CHAPTER III—MEXICO: THE CALENDAR AND CALENDRICAL FEASTS
MEXICAN ritual was so closely connected with the elaborate calendar that some explanation of the latter is necessary before it is possible to give an intelligible description of the various rites and ceremonies by which the favour of the gods was sought. The origin of this calendar is obscure, and can only be discussed in relation to the Maya calendar, with which it is obviously connected; so it will be best to leave this question to a later page, stating here only that in Mexico it was supposed to be the invention of Quetzalcoatl, and transmitted to the Nahua peoples through the agency of the two prototypes of magicians, Oxomoco and Cipactonal. The Mexican calendar is twofold, and comprises a ritual calendar, with a round of 260 days, which was employed in divination and for the fixing of certain "movable feasts," and a solar calendar, with a round of 365 days, according to which the seasonal feasts were held. The method of naming the individual days was the same for both, and consisted in the combination of twenty pictorial signs (Fig. 7) with the numbers one to thirteen. The signs were as follows (see Appendix I):
I. Cipactli. The head of a monstrous animal, identified now with the alligator, now with the sword-fish, and appearing in the manuscripts sometimes with legs and sometimes with fins. According to legend, the earth was created from the primordial cipactli, and the irregularities of the earth's surface are due to the scaly prominences on the animal's back. The date I. cipactli
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