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A Diachronic Study of Kennings in Mayan Languages

Kerry M. Hull

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The poetic and literary aspects of Maya hieroglyphic texts are just beginning to come into focus. In this chapter I trace the diachronic use of one of the most elegant poetic forms among the Maya: the diphrastic kenning—the pairing of two distinct elements to produce a metaphorical, more abstract third con-cept. I investigate the use and meanings of fourteen specific kennings/pairings found in Maya hieroglyphic writing that have attested counterparts in Colonial period documents or modern Mayan languages. This comparative analysis sheds light on both Maya conceptual patterning based on selec-tively paired lexical items and the interpretation of such ken-nings over time. I also argue that diphrastic kennings, firmly entrenched in the parallelistic structuring, allow us to defini-tively posit the presence of a poetic tradition at least as far back as the Early Classic period that has continued unabated to modern times.

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Literary Features oF Mayan Languages

The preferred vehicle for literary expression among all modern Mayan lan-guages is paralleled discourse. Quite simply, parallelism defines poetic or ornate discourse in the minds of the Maya themselves. Within its seemingly strict con-fines, the Maya are able to elaborate profoundly complex cultural knowledge by means of associative connections. Exploiting these relationships—whether complementary, contrastive, or otherwise—Maya poetics operate at times out-side the boundaries of the line, usually showing their true literary qualities only when in juxtaposition.

The most immediate manifestation of such unions is the couplet, long recognized as a key component of literary speech among the Maya (Bricker 1974; Edmonson 1982, 2008 [1986]; Gossen 1974, 2002; Monod Becquelin 1979; Tedlock 1983; Vapnarsky 2008). Parallelismus membrorum (parallelism of mem-bers) is the very essence of most Maya literary forms and the most prevalent rhetorical device found among all modern-day Maya groups, both in ritual and quotidian speech (Josserand and Hopkins 1998). However, in modern Mayan languages a general adage applies: the more formal the discourse, the more parallel structures appear. In fact, in the case of the Maya there is an unequivocal link between the frequency of parallelisms and the formality of the discourse. Indeed, the abundant couplet structures of Maya ritual speech have been aptly described as “coercive” (Edmonson 2008 [1986]: 17). Allen Christenson (this volume) also notes that chiastic structures most commonly appear in early post-Colonial K’iche’ writings when their authors are from rul-ing lineage dynasties, suggesting that expert use of highly paralleled forms was a prerequisite of rulers’ speech. According to William Hanks (2000: 114), the presence of abundant parallelisms “authenticates the identity of the signatories as genuine Maya nobles.” This is, however, not to say that all informal speech is devoid of such features (cf. Brody 1993; Christenson 2007: 50), only that there is an overwhelming tendency toward increased “poetic-ness” in formal situations and among religious and political leaders. It is undoubtedly on ritual and other formal speech occasions where the full f lowering of parallel structures can be found among the Maya (Gossen 2002: xlvi; Hull 2003).

Producing well-formed parallelisms, however, is not as easy as one might imagine. Years of careful learning and a high metalinguistic awareness of what constitutes a proper associative relationship among terms are usually neces-sary. In the case of the Tzotzil, a poor selection of terms in a parallelism would, according to Gary Gossen, “render a given performance weaker” (1974: 398). In the case of the Ch’orti’ Maya, for example, many of my consultants stress the importance of knowing “the right kind” of word to select in the latter stichs of a parallelism to avoid “infelicitous” pairings (Hull 2003: 376). Both knowing which word combinations are acceptable and understanding the metaphorical

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extensions that often accompany such groupings are crucial elements in one’s communicative competence in many Maya societies.

The Tzotzil speakers of Zinacantan, according to Victoria Bricker, do not overtly discuss or define what “formal” or “informal” speech is, though they use couplets in various discourse situations. Bricker further notes that “what serves as the criterion for classification at this level is the value judgment in terms of good (lekil) and bad (copol), formal speech genres being considered ‘good’ and informal ‘bad’ ” (1974: 377). This native-speaker understanding of what constitutes an appropriate pairing also allows us to peer into the concep-tual psyche of the Maya to gain insights into distinctive and salient associative patterns in their culture. Each and every form expressed in parallel fashion encapsulates some conceptual relationship held by the Maya. As we will see, this is particularly true in the case of diphrastic kennings, where the relation-ship between the linguistic elements is more metaphorically fused than is the case of simple couplets.

HierogLyPHic texts and Poetics

While various scholars have contributed in different ways to our ever-growing understanding of hieroglyphic texts, major advances in the field of poetic and narrative research on the hieroglyphs have been comparably fewer. Although unable to read the texts phonetically at the time, J. Eric Thompson was the first to assert that hieroglyphic texts had paralleled forms like those in mod-ern Mayan languages (1950: 61–62). In 1978, when hieroglyphic texts were in the early stages of decipherment, Floyd Lounsbury keenly identified couplet structures in the texts of the Temple of the Cross at Palenque (1980: 107–115). Since that time, however, appreciation of the formalized poetics of the hiero-glyphic script has generally taken a back seat to efforts toward decipherment and historical understanding. Early innovative work by Kathryn Josserand and Nicholas Hopkins was foundational in identifying the poetic and narrative characteristics of hieroglyphic texts. They were able to show unequivocally that Maya hieroglyphic texts contained clear narrative features that were found in modern Mayan languages, allowing for the identification of peak events and the division of texts into narrative blocks. These authors accomplished this groundbreaking feat by treating the language of the hieroglyphs as an actual Mayan language, thereby assuming that discourse structures found in the mod-ern Mayan languages should also be present in glyphic texts (Josserand 1991, 1995, 1997; Josserand and Hopkins 1988). Further work by Clemency Coggins (1992) and Linda Schele and Maricela Ayala (1993) succeeded in identifying cer-tain poetic patterns and metaphors in the hieroglyphic script.

My master’s thesis (Hull 1993) was a more in-depth study focused only on the recognition of poetic forms of discourse in the hieroglyphs, such as diphrastic

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kennings, couplets, triplets, and metaphors. In a report for the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI) in 2001, I also com-pared the verbal art of the Ch’orti’ Maya to poetic devices in the hieroglyphic inscriptions. Then in 2002, Timothy Knowlton published an important study in which he identified additional diphrastic kennings and provided insights into their contextual interpretations. My dissertation (Hull 2003) is one of the fuller treatments of the various poetic devices found in the hieroglyphic script in a single source. More recent research by Alfonso Lacadena (in press, this volume) has revealed new poetic figures and greatly improved our understand-ing of both the forms and meanings of glyphic poetics. Furthermore, Victoria Bricker (2007) has shown the close relationship between couplet types from the Classic period to Maya codices and post-Colonial sources. Aurore Monod Becquelin and Cédric Becquey (2008) have contributed by identifying specific types of poetic discourse and showing their clear relationship to modern-day Mayan languages. Michael Carrasco and I (n.d.) have also looked at the use of specific poetic forms in larger narrative structures and tried to identify distinct types of poetic genres.

