Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts | Page 6

on the moan head in Dr. 38c, on a head with the Cauac-sign
in Dr. 39c, 66c, and on the dog in Dr. 29a. All these pictures are meant
to typify his abode in the air, above rain, storm and death-bringing
clouds, from which the lightning falls. The object with the cross-bones
of the death-god, on which he sits in Dr. 66c, can perhaps be explained
in the same manner. As the fish belongs to god B in a symbolic sense,
so the god is represented fishing in Dr. 44 (1). His face with the large
nose and the tongue (or fangs) hanging out on the side in Dr. 44 (1)a
(1st figure) is supposed to be a mask which the priest, representing the
god, assumes during the religious ceremony.
Furthermore the following four well-known symbols of sacrificial gifts
appear in connection with god B in the Dresden manuscript; a
sprouting kernel of maize (or, according to Förstemann, parts of a
mammal, game), a fish, a lizard and a vulture's head, as symbols of the
four elements. They seem to occur, however, in relation also to other
deities and evidently are general symbols of sacrificial gifts. Thus they
occur on the two companion initial pages of the Codex
Tro.-Cortesianus, on which the hieroglyphs of gods C and K are
repeated in rows (Tro. 36-Cort. 22. Compare Förstemann, Kommentar
zur Madrider Handschrift, pp. 102, 103). God B is also connected with

the four colors--yellow, red, white and black--which, according to the
conception of the Mayas, correspond to the cardinal points (yellow, air;
red, fire; white, water; black, earth) and the god himself is occasionally
represented with a black body, for example on Dr. 29c, 31c and 69.
This is expressed in the hieroglyphs by the sign, Fig. 9, which signifies
black and is one of the four signs of the symbolic colors for the cardinal
points.
God B is represented with all the four cardinal points, a characteristic,
which he shares only with god C, god K, and, in one instance, with god
F (see Tro. 29*c); he appears as ruler of all the points of the compass;
north, south, east and west as well as air, fire, water and earth are
subject to him.
Opinions concerning the significance of this deity are much divided. It
is most probable that he is Kukulcan, a figure occurring repeatedly in
the mythology of the Central American peoples and whose name, like
that of the kindred deity Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs and Gucumatz
among the Quiches, means the "feathered serpent", "the bird serpent".
Kukulcan and Gucumatz are those figures of Central American
mythology, to which belong the legends of the creation of the world
and of mankind. Furthermore Kukulcan is considered as the founder of
civilization, as the builder of cities, as hero-god, and appears in another
conception as the rain-deity, and--since the serpent has a mythologic
relation to water--as serpent deity. J. Walter Fewkes, who has made this
god-figure of the Maya manuscripts the subject of a monograph (A
Study of Certain Figures in a Maya Codex, in American Anthropologist,
Vol. VII, No. 3, Washington, 1894), also inclines to the belief that B is
the god Kukulcan, whom he conceives of as a serpent-and rain-deity.
This view has been accepted by Förstemann (Die Tagegötter der Mayas,
Globus, Vol. 73, No. 10) and also by Cyrus Thomas (Aids to the Study
of the Maya Codices, Washington, 1888). The same opinion is held
also by E. P. Dieseldorff, who, a resident of Guatemala, the region of
the ancient Maya civilization, has instituted excavations which have
been successful in furnishing most satisfactory material for these
researches (see Dieseldorff: Kukulcan, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1895,
p. 780). Others have considered god B as the first parent and lord of the

heavens, Itzamná who has a mythologic importance analogous to that
of Kukulcan. Itzamná is also held to be the god of creation and founder
of civilization and accordingly seems to be not very remotely allied to
the god Kukulcan. Others again, for example Brasseur de Bourbourg
and Seler, have interpreted the figure of god B to represent the fourfold
god of the cardinal points and rain-god Chac, a counterpart of the Aztec
rain-god Tlaloc. The fact that this god-figure is so frequently connected
with the serpent and the bird is strongly in favor of the correctness of
the supposition, that we should see in god B a figure corresponding to
the Kukulcan of tradition. Thus we see the god represented once with
the body of a serpent and with a bird near by (Cort. 10b), while B's
hieroglyph appears both times in the text. God B is also pictured
elsewhere repeatedly with a serpent body, thus for example on Dr. 35b,
36a. On pages 4-6 of the Codex Cortesianus he