Preface.

In accordance with the general object of this series of volumes—which is to furnish materials for study rather than to offer completed studies—I have prepared for this number the text of the most ancient authentic record of American religious lore. From its antiquity and character, I have ventured to call this little collection the Rig Veda Americanus, after the similar cyclus of sacred hymns, which are the most venerable product of the Aryan mind.

As for my attempted translation of these mystic chants I offer it with the utmost reserve. It would be the height of temerity in me to pretend to have overcome difficulties which one so familiar with the ancient Nahuatl as Father Sahagun intimated were beyond his powers. All that I hope to have achieved is, by the aid of the Gloss—and not always in conformity to its suggestions—to give a general idea of the sense and purport of the originals.

The desirability of preserving and publishing these texts seems to me to be manifest. They reveal to us the undoubtedly authentic spirit of the ancient religion; they show us the language in its most archaic form; they preserve references to various mythical cycli of importance to the historian; and they illustrate the alterations in the spoken tongue adopted in the esoteric dialect of the priesthood. Such considerations will, I trust, attract the attention of scholars to these fragments of a lost literature.

In the appended Vocabulary I have inserted only those words and expressions for which I can suggest correct—or, at least, probable—renderings. Others will have to be left to future investigators.

Introduction.

As in a previous number of the Library of Aboriginal American Literature I have discussed in detail the character of the ancient Mexican poetry, I shall confine myself at present to the history of the present collection. We owe its preservation to the untiring industry of Father Bernardino de Sahagun, one of the earliest missionaries to Mexico, and the author of by far the most important work on the religion, manners and customs of the ancient Mexicans.

By long residence and close application Sahagun acquired a complete mastery of the Nahuatl tongue. He composed his celebrated Historia de las Cosas de la Nueva España primarily in the native language, and from this original wrote out a Spanish translation, in some parts considerably abbreviated. This incomplete reproduction is that which was published in Spanish by Lord Kingsborough and Bustamente, and in a French rendering with useful notes by Dr. Jourdanet and M. Rémi Simeon.

So far as I know, the only complete copy of the Nahuatl original now in existence is that preserved in the Bibliotheca Laurentio-Mediceana in Florence, where I examined it in April, 1889. It is a most elaborate and beautiful MS., in three large volumes, containing thirteen hundred and seventy-eight illustrations, carefully drawn by hand, mostly colored, illustrative of the native mythology, history, arts and usages, besides many elaborate head and tail pieces to the chapters.

There is another Nahuatl MS. of Sahagun’s history in the private library of the King of Spain at Madrid, which I examined in May, 1888, and of which I published a collation in the Mémoires de la Sociétè Internationale des Américanistes, for that year. It is incomplete, embracing only the first six books of the Historia, and should be considered merely as a borrador or preliminary sketch for the Florentine copy. It contains, however, a certain amount of material not included in the latter, and has been peculiarly useful to me in the preparation of the present volume, as not only affording another reading of the text, valuable for comparison, but as furnishing a gloss or Nahuatl paraphrase of most of the hymns, which does not appear in the Florentine MS. As evidently the older of the two, I have adopted the readings of the Madrid MS. as my text, and given the variants of the Florentine MS. at the end of each hymn.

Neither MS. attempts any translation of the hymns. That at Madrid has no Spanish comment whatever, while that at Florence places opposite the hymns the following remarks, which are also found in the printed copies, near the close of the Appendix of the Second Book of the Historia:—

“It is an old trick of our enemy the Devil to try to conceal himself in order the better to compass his ends, in accordance with the words of the Gospel, ‘He whose deeds are evil, shuns the light.’ Also on earth this enemy of ours has provided himself with a dense wood and a ground, rough and filled with abysses, there to prepare his wiles and to escape pursuit, as do wild beasts and venomous serpents. This wood and these abysses are the songs which he has inspired for his service to be sung in his honor within the temples and outside of them; for they are so artfully composed that they say what they will, but disclose only what the Devil commands, not being rightly understood except by those to whom they are addressed. It is, in fact, well recognized that the cave, wood or abysses in which this cursed enemy hides himself, are these songs or chants which he himself composed, and which are sung to him without being understood except by those who are acquainted with this sort of language. The consequence is that they sing what they please, war or

peace, praise to the Devil or contempt for Christ, and they cannot in the least be understood by other men.”

