Rig Veda Americanus | Page 2

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.
RIG VEDA AMERICANA
I. Vitzilopochtli icuic.
0. Vitzilopuchi, yaquetlaya, yyaconay, ynohuihuihuia: anenicuic,
toçiquemitla, yya, ayya, yya y ya uia, queyanoca, oya tonaqui,
yyaya, yya, yya.
0. Tetzauiztli ya mixtecatl, ce ymocxi pichauaztecatla pomaya, ouayyeo,
ayyayya.
0. Ay tlaxotla tenamitl yuitli macoc mupupuxotiuh, yautlatoa ya,
ayyayyo, noteuh aya tepanquizqui mitoaya.
0. Oya yeua uel mamauia, in tlaxotecatl teuhtla milacatzoaya,
itlaxotecatl teuhtla milacatzoaya.
0. Amanteca toyauan xinechoncentlalizquiuia ycalipan yauhtiua,
xinechoncentlalizqui.
0. Pipiteca toyauan xinechoncentlalizquiuia: ycalipan, yautiua,
xinechoncentlalizqui.
Var. 6. This verse is omitted in the Medicean MS.
Gloss.
0. In ivitzilopochtli ayac nouiui, id est, ayac nechneneuilia,