V.-Maya Hieroglyphic Alphabet of Yucatan.* By WILLIAM BOLLAERT, Hon. Sec. A.S.L., Corresponding Member of the University of Chile, of the Ethnological Societies of London and New York, etc.

RECENT DISCOVERY OF AN AMERICAN ALPHABET.

IN September 1864, I had the pleasure to meet in London the indefatigable Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, then on his journey, about to leave for Mexico and Central America, as one of the scientific commission sent by the French Government to explore those regions. He presented me with a copy of his last work (in Spanish and French), entitled, Relation des choses de Yucatan de Diego de Landa, 1566; comprenant les Signes du Calendrier et de l'Alphabet hieroglyphique de la Langue Maya, accompagné de Documents divers historiques et chronologiques, avec une Grammaire et un Vocabulaire français maya.†

For the present, I offer from this work what concerns the Maya alphabet, which is the first indication we have of so valuable an addition to our knowledge of an alphabetic arrangement originating in the New World. This will be information, especially to Mr. Crawfurd, who, in his paper " On the Civilisation of Man," in Trans. Ethno. Soc., 1861, says, "From Italy to Japan, many nations had invented written languages, either hieroglyphic or phonetic, but neither the inhabitants of the Andes nor any other American people had done so."

The Abbé observes as follows:-"In the winter of 1863, I copied the Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, which are in the Royal Academy of Madrid. It contains the complete nomen

* Yucatan comes from the Maya words Ci u than, "they said so". It was known to the natives as Ulmil Cuz, and Etel Ceh, or "land of the wild turkey and deer". Maya, or Mayathan, comes from Ma-ay-ha, "land without water". Mayapan means flag or banner of the Mayas". There was a more ancient name for this region, viz., Chacnouitan.

+ Published by Trübner and Co., London.

The MSS. from which this was copied is not Landa's original one, but one made thirty years after his death. Judging by the title and certain

clature of the signs of the Maya Calendar, which will be of great importance for the reading of the Yucatan inscriptions. Landa has the great merit of handing down to us the signs constituting the alphabet, which, although incomplete, is of great interest, as it is the first key to unravel the mysterious inscriptions of Yucatan, Palenque, Copan, etc. I have compared these characters with those of the Codex Mexicanus, No. 2 of the Bib. Imp., and with the Codex Amer. of Dresden, reproduced in Lord Kingsborough's work; one and the other are written in identical characters; and I have already observed those of the calendar reproduced by Landa, as well as about a dozen phonetic signs. I have read a certain number of words, including ahpop, chief; ahau, king. The difficulty I have had, up to the present time, has been to identify the other signs; which leads me to think that they belong to a very ancient language, or to dialects different to the Maya or Quiché. I hope that photographs will soon be taken of the Yucatan inscriptions; also, that there will be discovered some Maya. MSS. (books like those of the Aztecs), said by Landa to have been buried with the Maya priests.

"Diego de Landa was of the noble house of Calderon; he was born in 1524, and became a Franciscan monk in 1541. He was the first of his Order who went to Yucatan, where he laboured zealously to convert the Indians; still his zeal was not exempt from violent acts. He became second Bishop of Merida in 1573, and died 1579.

"Looking at the times when Landa lived, there may be some excuse for his burning all the Maya MSS. he could lay his hands on, for he says they were the work of the devil. Such, also, were the ideas of Zumarraga in Mexico, and Las Casas in Guatemala. Landa, however, has rendered a great service to history and science in compiling such a work as he did, and particularly in preserving to us the Maya alphabet, which we

phrases, it is incomplete; and the copyist has suppressed the titles which divide the chapters. Pinelo, in his Bib. Occ., adverts to a work the title of which is similar to that of Landa by Dr. Sanchez de Aguilar, a native of Valladolid in Yucatan. Cogulludo mentions this work as one of great historical interest.

may look upon as a key to many of the American inscriptions; without him they would have remained an enigma probably for ever, as were the Egyptian hieroglyphics before the discovery of the Rosetta stone."

THE MAYA ALPHABET.-EXAMPLES.

Landa's Account of the Hieroglyphic Alphabet of the Maya Language." The Mayas made use of certain characters, or letters, by which they wrote in their books the account of their ancient doings and their sciences, and with these and figures, they understood those things,-they made them to be understood, and taught them. We found a great number of books of these letters, and that they should not have anything which had the superstition and the falsity of the devil in them, we burnt them all, at which they were surprised, indeed, and much afflicted."

By the side of these letters I will put a, b, c, etc., for their rudeness did not allow them our letters. They used for the sounds of their letters a character, and for the punctuation another, which was carried on ad infinitum, as will be seen by the example Lé, which means "a lazo or noose" used in hunting; to write which in their characters, although it has only two letters, they wrote it with three, adding to the sound of the 7 the vowel e, which is before the word,† and afterwards, at the end, they put both together.

Ha means "water", because h, or its sound, has a, h, they place it rather before the a, and at the end, as seen in the example.‡

They thus write in part, but in one and the other manner; and I would not have made mention of this subject, but that I wish to make known all about them. Ma in Kati means "I

*These notes by B. de Bourbourg. It is to be regretted that Landa did not deem it of sufficient importance to have preserved these signs, with the characters.

+ Landa's style is very obscure. It would seem there was a repetition of the second Le.

See p. 318 of the Relation, etc. The sign A found in the original after the sign ha; is this a sign of aspiration, sound, or a simple mark of the author's? In the MSS. said to be Mexican, No. 2 in the Bib. Imp., there is often seen a similar sign of a horseshoe form; is this a sign of aspiration or sound? Following Landa, it would seem that the word ha, water, is written with the two forms of h (the guttural and the aspirate), and a, and the following character is simply the symbolic sign of water; which leads me to conclude that the Mayas, like the Egyptian, first gave the letter, then the figurative sign of thing to be written for greater certainty.

E

do not care", which they write in parts, as seen in the example. Then there are the additional signs: as, variation of the letter a, No. 1; of the letter h; ha (water) or 'h guttural ; Ma (probably me or mo); ti; and the sign of aspiration (the horseshoe?)."

NOTES ON THE ALPHABET BY B. DE BOURBOURG.

1. (19. p). In Landa's original MSS., the sign of the letter P is not in its right place, but in the margin with this sign A, which I find again between the characters o and pp. The resemblance will show that what I have taken above for the sign of aspiration (but on which subject I have still my doubts), has caused me to think it is an o aspirate (fig. 18), and the aspiration of the character (fig. 25). I nevertheless think it may have neither of the above meanings.

2. (25. u). I have not been able to make out whether this is a u or any other letter, the MSS. being illegible. Subsequent researches among the documents written by the aid of these characters will doubtless give the true sound, as well as those of c, cu, Ka, x, and z, relative to which there are some doubts.

3. (27. 2). The reader will find in the following page several monosyllabic signs, also variations of the letter a (1) and of the letter h (9). I may mention that there is also found among several of the characters representing the days, and that these appear to offer a series of syllabic signs, or figurative, employed together in the Maya writing, independently of their signification as special characters of the days. [The same may be said of the characters representing the months.-W. B.]

4. We may observe that the Maya alphabet, according to the grammar of Pedro Beltran de Santa Maria, has twentytwo letters, of which the following (c reversed), ch, barré du haut, I replace by a ch, merely to distinguish it from k, pp, th (written sometimes tt), and tz, are proper to the language,