Lord Kingsborough says in a note in his voluminous work on the Antiquities of Mexico that this portion of Sahagun’s text was destroyed by order of the Inquisition, and that there was a memorandum to that effect in the Spanish original in the noble writer’s possession. This could scarcely have referred to a translation of the hymns, for none such exists in any MS. I have consulted, or heard of; and Sahagun intimates in the passage quoted above that he had made none, on account of the obscurity of the diction. Neither does any appear in the Florentine MS., where the text of the hymns is given in full, although the explanatory Gloss is omitted. This last-mentioned fact has prevented me from correcting the text of the Gloss, which in some passages is manifestly erroneous; but I have confined myself to reproducing it strictly according to the original MS., leaving its correction to those who will make use of it.

The Florentine MS. has five colored illustrations of the divinities, or their symbols, which are spoken of in the chants. These are probably copied from the native hieroglyphic books in which, as we learn from Sahagun, such ancient songs were preserved and transmitted. These illustrations I had copied with scrupulous fidelity and reproduced by one of the photographic processes, for the present work.

Such is the history of this curious document, and with this brief introduction I submit it to those who will have the patience and skill to unravel its manifold difficulties.

Notes.

Huitzilopochtli was the well-known war-god of the Azteca, whose functions are described by Sahagun (Historia, Lib. I., cap. 1) and many other writers. The hymn here given is probably the tlaxotecuyotl, which was chanted at the celebration of his feast in the fifteenth month of the Mexican calendar (see Sahagun, Historia, Lib. II., cap. 34). The word means “his glory be established.” It was commenced at sunset and repeated till sunrise.

This hymn may be compared to another, descriptive of the same divinity, preserved in Sahagun’s MS. in Madrid. It is as follows, with my translation by its side.

When in Florence, in 1889, I had an accurate copy made of the Nahuatl text and all the figures of the first book of Sahagun’s History. The colored figure of Huitzilopochtli is in accordance with the above description.

Notes.

There is no Gloss to this hymn, but its signification seems clear. Huitznahuac was a name applied to several edifices in the great temple at Tenochtitlan, as we are informed at length by Sahagun. The word is a locative from huitznahua. This term means “magicians from the south” or “diviners with thorns,” and was applied in the Quetzalcoatl mythical cyclus to the legendary enemies of Huitzilopochtli, whom he is said to have destroyed as soon as he was born. (See my discussion of this myth in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society for 1887.) Apparently to perpetuate the memory of this exploit, the custom was, at the festival of Huitzilopochtli, for the slaves who were to be sacrificed to form two bands, one representing the Huitznahua and the other the partisans of the god, and to slaughter each other until the arrival of the god Paynal put an end to the combat (Sahagun, Historia, Lib. II., cap. 34). The song here given belongs to this portion of the ancient rite.

Notes.

The god Tlaloc shared with Huitzilopochtli the highest place in the Mexican Pantheon. He was the deity who presided over the waters, the rains, the thunder and the lightning. The annual festival in his honor took place about the time of corn-planting, and was intended to secure his favor for this all-important crop. Its details are described at great length by Diego Duran, Historia de Nueva España, cap. 86, and Sahagun, Historia, Lib. II., cap. 25, and elsewhere. His name is derived from tlalli, earth. Tlalocan, referred to in v. 5, “the place of Tlaloc,” was the name of a mountain east of Tenochtitlan, where the festival of the god was celebrated; but it had also a mythical meaning, equivalent to “the earthly Paradise,” the abode of happy souls.

It will be observed that v. 10 is a repetition of v. 6. The word ayauicalo refers to the ayauhcalli, “house of mist,” the home of the rain god, which Sahagun informs us was represented at the annual festival by four small buildings near the water’s edge, carefully disposed to face the four cardinal points of the compass (Sahagun, ubi supra).

In v. 8 the expression tetzauhpilli (tetzauhqui, to frighten) may be explained by the figure of Tlaloc, whose statue, says Duran, was that of un espantable monstruo, la cara muy fea (ibid.).

The compound in v. 10, nauhxiuhtica, “after four years,” appears to refer to the souls of the departed brave ones, who, according to Aztec mythology, passed to the heaven for four years and after that returned to the terrestrial Paradise,—the palace of Tlaloc. (See my paper, The Journey of the Soul, in Proceedings of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, 1883.)