This brief survey of those carrying out studies on rhetorical features of the hieroglyphic script is by no means complete, and some contributions have gone unmentioned. Fortunately, interest in the subject of glyphic poetics is on the rise, and new research is further expanding our understanding of the Classic Maya literary tradition (cf. Carrasco and Hull, in prep; Hull, in prep; Lacadena, in press; Monod Becquelin et al. 2010).

Functions oF ParaLLeLisM in HierogLyPHic texts

While the language of the Maya script is undoubtedly a prestige form that likely differed in various ways from the languages spoken at most ancient Maya cities (Houston, Robertson, and Stuart 2000; Lacadena and Wichmann 2000; Wichmann 2002), poetics are based on textual content and thus are not beholden to the vehicle of linguistic expression. In other words, while heav-ily poetic ritual languages are well documented around the world, the actual poetic-ness within any discourse is usually tied to the purposes and caprice of the speaker/writer; it is not something necessarily inherent in the language itself. Therefore we should not automatically expect to find a significantly higher frequency of poetic forms simply because the language of transmission is one of prestige. In actuality, semantic parallelisms—those most commonly found in formal discourse in modern Mayan languages—are used somewhat reservedly on the whole in the hieroglyphic script compared to formal speech among modern Maya.1 Certain types of genres (our knowledge of which is still in its infancy) do show a more conscious effort to create paralleled lines, but as far as I can tell, few of them correlate exclusively to the graphic media on which

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the texts were recorded, such as monuments, ceramics, bones, and others. The one clear exception is the stricter formulaic presentation found in many of the four surviving Maya codices, which are much denser in structural poetics than texts in other types of media. The poetic features of much of the Colonial lit-erature, such as the Ritual of the Bacabs (see Knowlton, this volume; Vail, this volume) and especially the Books of Chilam Balam, are the direct inheritors of the codical formulas and expressions. Note this example from the Chilam Balam of Tizimin (Edmonson 1982: 51, lines 1021–1024):

Nicte ahau2 Of the Flower lordsCa em i When they descend.

Ma ix uah And “there is no food”U cuch nicte katun Is the burden of the Flower katun.

These two couplets demonstrate strong similarities to Maya codices in terms of both content (here auguries and burdens) and style. Furthermore, many of the lexical pairings we find in Colonial and modern Maya literature can be traced back to Classic period times. In most cases such couplets rep-resent core associations that ref lect intimate cultural understandings, which explains their longevity.

The standard approach to forming couplets and other larger parallel con-structions in all Mayan languages is synonymy—the systematic replacement of one term in each stich with a different term of similar meaning (Hull 2003: 41), as this example from Ch’orti’ demonstrates:

Koche b’an atz’i ik’ab’a’, As thus are your names,B’an atz’i inombre, Señor. Thus are your names, Masters.

The curandero, or traditional healer, alternated between the Ch’orti’ term k’ab’a’, ‘name’, and the Spanish loanword nombre with the same meaning to cre-ate this synonymous parallelism.

In other cases semantic parallelism can be based on word class, not the specific meaning of a term. Note this example from the Ritual of the Bacabs (Arzápalo Marín 1987: 289, text VI, folio 31, lines 36–37):

chacal kutz red tobaccosacal kutz white tobacco

Here the slot of ‘color term’ is substituted since they share the same seman-tic class. In the hieroglyphic script, we can identify numerous parallelisms based on this principle of semantic parallelism (in all of its varieties) that have Colonial or modern-day equivalents in Mayan languages.

A second important type of semantic parallelism in Mayan languages is antithetical (Hull 2003)—the use of contrary or opposing3 semantics across the

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lines of a verse. Known as diphrastic kennings, these poetic devices use multiple individual terms to create separate, more abstract ideas. Ángel María Garibay Kintana (1953: 112) first noted their presence (he termed them difrasismos) in Nahuatl literature, describing them as binary expressions used metaphorically that, if taken in a literal fashion, would result in a loss of their true meaning. The literary power of such metonymic expressions can be profound as their meanings turn metaphorical, representing a larger whole than its component parts. At other times they can also encapsulate deeper cultural conceptions than do ordinary expressions. An example of this can be seen in the eighteenth-century copy of the Ritual of the Bacabs (Arzápalo Marín 1987: 229, text VII, folio 44, lines 341–342):

Cen a nae Yo soy tu madre (I am your mother),cen a yum yo soy tu padre (I am your father).

The pairing of the terms “mother” and “father” here likely means, as Ramón Arzápalo Marín (1987: 18) has suggested, something akin to ‘I am your progenitor’. From two distinct but related terms a third, more abstract concep-tual image is born. The relationship between paired terms, however, can be complex since the new meaning created through their union is metaphorical. The association between the elements can be complementary at times or it can be contrary; that is, conceptual opposites, what Evon Vogt (1976: 31) refers to in Tzotzil as “critical recurring binary discriminations.” When the latter is true, I believe the sense of distant extremes is central to understanding their semantics.

coMPLeMentary extreMes and MetaPHor

The concept of employing two polar extremes to express the notion of ‘every-thing between them’ (that is, ‘complete’, ‘full’, or ‘all’) is an integral part of Maya poetic discourse and names4 (cf. Morales 2002: 22–23 for a similar use in Nahuatl). For example, in Yukatek the pairing of “older brother” and “younger brother”—two extremes of age—refers to “everybody” (Edmonson 2008 [1986]: 19). Ch’orti’ also has this same kenning (Hull 2003: 143):

Tya’ matuk’a kamayores, Where there are none of our older brothers,

Tya’ matuk’a kawijtz’inob’, Where there are none of our younger brothers,

Tya’ matuk’a e pak’ab’ Where there are no people, e konoj. no humans.

The first two lines form a semantic couplet with “older brothers” and “younger brothers,” meaning ‘all men’ or ‘all people’.5 The meaning of the first verse is

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clarified in the second couplet with the frozen archaic expression “e pak’ab’, e konoj,” which refers to ‘all human beings’.

