections are then moved over to page 161 with Tedlock's explanation on the top of page 304.
It is only his reflection that remains. What might be behind this statement is revealed by the contemporary Mopán Maya tale in which Lord K'in, the sun, goes from his home in the east to the center of the sky nd then back to the east again. It only seems that he goes clear across the sky because he has placed a mirror at its center. (Thompson, 1930, 132) To interpret the movements of the sun in this manner is to model it on Venus as morning star, which  both rises and sets in the east.
     Tedlock's inference to the Planet Venus is a mistaken view of the words spoken by the translator, Andrés Xiloj. Taken literally, it would be the presence of a comet that had passed overhead and put the Lord K'in, the true sun to shame.

     The comet had the name of Quetzalcoatl with Xolotl in Aztec, but in Maya it was Hunahpú and Xbalenqué. Zipacna's story actually begins on page 81 about Seven Macaw and later his encounter with the four hundred boys; until he met the Twins and died at their hands on pages 84-88. The Twins had been upset by the deaths of the 400 boys and vowed to end Zipacna's life.

     A bit below the aboves is here continued on page 618 as:
"…Presently they created a man and a woman; the man they called Vxumuco, and the woman Çipastonal,  and to them they gave command that they should till the ground, and that the woman [618] should spin and weave, and that of them should be born the Maçeguales, and that they should find no pleasure, but should always be obliged to work; to the woman the gods gave certain grains of maiz, so that with them she should work cures, and should use divination and witchcraft, and so it is the custom of women to do to this very day. Then they created the days which they divided into months, giving to each month twenty days, of which they had eighteen, and three hundred and sixty days in the year, of which will be spoken subsequently. Then they created Mitlitlatteclet and Michitecaçiglat, husband and wife, and these were the gods of the lower regions (infierno), in which they were placed; then the gods created the heavens below the thirteenth, and then they made the water and created in it a great fish similar to an alligator which they named Çipaqli, and from this fish they made the earth as shall be told; and to create the god and goddess of water…"
     In this part of the creation the year, months, and days has been identified as 360 days in the year in spite of the current version of 365.22 days that we now accept as factual.

    At the end of this very long paragraph the identification of Çipaqli, or Cipacuatli is made, but the 400 boys are left out of the story in Aztec as well as the Maya Twins.

     The epigraphers would understand then, that the "ç" became "Z" and the "L" became "N" according to the Chinese inability to pronounce the "L" even though they have many words that begin with "L,"  but never any at the end. And the "Q" would never be a problem. It can be equated with a hard "Ch" as the the Aztec variation of Çipaqli's name. However, it is usually the fault of the translator who use the variant spellings, not native spellings.

     Yet, it is strange. When would the Aztec/Maya languages ever pick up an Oriental language problem in pronunciation? Could the stelae with Oriental eyes that are found in Copan have anything to do with it?
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Tedlock, Dennis [1996, 77] Popol Vuh   Zipacna and his brother Earthquake

Phillips, Jr, Henry [1883, 618]  History of the Mexicans as Told by Their Paintings, (Edited by Alec Christensen   and also known as the Codex Ramirez,) Çipaqli, or Cipacuatli =  alligator, fish or earth"