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occupy themselves with the presages of their second idol and to offer sacrifices to him, having taken away their first idol to replace it by the second, in order to worship it in the coming ten years."[1]
"The Indians say, for example, that the Spaniards arrived at the City of Merida in the year of the nativity of our Lord and Master 1541, which was precisely the first 3'ear of Buluc Ahau (11 Ahau), the same that we find ])laced at the top of the instrument [2] below the cross, and which also indicates that they arrived in the month Pop which is the first in their year. Had the Spaniards not come as they did, then they would have placed the Idol of Bolon Ahau (9 Ahau), offering homage to it, and continuing to refer to the prognostics of Buluc Ahau, till the year 1561; and then they would take it from the temple and put in its place that of Vuc Ahau (7 Ahau), all the while continuing to refer to the prognostics of Buluc Ahau, for ten years more, and the same with the others until the tour was made. In this way they made up their Katuns of twenty and ten years, worshipping them according to their superstitions and juggleries, which were in such great numbers that there were more than enough to deceive that simple people, and there is reason for astonishment when one knows what kind of things in nature and experience belong to the Demon."
Whoever is acquainted with the awkwardness and literary negligence of Landa's writing will not be astonished that in
- ↑ Las cosas de Yucatan, Diego de Lancia. Edition B. de Bourboiirg. Paris, 1864. Page 315, § XL.
- ↑ A specimen of such an instrument with a surface inscribed as the cut shows would hardly have been preserved. We think that the box enclosed around disk turning on a pivot; this contrivance, evidently served as an aid to the memory in enumerating the alternating Ahaues. To-day, we should obtain the same result by writing the Ahaues in a horizontal or vertical line, but the Nahuatls and Mayas, having solely a symbolical or pictorial manner of representation, made use of this ingenious arrangement by painting the series of the Ahaues on the circumference of a circle. Thus the idea of an uninterrupted sequence of time and the connection of the 2d Ahau with the 13th were brouaht to notice.