As the previous two expressions from Yukatek and Ch’orti’ show, the met-onymic use of dual extremes implies a larger whole. This has been a favorite poetic device since Classic period times and pervades all levels of Maya dis-course. It is no exaggeration to say that this binary principle forms the dis-cursive backbone of formalized speech in Mayan languages. A good example can be seen in K’iche’ where in the Rabinal Achi (Tedlock 2003: 56) Cawek of the Forest People says, “I left the prints of my sandals on that land spread out in front, spread out behind,” clearly signifying that his footprints were ‘every-where’. As noted earlier, such diphrastic kennings, which often fall into the cat-egory I term “complementary extremes,” are replete in post-Colonial and mod-ern Mayan languages, especially in more formal speech situations. However, the complementarity I refer to requires further explanation. The antithetical base of such dyads is often unmistakable (day-night, head-feet, older-younger), yet within this polarization also lies an intimate link or a kind of oppositional complementarity in which two opposing terms work together to reinforce the metaphorical extension that is created by their pairing, just as in the English expression “I got soaked from head to toe,” meaning my entire body was wet. Thus I find no contradiction in the notion of complementary extremes, espe-cially when viewed through the cultural lens of Mesoamerica.

With the abundance of complementary extremes found throughout post-Conquest Mesoamerican literature, we would not be amiss in expecting simi-lar constructions to exist in the language recorded in Maya hieroglyphic writ-ing. Recent research has indeed confirmed that Maya hieroglyphic texts con-tain a wide variety of diphrastic kennings (Hull 1993, 2003; Knowlton 2002; Stuart 2003), many of which fall into the category of this type of complemen-tary extreme. Significantly, not only do we find complementary extremes in the hieroglyphic script, but they appear remarkably in contexts that suggest a strong continuity and preservation of meaning over more than a millennium. In the subsequent discussion, I have selected fourteen of these complementary extremes that have exact or near-exact counterparts in post-Conquest Mayan languages and will discuss the metaphorical extensions possible for each dyadic construction.

sky/eartH

The first of these kennings, “sky, earth,” is doubtlessly one of the most com-monly encountered in Colonial and modern Mayan languages, especially in ritual contexts. For example, the Rabinal Achi is replete with the “sky, earth” dyad: “Thanks be to the Sky, thanks be to the Earth” or “here at the navel of the sky, navel of the earth” (Tedlock 2003: 45, 54). In fact, an analysis by

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Monod Becquelin and Becquey (2008: 140–141) of the frequency of different couplet pairs in the Rabinal Achi, a K’iche’ dance drama performed in Rabinal, Guatemala, revealed that the “sky, earth” (kaj/ulew) pairing ranked the high-est in frequency of use (15.36%), double that of the pair in second place. By pairing two locative extremes—earth and sky—the Maya express the notion of expanded space, everything between the planes of heaven and earth (Hull 2003: 432–437). Here are two Yukatekan examples of this “sky, earth” dyad:

Elom can Burned was the sky;Elom lum Burned was the land.

(Edmonson 1982: 30, linEs 455–456)

hom [canal] in the caves of the sky,hon cabal in the caves of the earth.

(ArzápAlo mArín 1987: 313, tExt x, folio 62, linEs 29–30, my trAnslAtion from spAnish)

In both passages the pairing of “sky” with either lum, “land,” or cab(al), “earth,” refers to all space between the sky and earth, that is, ‘everywhere’. Hence, Arzápalo Marín in another passage translates canal cabal as “de arriba para abajo” (from above to below) (ibid.: 408). This is also reminiscent of the Nahuatl in topan, in mictlan, “what is above us, the region of the dead,” a kenning for “the metaphysical beyond” (León-Portilla 1963: 102). The expansive sense of the kenning is apparent in this couplet from the Rabinal Achi (Breton 1999: 144–145, lines 53–54, my translation from Spanish):

kaØcha k’u ri nutzij ch(i) uwach kaj ch(i) uwach ulew

he says my word on the face of the sky, on the face of the earth

In Ch’orti’ Maya, traditional healers (ajnirom) also regularly use the “earth, sky” kenning in curing rites to refer to the more general idea of ‘everywhere’,

A’si tama oriente mundo, They play in the eastern world, oriente syelo. the eastern sky,

meaning the evil disease-causing spirits are found everywhere in the eastern region (Hull 2003: 138). Similarly, in the K’iche’ document Título de Totonicapán, the look of certain ‘magical beings’ is said to reach as far as “chi kaj, chi ulew,” “to the sky, to the earth” (Carmack and Mondloch 2007: 67). The Popol Vuh also contains the “earth, sky” pairing in K’iche’ (Christenson 2003: 50):

cajxucut kaj, the four corners of the sky,cajxucut ulew the four corners of the earth.

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Barbara Tedlock (1992: 82) notes that among the modern K’iche’ cajxucut kaj can mean “south” and cajxucut ulew “north,” referring to the mountains Tamacu and Pipil, respectively, which are part of a forty-day ritual circuit (known as the “sowing and planting”) made by local priests. The use of the pairing of these underlying directional opposites in the Popol Vuh similarly pre-scribes a larger spatial location.

In Hieroglyphic Mayan we also find many occurrences of the same pair-ing of “sky, earth.” For example, on page 35a of the Dresden Codex, chan-kab appears prefixed with the number “2.” Also, in the Classic period inscriptions an example of the common chan-kab expression can be seen on Bench 1 from the South Subterranean Building of Palenque’s Palace:

numil ta chan Passing in the sky,numil ta kab Passing on the earth.

In other cases the personifications of the sky and earth, the Sky God(s) and Earth God(s), are similarly paired, as they are on Tikal Stela 31 (B13–B14).

“1” pik k’uh chan 8,000 are the Gods of the Sky, k’uh kab Gods of the Earth.

Thus we see the uninterrupted use of precisely the same complementary extreme, chan-kab, from the Classic period to modern Mayan languages. The last example from Tikal Stela 31 has additional importance because of its early date, that of 9.0.10.0.0 in the Maya Long Count, or AD 445, pushing back the attested date for this expression into the Early Classic period.

It is of interest that the same types of grammatical variation we observe in the hieroglyphic script with this compound are also found in the modern languages. In this example from the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin, both nouns carry an -al suffix (Edmonson 1982: 63, lines 1444–1445):

T an u pax cabal There was the breaking of the lands;T an u sot canal There was the shaking of the heavens.

At B6–A7 of the Middle Panel of the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque, the same construction appears: chanal ikaatz, kabal ikaatz, ‘Jade of the sky, Jade of the earth’ or ‘Heavenly Jade, Earthly Jade’. In other cases, however, only chan takes the -al suffix, as this example from a looted mask (see Carrasco 2010: 614, figure 7, A6–D1) shows: chanal k’uh, kab k’uh, ‘God of the sky, God of the earth’. A similar suffixation pattern is observed in the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin: Elom ti cab, Elom canal, “Burning on earth, Burning in heaven” (Edmonson 1982: 73, lines 1615–1616). Finally, sometimes the -al suffix appears only on the ‘earth’ term, as on vessel K27966 as well as in this excerpt from Stela J at Quirigua (figure 3.1a):

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uyokte’ chan, The strides/base of the sky,uyokte’ kabal The strides/base of the earth,

k’ahk’ tiliw chan yopaat. of K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat.

