BY
CHARLES P. BOWDITCH
CAMBRIDGE
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1901
Goodman, in his elaborate and valuable book on the Maya Inscriptions,has made up his Tables on the supposition that the beginning day of themonth was not called Day 1, but Day 20, giving the day this numberbecause in his view the Mayas counted the number of days which hadpassed and not the current or passing day. That is, the Mayas,according to Goodman, used the same plan in counting their days whichwe use in counting our minutes and hours and which we depart from incounting our days. Thus, when we speak of January 1, we do not meanthat one day has passed since January came in, but that the month ofDecember has passed and that we are living in the day which whencompleted will be the first day of January. But when we say that it isone o'clock, we do not mean that we are living in the hour which whenpassed will be the first hour of the day or half-day, but we mean thatone whole hour of the day or half-day has fully passed. Goodman's ideais that the Mayas used this system in counting their days of the month,their kins, uinals, tuns, katuns, and cycles. In other words heconsiders that the beginning day of the month Pop was not 1 Pop, but 20Pop, the beginning day of Uo was 20 Uo; that the beginning kin of auinal was Kin 20, the beginning uinal of a tun was Uinal 18, thebeginning tun of a katun was Tun 20, that the beginning katun of acycle was Katun 20, and that the beginning cycle of a grand cycle wasCycle 13. The reason why Goodman substitutes 18 and 13 for 20 in thecase of the uinals and cycles respectively is that these are thenumbers of uinals and cycles which are needed to make one of the nexthigher units in his scale of numeration.
Without considering the truth or error of his view in regard to thecycles, katuns, etc., let us try to solve the following questions:
1st. Did the Mayas count the days of their month by the day which hadpassed, as we count our hours?
2d. Was the number which they gave to the beginning day of the month 0or 20?
For our answers to these questions, let us turn to pages 46-50 of theDresden Codex. These pages contain three rows of twenty month dateseach, and each of these dates is reached with but two exceptions bycounting forward from the preceding date the number of days specifiedin red at the bottom of the pages, the first date of each row on page46 being the regular number of days distant from the last date of thesame row on page 50.
In the first row of dates, we find that the third date on page 48 is 12Chen. The number of days at the bottom of the page which need to becounted forward in order to reach the fourth date is 8. If thebeginning day of the month were marked by the Mayas with 1, then thelast day would be marked with 20, and by adding 8 days to 12 Chen, weshould reach 20 Chen. But the date is not 20 Chen. The month isYax,—the month immediately following Chen,—and the glyph which takesthe place of the number has a form resembling two half-circles placedside by side. In other words, in this case 8 days from 12 Chen reach ?Yax, and as far as the first proposition is concerned, it is immaterialwhether the form above given is called 0 or 20. Eight days have takenus out of the month Chen into the next month Yax, and to a day of thatmonth which is not 1 Yax, but must be a day preceding 1 Yax, whetherthat is called 0 Yax or 20 Yax.
Again, the first date of the first row of month dates on page