Notes.

The goddess to whom this hymn is devoted was called Teteoinan, the Mother of the Gods, Toçi, our Mother (maternal ancestor), and also by another name which signified “the Heart of the Earth,” the latter being bestowed upon her, says Duran, because she was believed to be the cause of earthquakes. Her general functions were those of a genius of fertility, extending both to the vegetable and the animal world. Thus, she was the patroness of the native midwives and of women in childbirth (Sahagun). Her chief temple at Tepeyacac was one of the most renowned in ancient Mexico, and it was a felicitous idea of the early missionaries to have “Our Lady of Guadalupe” make her appearance on the immediate site of this ancient fane already celebrated as the place of worship of the older female deity. The Codex Ramirez makes her a daughter of the first King of Culhuacan.

Notes.

The goddess Chimalipan is not mentioned by the authorities at my command; but from the tenor of the hymn it is evident that the name is a synonym for the virgin mother of Huitzilopochtli, who is distinctly referred to by his title Yautlatoani (see ante, p. 18). In the myth, she dwelt upon the Coatepetl, the Serpent Mountain, on the site of Tulan. For a full discussion of this myth I refer to my inquiry, “Were the Toltecs an Historic Nationality?” in Proceedings of the Amer. Phil. Soc. for Sept. 1887, and American Hero-Myths, chap. 11. (Phila., 1881).

The Gloss distinctly states that the mother of Huitzilopochtli is referred to in the hymn. We must regard Chimalipan therefore as identical with Chimalman, who, according to another myth dwelt in Tula as a virgin, and was divinely impregnated by the descending spirit of the All-father in the shape of a bunch of feathers.

In other myths she is mentioned as also the mother of the Huitznahua, the enemies and the brothers of Huitzilopochtli, referred to in the second of this collection of chants.

Notes.

Ixcoçauhqui, “the Yellow Faced,” was the Mexican God of Fire. Torquemada gives as his synonyms Xiuhtecutli, “Lord of Fire,” and Huehueteotl, “the Ancient God” (Monarquia Indiana, Lib. VI., cap. 28). Elsewhere he identifies him with the Sun-god (Ibid., Lib. XIV., cap. 4). Sahagun describes his annual festival (Hist., Lib. II., cap. 38), and gives another of his names, Cueçaltzin, a reverential form of cuezalotl, flame (Hist., Lib. I., cap. 13).

The tzonmolco so often referred to in this hymn was the sixty-fourth edifice in the great temple of Tenochtitlan, and was devoted to the worship of Ixcoçauhqui (Sahagun). The word literally means “the place of spreading hairs,” the rays or ornaments spreading from the head of the statue of the god representing flames (Sahagun).

The reference in v. 6 seems to be to one of the women who were sacrificed at the festival, as related by Sahagun (Lib. II., App.).

Notes.

“The Chichimecs,” says Sahagun (Hist., Lib. VI., cap. 7), “worshipped only one god, called Mixcoatl.” The Anales de Cuauhtitlan speaks of Mixcoatl as one of the leaders of the ancient Nahuas from their primitive home Chicomoztoc, the land of the Seven Caves. This is what is referred to in the above hymn. In later times Mixcoatl became god of hunting and of the tornado, and his worship extended to the Otomis.

Tzihuactitlan, “the land of the tzihuac bushes,” I have not found mentioned by any of the Spanish authorities, but it is named in connection with Chicomoztoc in an ancient war-song given in my Ancient Nahuatl Poetry, pp. 88 and 140.

The hymn appears to be in memory of the leadership of Mixcoatl in conducting the ancestors of the Nahua on their long wanderings after leaving their pristine seats. It should be read in connection with the earlier pages of the Annals of Cuauhtitlan.

The reduplicated form of the name, Mimixcoatl, is not found elsewhere, and appears to be a poetic license.

Notes.

Xochipilli, “lord of flowers,” otherwise named Macuilxochitl, “five flowers” (the name of a small odorous plant), was the deity who gave and protected all flowering plants. As one of the gods of fertility and production, he was associated with Tlaloc, god of rains, and Cinteotl, god of maize. His festival is described in Sahagun (Historia, Lib. I., cap. 14).