An analysis of the use of the “sky, earth” kenning across Mayan languages makes clear that this most intelligible of the complementary pairings repre-sents the broader notion of ‘everywhere’, ‘domain’, or, at times, ‘the world’ (cf. Hull 2003: 437). We can therefore appreciate the poetic pairing of these two terms in a title for Yax Pasaj, the sixteenth ruler of Copan, on Copan Stela N as chan kab ajaw, which I have suggested elsewhere designates him as ‘Lord of the World’ or ‘Lord of All His Domain’ (ibid.: 443–444), perhaps akin to the Aztec deity Tezcatlipoca, one of whose titles was Tloque Nahuaque (Lord of the Near and Far) (figure 3.1b).

tiMe kennings

Poetic time expressions figure prominently in Colonial and modern Maya dis-course. Each standard time period (day, month, year) can be paired in various combinations (cf. Monod Becquelin and Becquey 2008: 117–118). An example of their use can be seen in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. In a discussion about a group of Maya who chose not to become Christians, the text mentions their eventual death. Then, using a series of metaphoric expressions in couplet form, the author further describes their death in the following way (Edmonson 2008 [1986]: 147; translation following Roys 2008 [1933]: 34):

tulis u Complete, was the month,tulis hab complete, was the year.

The pairing of “month” and “year” represents ‘time’ in a general sense (cf. Hull 2003: 439; Lacadena, in press)—in this case, the lifespan of these individu-als who were killed. While there is no clear occurrence of the “month, year” dyad in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, a near-equivalent phrase “day, year” does appear at D6–C8 Lintel II of the Four Lintels at Chichen Itza.

ta yilil k’in, On the sign of the day,ta yilil haabil. On the sign of the year.

About this “k’in, haab” couplet I have written elsewhere (Hull 2003: 440):

I have documented an archaic expression in Ch’orti’ for ‘calendar’ that makes use of this precise term: uwirib’ir7 e ajk’in, uwirib’ir e jab’, ‘the sign of the day, the sign of the year’. In this Ch’orti’ metaphor, the notion of ‘calen-dar’ is gracefully expressed in a couplet of k’in and jab’, or ‘day’ and ‘year’, respectively. Therefore, I would suggest that the closely parallel form found on Lintel II at Chichen Itza may also make reference to ‘calendar’ or ‘time’.

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Among many modern Mayan languages, simi-lar pairings of “day, year” are found, though the pattern preferred in hieroglyphic texts is “day, month.”8 The broader concept of ‘time’ is often the intended meaning of such temporal couplets.

The pairing of “day, night” is a fundamen-tal kenning that appears throughout Mayan languages. Cross-culturally, the grouping of day and night into a single conceptual unit is one of the more natural associa-tions to make. Indeed, in languages throughout the world there exist expres-sions pairing day and night to mean ‘all the time’; for example, “She worked day and night to get the project finished.” It is therefore not necessarily sur-prising that the “day, night” dyad also abounds in Mayan languages, including that of the hieroglyphic script. In fact, in allographs of the Distance Number Introductory Glyph (DNIG) where two complementary terms substitute for T573, tz’ak,9 no pairing is more common than k’in-ak’ab or “day, night.” From this we can infer the centrality of this concept among the dozen or so similar substitution pairs.

However, to fully appreciate the poetics of such dyads in this context, we need to know the meaning of the word they are substituting for, tz’ak. The term tz’ak has several possible interpretations in modern Mayan languages, among the most common of which are ‘complete’, ‘healing’, or ‘ordered’. I have previously argued for viewing the DNIG and all of its allographs as referring to a ‘completeness’ that comes from the pairing of two seemingly opposing con-cepts to create a metaphoric whole (Hull 2003: 446–447). Stuart similarly views these pairings as representing “wholeness” or “completeness” (2003: 3) and else-where as “complementary pairings that convey a whole idea or concept” (2005: 99). Taken in this light, in DNIG substitutions k’in/ak’ab would represent time as a complete whole, stressing the ‘completion’ of the time period discussed in a particular portion of the text.

Figure 3.1. Examples of the “sky, earth” dyad: (a) u-yo-ok-te’ cHan-na, u-yo-ok-te’ kaB, uyokte’ chan, uyokte’ kab, ‘The strides/base of the sky, The strides/base of the earth, of K’ahk’ Tiliw Chan Yopaat’, on Quirigua, Stela J, C5–D6 (shown in scansion), drawing by Matthew Looper; (b) cHan-kaB-aJaW-wa, chan kab ajaw, ‘Lord of All His Domain’, on the Base of Copan, Stela N, C5, drawing by Linda Schele; courtesy, Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Crystal River, FL.

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There are, however, a number of k’in/ak’ab occurrences outside the DNIG context in which the more general notion of ‘time’ was likely meant. This meaning is certainly apparent in modern Mayan languages. Today, most Mayan languages do not have a distinct term for ‘time’, relying instead on extended meanings of words such as ‘day’ or ‘year’. Thus in Itzaj the concept of “date” or “time” is expressed by the term k’inil (Hofling 1997: 392), as it can be in Yukatek also, as k’iinil (Bastarrachea, Yah Pech, and Briceño Chel 1992: 68). According to the Cordemex, Yukatek uses both the term k’in [k’iin] (day) and hab [ ja’ab’ ] or a’b’ (year) to refer to ‘time’ in a more general sense (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980: 1, 165, 400). In more formalized discourse, however, speakers often turn to paired temporal expressions. In Yukatek, as Hanks notes, the “day, night” dyad is a metonymic emblem of time (1989: 107). It is also commonly found in K’iche’ literature as k’iij-ak’ (cf. Norman 1983: 116). Likewise, in Ch’orti’ cur-ing prayers, healers make copious references to day and night in couplets (Hull 2003: 139):

Ch’a’r a’syob’ atz’i ya’ tamar e silensyo diya, tamar e silensyo noche.They are indeed playing in the silent day, in the silent night.

In the Ritual of the Bacabs, the terms for day and night regularly appear in parallel stichs of couplet lines. Note these examples:

u coil akab de la lujuría de la noche (of the lust of the night),u coil kin de la lujuría del día (of the lust of the day)

(ArzápAlo mArín 1987: 299, tExt Vii, folio 44, linEs 7–8)

he [ti] kin Tanto de día (As much by day)[ti] akab como de noche (as by night)

(ibid.: 400, tExt xli, folio 183, linEs 9–10)

In both examples the emphasis is on the fact that the action is happening ‘all the time’. In addition, in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Roys 2008 [1933]: 109) the phrase “He is in the sky by day; he is in the sky by night” implies that he was in the sky all the time. In the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin (Edmonson 1982: 62, lines 1365–1368) in the prophecy of 7 Ajaw for those of Mayapan,

Hunac tzuc ti cab He will gather lust in the land.Ppen cech cal pach y an i There was lust and adultery,

T i pulan Which was carriedY oc t u lacal i And sprouted everywhere.

