The value of ancient Mexican manuscripts in the study of the general development of writing / Alfred M. Tozzer.

  • Alfred Tozzer
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The value of ancient Mexican manuscripts in the study of the general development of writing / Alfred M. Tozzer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    great ability possessed by the natives of Mexico to read by means of pictures. They took advantage of this in several ways in order to disseminate the teachings of the Roman religion. The entire cate- chism was shown by means of pictures. No question of sound entered into this sort of picture writing. These pictures were painted upon great cloths and hung up before the people. A page of Velades,1 2 a Latin account of the activities of the priesthood, dated 1579, shows some of the ways taken by the priests to introduce the new religion into Mexico. * * * Torqumada (1723)2 and other early writers describe these charts or “lienzos.” I know of none of these charts still in existence, but there are several manuscripts which contain the same class of pictures. Leon (1900) illustrates and describes this kind of document. The Peabody Museum has a manuscript which is slightly more elaborate in its figures than that pictured by Leon, but in all essential particulars they are identical. Both may be considered copies of earlier charts. * * * In all these illustrations we have seen pure “thought writing,”3 ideas expressed by pictures, conventionalized pictures, symbols, or conventionalized symbols. Up to this time there has been no sug- gestion of the name, or, more exactly, the sound of the name. Ideas have been expressed, but ideas regardless of the sounds which the names would signify. The next step to be illustrated by Mexican examples is where sound comes in for the first time as a factor. It is not the object now that is the desired thing, but the name of the object. This marks an intermediate stage between picture writing on the one hand and phonetic writing on the other. It employs the well-known principle of the rebus. It is this step which is illustrated with special clearness in the Nahua manuscripts, perhaps better than in the writing of any other people. Much has been written in various places on this phase of the writing of the Mexicans. The phonetic character of the greater part of the various pictures has been known for some time.4 Brinton (1886 and 1886, a) has discussed this method of wilting and gives it the term “ikonomatic,” the “name of the figure or image,” referring to the sound of the name rather than to any objective significance as a > Velades, 1579, chap, xxviii, gives a pictorial alphabet which is of no importance. Valentine, 1880, p. 74, gives a reproduction of it. 2 Boole xv, chap, xxv, “Tuvieron estos Benitos Padres, un modo de Predicar, no menos trabajoso, que artiheioso, y mui provechoso, para estos Indios, por ser conforme al uso, que ellos teniae, de tratar todas las cosas por Pinturas, y era desta manera. Hacian Pintar en un Liengo, los Articulos de la Fe, y en otro, los diez Mandamientos de Dios, y en otro, los siete Sacramentos, y lo demits que querian, de la Doctrina Christiana; y quando el Predicador, queria Predicar de los Mandamientos colgavan junto, de donde se ponia it Predicar el Liengo de los Mandamientos en distancia que podia, con una Vara senalar la parte del Liengo, quequeria. * * * ” For further references to this custom, see Leon, 1900. 2 Scler, 1888, uses the term “ Gedankenrebus” for this kind of writing. 4 Peflafiel, 1885, gives an atlas of the place-names found in the tribute lists in the Codex Mendocino.