La u tucul t u kinil That was the thought by day;La u tucul ti akab That was the thought by night.

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Edmonson was correct is glossing the meaning of these lines as “with lust and sodomy everywhere day and night” (ibid.: 61–62). The text continues (ibid.: 62, lines 1369–1374):

U keban kin That sin of day;U keban akab That sin of night,

Umunal u pucsikal hal ach uinicob Enslaving the hearts of the governors,Ah bobatob The prophets.

Again, Edmonson captures the sense of the “day, night” kenning in glossing this as “constant sin enslaving the hearts of the rulers” (emphasis added) (ibid.: 62).

In the hieroglyphic inscriptions when “day, night” is not part of the DNIG sign block, just such a sense of general, continuous time is almost certainly intended. One terse example of this couplet with this meaning is found on page 68a of the Dresden Codex, simply written as k’in, ak’ab, ‘day, night’, fol-lowed by another kenning (ti’ we’, ha’) referring to ‘sustenance’ or ‘abundance of sustenance’—a straightforward description of the long-term existence of one of these concepts (see Hull 2003: 441–442). A text from the Tabasco area at Comalcalco contains an interesting parallel:

wi’il ?-k’in Abundance of ? by day / Abundance of ? days,wi’il ak’abil Abundance by night / Abundance of nights.

While the form wil means “necesario” (necessary), wi’il means “alimento” (food) (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980: 922). A related term is wi’ih, which means “hambre” (hunger), “falta de cualquier comida” (lack of some food) (ibid.; cf. Bastarrachea, Yah Pech, and Briceño Chel 1992: 130). However, in this context, the meaning of “abundance” seems more appropriate, especially based on the behavior of this sign in other contexts.

Another example from the hieroglyphic corpus comes from the site of Ek’ Balam in the northern Yucatan. An inscription on a bone, Miscellaneous Text 7, contains these phrases (figure 3.2):

k’in tzuk? tz’akaj, Day partition? was completed,ak’bal tzuk? tz’akaj. Night partition? was completed.

The temporal completion or a partition10 appears to be the intended mean-ing. There is a nice parallel to this construction in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Luxton 1996: 35):

Tulis kin The day completed,Tulis akab The night made whole.

In Yukatek the adjective túulis means “full, round, whole” and túulistal means “become round, complete” (Bricker, Po’ot Yah, and Dzul Po’ot 1998: 284). Thus

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while Edmonson renders the tulis as “returned,”11 a more accurate translation of the term is “complete,” as both Luxton (1996: 35) and Roys (2008 [1933]: 34) have it. This, then, is in line with the meaning of the Ek’ Balam inscription previously mentioned that also discusses the ‘completion’ or ‘making whole’12 of the ‘time’ (“day, night”). We therefore have a direct semantic equivalence between the verb tz’ak in the hieroglyphic texts and the adjective tulis [túulis] in this Colonial text as a parallel usage with the kenning “day, night.”

Possessed forms of the k’in/ak’ab couplet are also found in both the hiero-glyphic inscriptions and post-Colonial texts. For example, on Lintel II from the Four Lintels at Chichen Itza, we find this phrase:

uk’in, Its day / It was the day,yak’ab Its night / It was the night.

In the Ritual of the Bacabs (Arzápalo Marín 1987: 299, text VII, folio 44, lines 3–6), the same grammatical construction is used with this pair (my translation from Spanish):

Hun Can Ahau u kinil Exactly the Can Ahau “Four-Ahau” was the day,

hun Can Ahau u yakbilil Exactly the Can Ahau “Four-Ahau” was the night.

In summary, the dyad “day, night” metaphorically refers to general or con-tinual time. The sheer number of occurrences of this pairing from even Early Classic times (for example, the Delataille Tripod [see Hull 2003: 591]) to the

Figure 3.2. Pairing of “day-night” on Miscellaneous Text 7 at A10–D2 from Ek’ Balam: k’in-ni tZuk? tZ’ak-ka-ja ak’aB-la tZuk? tZ’ak-ka-ja, k’in tzuk? tz’akaj, ak’bal tzuk? tz’akaj, ‘Day partition? was completed, Night partition? was completed’. Drawing by Alfonso Lacadena.

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present day in many Mayan languages attests to its poetic saliency for Maya discourse.

Wind or air/Water or rain

The “wind, water” dyad appears in several DNIG substitutions on Hieroglyphic Stairway 1 at Copan and the Tablet of the 96 Glyphs at Palenque. The semantic connection between water and wind comes, of course, from rainstorms. While not significantly common in either the hieroglyphs or post-Conquest Mayan languages, its use as a DNIG allograph shows that the notion of their comple-mentarity was in place from Classic period times. The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin contains a Colonial period example of this pairing (Edmonson 1982: 120, footnote 3207):

U hokol y ik hub The appearance of the conch wind; u kin haa the time of water.

In post-Colonial documents, the linking of wind and water often corre-sponds to the appearance of rain. This is similar in many ways to the Zapotec term guiiebee, which, as Daniel Brinton notes, means “wind-and-water cloud” (cited in Thomas 1897: 218). Among the Maya, storm clouds are thought to not bring rains alone but also wind. Yet the relationship between wind and water goes even further. It is from water that wind originates. Note this description of wind and water based on the beliefs of the inhabitants of the village of Chan Kom in the Yucatan, Mexico:

The wind that blows from the clouds’ (ojo-ik-muyal)—from the clouds, that is that threaten rain—is one such dangerous wind. Ojo-ik-ha is the name given to the wind that blows from the water just before the rain comes. There is, in fact, an idea that it is water which causes wind; that winds arise only from water. In proof of this it was pointed out that leaves of the plants grow-ing on the sides of the cenotes are in motion when everything else is quiet (emphasis added). (Redfield and Villa Rojas 1934: 164–165)

This notion of wind originating from water or watery places such as caves or cenotes is fairly widespread throughout the Maya region (Bassie-Sweet 2002: 5–6). Thus the pairing of wind and water in the DNIG allograph taps into an intimate association in Maya thought relating to the origin of wind itself and the convergence of both elements to create a rainstorm.

MaLe/FeMaLe

A considerable body of literature has been produced in recent years dedicated to investigating and explaining the concept of dualism among the ancient and

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modern Maya and others in Mesoamerica (Bassie-Sweet 2002; Hull 2009; Joyce 2000; Klein 2001; León-Portilla 1963: 99; Tarn and Prechtel 1986). The principal issue in any discussion of dualism is the relationship between genders, male and female. What is clear from an analysis of Mesoamerican societies in gen-eral is that their slotted categories of gender often do not correspond to those of Western society. Instead, we find gods in modern Maya societies that are fully dual-gendered, possessing both male and female characteristics simultane-ously. For example, the K’iche’ gods Q’uq’kumatz and Tepew seem to have had both masculine and feminine aspects (Carmack 2001: 279). Among the Ch’orti’, for example, I have argued that their pantheon consists of two types of dual-ism: “Dual genderedness has two forms in Ch’orti’ thought as I interpret it: ‘inherently dual-gendered supernaturals’ (at once embodying male and female aspects) as well as ‘dual-gendered paired supernaturals’ (complementary but separate female and male entities), which form the liturgical underpinnings of spiritual interactions between this existence and the Otherworld” (Hull 2009: 187). In Ch’orti’ ritual discourse, dual-gendered gods are the norm, not the exception. In fact, according to Charles Wisdom, Ch’orti’ deities “must” be dual-gendered (1940: 409–410).

Paired male/female terminology abounds in Mesoamerican languages. In Ch’ol, according to Josserand and Hopkins (1996: 27), the pairing of the gen-dered terms tat-na’, ‘father-mother’, is a metonym for “ancestor.” This is akin to the Tzotzil expression totilme’iltik (‘father-mothers’) that refers to “ances-tral deities” (Vogt 1969: 32). Yet another related compound term is the priestly title in K’iche’ of chuchkajawib, also translating literally as ‘mother-father’ (B. Tedlock 1981). In Ch’olti’ the couplet na’, ‘mother’, and mi, ‘father’, according to Danny Law (this volume), “is often used to poetically refer to God or to the Catholic priest.” Law gives this example:

natz’ et ka-na’, You(sing.) are our Mother, ka-mi, our Father

In modern-day Ch’orti’, the sister language of Ch’olti’, traditional healers often refer to God in exactly the same terms, calling him at once ‘father’ and ‘virgin’ (that is, the Virgin Mary), also using a singular second-person pronoun as noted by Law in Ch’olti’ (Hull 2009: 191–192).

Stephen Houston, David Stuart, and Karl Taube, however, have cautioned against overstating the case for ‘shifting genders’ that are “performative” in nature, arguing that the evidence for such assertions is not found in Classic period texts or iconography (2006: 51–56). Instead, they point to the consistent demarcating of gender lines in word and image, except in very rare cases. The most commonly cited example of a type of dual genderedness is the feminine attire worn by the young Maize God. However, Houston and colleagues note that this type of costume “refer[s] to a particular category of deity, not to a

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blurring of genders” (2006: 51–52). While our direct evidence for dual-gendered gods during the Classic period is weak at best, we are left with the conundrum of explaining the widespread dual-gendered deities found among many mod-ern Maya deities, agricultural terms, and physical locations, in addition to the pervasive dual-genderedness in the later Aztec society (cf. Bassie-Sweet 2000; Hull 2009). This simply cannot be explained as a post-Colonial phenomenon. At a certain level, some deities or Otherworld beings with dual-gendered char-acteristics must have been present in Classic period times, since no other line of reasoning could adequately account for the geographic and chronological distribution of this ideology throughout Mesoamerica.

Diphrastic kennings in which different genders are represented in the couplet halves, however, do not necessarily entail a dualistic unity comprising both genders. Instead, it is at the intersection of conceptual meaning, the space between two extremes, where the poetic impact of the expression blossoms. This can be seen in the pairing of male and female entities, one of the standard features of ritual discourse in modern Maya languages. Vogt (1976: 31) calls the male/female dyad one of the “critical recurring binary discriminations” among the Tzotzil Maya. Across Mayan languages, these dyads can take a number of different forms, usually as male/female, son/daughter, or mother/father, though all with different meanings. When the least specific of the three, male/female, is used, a metaphorical extension may or may not be implied. In the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel we find this example (Edmonson 2008 [1986]: 44, lines 809–810):

Ah kainom nu xib Sung to were the men,An kainom ix nuc Sung to were the wives.

In this example (and other similar couplets), we must allow for both a met-aphorical interpretation and a straightforward one; in this case, the former is ‘everyone’ and the latter is simply ‘to the men and wives’. The more specific gender pairings, however, such as this example from the Ritual of the Bacabs, suggest a single interpretation (Arzápalo Marín 1987: 299, text VII, folio 44, lines 341–342):

Cen a nae I am your mother,Cen a yum I am your father

Here the speaker claims to be both father and mother—an unlikely event indeed (!)—but as a kenning the phrase makes perfect sense (as noted earlier in a related passage) as ‘I am your progenitor’, a broader meaning derived from the more specific extremes mentioned in the couplet. Also, in the Annals of the Cakchiquels, when the speaker addresses the interlocutors as [c]a ohix [c]a, yxnu[c]ahol, “You, my sons, you, my daughters” (Brinton 1885: 70–71, paragraph 7), the all-encompassing reference to ‘my children’ is meant.

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In the hieroglyphic inscriptions there are various types of gender pairings, from mother/father relationship expressions to simply the pairing of male and female in couplet halves, often with the meaning of ‘everyone’ or ‘complete’. In addition, on the East Door, South Panel of Temple XI at Copan, an allograph for the DNIG appears as a female and a male head, indicating the notion of ‘completeness’ by the presence of both genders (figure 3.3a).

An illustrative case appears on the East Panel of the Temple of the Inscrip-tions at Palenque at O8–P9, a text recording the result of an attack on Palenque by the distant regional powerhouse Calakmul (figure 3.3b):

satay k’uhul ixik The divine ladies got destroyed/diedsatay ajaw The lords got destroyed/died

This lament of the death of Palenque nobles is expressed through the pair-ing of ‘women’ and ‘lords’, which assumedly in this context refers to ‘women’ and ‘men’.13 In this case there is no indication that a kenning was intended, rather the sense seems to be that various members of the Palenque nobility were killed in or after the Calakmul attack. The root of the verb, sat, is often translated as ‘lost’ in numerous Mayan languages, but this must be understood in Mesoamerican idiom, where being ‘lost’ refers to death or destruction, as I have argued elsewhere (Hull 2003: 452–453). Thus in the Popol Vuh this rela-tionship is made apparent: “I would not die, I would not be lost” (Christenson 2007: 128) (see also Sam Colop, this volume, for a discussion of this couplet). Similarly, in the Annals of the Cakchiquels, paragraph 14, we find the couplet quix cam, quix çach, “You shall die, you shall be lost” (Brinton 1885: 76–77). Also, in the Rabinal Achi the warrior Cawek states (Tedlock 2003: 171):

Figure 3.3. “Male, female” pairings in hieroglyphic writ-ing: (a) Distance Number Introductory Glyph (DNIG) allograph showing female and male heads, drawing by David Stuart (2005: 100, figure 71i); (b) sa-ta-yi k’uH[ul] ixik, sa-ta-yi aJaW, satay k’uhul ixik, satay ajaw, ‘The divine women got destroyed/died, the lords got destroyed/died’, on East Panel of the Temple of the Inscriptions, O8–P9, at Palenque (shown in scansion), drawing by Linda Schele; courtesy, Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Crystal River, FL.

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We qatz waral in kamel14 If I am truly dead in sachel if I am lost

The Book of Chilam Balam of Mani (Craine and Reindorp 1979: 112–113) recounts a great famine that spread throughout the Peten, causing considerable hard-ships for the Itza:

Ox vudz katun ca cimie, For three folds of the Katun the Itza died ca satic and were lost

In Yukatek the same root sat- can also refer to the ‘destruction’ of someone or something; for example, Satnom y al, “Destroyed were the born children” (Edmonson 1982: 149, line 4218). In the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin there are numerous usages of this verb and structure parallel to the couplet at Palenque:

Sati ucanil Destroying the sprouting,Sati ual t u pach e Destroying the return afterward.

(ibid.: 81, linEs 1859–1860)

Satan hal ach uinicob i Destroyed were the governors(ibid.: 152, linE 4307)

Satom uah Destroyed was the bread,Satom kauil Destroyed the gods.

(ibid.: 74, linEs 1620–1621)

The last of these examples is a reference to a war that took place in 1595 in which the food supply and Maya gods were destroyed—a very similar context to that of the East Panel of the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque. Thus these verses provide a clear basis for interpreting the result of the Calakmul attack on Palenque and indicate the presence of a long-running couplet using the root sat-, ‘die, lose, destroy’, in couplet form.

stone/Wood

The two principal building materials in Classic Maya society were stone and wood. Elite architecture was primarily constructed of cut stone,15 while the less wealthy, who were also often more mobile, used easier-to-build perishable materials (wood, thatch, cane, mud plaster) (cf. Johnston and Gonlin 1998: 149). In addition, perishable wooden structures were often erected on the tops of temples and other buildings. In many cases wooden posts were incorporated into stone and masonry in f loors, patios, platforms, corbelled vaults, and other locations, though always on platforms made from earth and rubble (Sharer and Traxler 2006: 215). At other times, such as at Rio Azul, later occupations show an increased use of wooden structures on top of filled-in stone and masonry

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buildings (Adams 1999: 48). In most forms of housing construction, however, both stone and wood were used, regardless of the individuals’ status. Therefore I would argue these two materials, constantly in use together in the Maya built world, were natural candidates for use in couplet halves as well as in metaphori-cal extensions as a kenning. Note these examples:

unicil te del madero humano (of human wood)unicil tun de la piedra humana (of human stone)

(ArzápAlo mArín 1987: tExt Vii, folio 40, linEs 331–332)

Likan u che Erected was the tree,Likan u tunich Erected was the stone

(Edmonson 1982: 85, linEs 1969–1970)

The second example describes the ‘erection’ of both a tree and a stone in paral-lel lines. David Freidel, Linda Schele, and Joy Parker (1993) surmised that trees and stones are conceptually related among the Maya because they are both objects that can be ‘planted’. To non-Maya, the notion of ‘planting’ a stone is foreign; however, the ancient Maya used precisely the same term, tz’ap, ‘to plant (something in the ground)’, for the standing up of carved stones, or stelae, by digging a hole and ‘planting’ them in it.

The pairing of wood (te’) and stone (tuun) is also found in the Classic period on a ceramic vessel (K1398) (figure 3.4a):

utz’apil te’, His planting of the tree,utz’apil tuun. His planting of the stone.

Albert Einstein once famously quipped, “I don’t know what weapons will be used in World War Three, but in World War Four people will use sticks and stones.” The “sticks and stones” metaphor is one well-known in Western culture (e.g., “Sticks and stones can break my bones”). The pairing of “stone, wood” in Mayan languages similarly creates a metaphorical expression distinct from its component parts. For example, in Yukatek, pairing “sticks” and “stones” pro-duces a kenning referring to war (Edmonson 2008 [1986]: 19).16 Note this highly poetic example from the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin (Edmonson 1982: 46, lines 863–872):

Ox lahun ku The 13 GodsTi bolon ku To the 9 Gods:

Ca emi kak “Bring down fire.Ca emi tab Bring down the rope.

Ca emi tunich Bring down stonesY etel chee And trees.”

Ca tal i Then cameU baxal Pounding

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Che of sticks Y etel tunich And stones.

Edmonson glosses this passage as “the 13 Itza Gods to the 9 Xiu Gods, ordering war and punishment, and there was war and punishment” (ibid.: 45–46). It is the gods who cause the ‘descent’ of ‘sticks and stones’, that is, who send punishment through war-fare and strife. In Nahuatl, a similar kenning exists: in tlatoltetl, in tlatolcuauitl, which literally means, ‘word rock, word stick’ but metaphorically refers to “el castigo hablado” (spoken punishment) (Morales 2002: 17). An even more graphic example of this ken-

ning appears elsewhere in the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimim (Edmonson 1982: 30, lines 453–454):

Emom u kikel che Descended were bloody sticks Y etel tunich And stones.

The Colonial Motul dictionary of Yukatek Mayan makes reference to the “stone, wood” pairing a term designating “defeats and pestilence” (cf. Roys 1967: 99). This is likely the intended meaning on page 37 of the Madrid Codex where a te’-tuun ‘wood-stone’ compound appears.

The Annals of the Cakchiquels, a mytho-historical account of Cakchiquel people, also describes the arrival of the Spanish and its ensuing consequences through the “stone, wood” (“chee, abah”) kenning (Brinton 1885: 176).

Va[c]a te chupam huna ok ki xeul Castilan vinak; xcavinak ok rubeleha, ok xeulCastilan vinak Xepit Xetulul; chi hun [t]anel xcam [c]echevinak chiri ruma

Figure 3.4. Kennings associated with wood, stone, and f lint: (a) example of “wood, stone” kenning: u-tZ’a-?-li-te’ u-tZ’a-?-li-tuun-ni, utz’apil te’, utz’apil tuun, ‘his fashioning (?) of the tree, his fashioning (?) of the stone’, on K1398 (shown in scansion), drawing by Michael D. Carrasco, after photo by Justin Kerr; (b) example of “wood, f lint” kenning: te’-BaaH took’-BaaH, te’ baah, took’ baah, ‘wood image, f lint image’, on K1398, draw-ing by Michael D. Carrasco, after photo by Justin Kerr; (c) te’-took’-BaaH-ja, te’ baahaj, took’ [baahaj], ‘It is the wood image, it is the f lint image’, on a looted panel, likely from the site of La Corona (Site Q) (shown in scan-sion), drawing by Linda Schele; courtesy, Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Crystal River, FL.

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Castilan vinak, Tunatiuh Avilantaro rubi, cahaual ri ki xkaçan ronohel ama[t];mahaok tetamax vi quivach [c]a tahinok ti [t]ihalox chee, abah.

It was during this year that the Castilians arrived. Forty-nine years have Xetulul. On the day 1 Ganel the Quiches were destroyed by the Castilians. Tunatiuh Avilantaro, as he was called, conquered all the towns. Their coun-tenances were previously unknown and the people rendered homage to sticks and stones.

In what is one of the most poignant lines in the Annals of the Cakchiquels, the surrender of the Cakchiquel Maya to the Spanish invaders is here recorded as “Their countenances were previously unknown and the people rendered homage to sticks and stones” (emphasis added). There are two possible ways to interpret this phrase. First, in the context of the present discussion, it could be a direct reference to the military might of the Spanish forces. Alternatively, it could mean the Cakchiquels worshipped their ‘idols’, since in a number of highland Mayan languages the pairing of che’, ‘wood’, and ab’aj, ‘stone’, is a kenning for a carved or graven deity (“idol”).17 (In the Popol Vuh, see Christenson 2007, lines 5256–5257, 5338–5339.) The author of the Annals of the Cakchiquels elsewhere refers to idols using this same metaphor: ok xyape ri mi[c]hbal quichin ri chee abah “and then was given them the wood and stone which deceive” (Brinton 1885: 70–71). However, in the line “the people rendered homage to sticks and stones.” it would make less sense for the defeated Cakchiquels to immediately begin to worship their god statues right after being conquered by the Spanish, while if the meaning ‘military might’ is applied, the fact that they paid homage to mili-tary might instead would seem more appropriate.

A closely related (if not synonymous) ‘war’ kenning is the pairing of “wood, f lint” found in the hieroglyphic inscriptions, where it is usually preceded by the baah (‘first’, ‘head’, ‘image’) glyph (cf. Hull 2003: 420–421).18 On the vessel K1398, a portion of one of the vertical texts reads (figure 3.4b):

te’ baah, Wood image,took’ baah. Flint image.

On a looted panel, likely from the site of La Corona (Site Q), a similar expres-sion appears (figure 3.4c):

te’[baahaj] It is the wood image,took’ baahaj It is the f lint image.

Nikolai Grube first suggested that this collocation was a metaphor for warfare with knives (Schele and Grube 1997: 27). This same expression also appears on page 10a of the Dresden Codex where the augury is negative. Furthermore, throughout the Dresden and Paris Codices this kenning’s association with warfare and death is readily apparent. What is more, the context of the passage on K1398

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into which this couplet fits is strictly martial—the overturning (pat-) of the rul-er’s throne (see Hull, Carrasco, and Wald 2009: 37–38; Wald and Carrasco 2004).

One of the more interesting contexts of the “wood, f lint” pairing is found in the hieroglyphic expression te’nib took’nib. Morphologically, we could inter-pret these forms as te’, ‘wood’, -n, “passivizer,” and -ib, “instrumental suffix” and took’, ‘f lint’, -n, “passivizer,” and -ib, “instrumental suffix.” The -ib instru-mental suffix normally appears on CVC verbal roots, which must first be pas-sivized with -n to receive the -ib suffix. Therefore, te’nib and took’nib could be derived instrumental nouns, literally ‘wood-instrument’ and ‘f lint-instrument’, respectively, if their roots are verbal, which seems somewhat unlikely. A better possibility is that they are nominal forms with a -nib locative suffix, designating them as place names.

The pairing of te’nib and took’nib appears in only a handful of inscriptions. One instance is on a wooden mirror backing from the site of Topoxte in Lake Yaxha as the final two glyphs in a dedication formula in a position that would suggest a personal title or a place name (figure 3.5a). Another case of this pair-ing appears on Xunantunich Panel 2 (figure 3.5b), the transliteration of which is ti-took’ ti-PakaL ix-Winaak-ki te’-ni-bi-k’uH took’-ni-bi k’uH ka-ta-wi-tzi-WitZ-aJaW. The transcription and translation in scansion are as follows:

ti took’ with the f lint,ti pakal with the shield,

ixwinaak Lady Winaak.te’nib k’uh Wood-place god,

took’nib k’uh f lint-place god.kat witz Kat-hill

witz ajaw Lord of Witz

The poetic features of this fragment of Panel 2 are remarkable in a number of ways. With three couplets and one monocolon, this entire portion of the text is set out in poetic verse. The first couplet at B1–C1 is the kenning “f lint, shield” (which I discuss later), and the second couplet is also a kenning, with the pairing of “wood, f lint” used in the description of certain gods. Finally, the toponymic reference poetically repeats the term witz, ‘hill’—first as kat witz, which is likely a local emblem glyph (Grube and Martin 2004: II-82), and later as witz ajaw, designating this protagonist as a ranking lord (ajaw) over a larger region called witz.

FLint/sHieLd

One of the earliest visual kennings to be recognized in Maya iconography was the “f lint, shield” combination (figure 3.5c). Jean Genet (1934) first noted the

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relationship between scenes showing war and the shield glyph (Houston 1983: 14). In her article Genet (1934) uses ethnohistorical documents to show the use and variation in the f lint/shield complex. She also noted pictorial examples from the codices as well as from the Books of Chilam Balam, where the f lints (or sometimes arrows or spears) and shields are actually drawn, from which she extrapolated the meaning of war. While Genet did not have the benefit of being able to read the hieroglyphs, she deduced much of the meaning associ-ated with the visual pairing in the iconography with help from linguistic and ethnographic sources. Today we know the reading of the signs as took’, ‘f lint’, and pakal, ‘shield’. Our best resources for understanding the meaning of this kenning, as Genet also found, come from post-Conquest documents. This first example is from the Annals of the Cakchiquels (Brinton 1885: 81) where it appears in reverse order:

[c]ha, pocob, shields,achcayupil. double-headed lances.

The Rabinal Achi19 (Tedlock 2003: 249) contains passages such as “You spoke them in range of my weapon, in range of my shield” as well as “the power of your weapon, the power of your shield” (ibid.: 41), clearly linking the “f lint/lance/arrow, shield” kenning to warfare and military might. In Nahuatl the kenning in mïtl, in chïmalli (arrow, shield) similarly refers to war or combat (Montes de Oca 2008: 234).20

In many cases in the hieroglyphic inscriptions the “f lint, shield” compound appears in a verbal phrase describing the ‘bringing down’ or ‘lowering’ ( jubuy) of the f lint-shield of a particular site as an expression for its military defeat.21 For example, on the West Side of the Capture Stairs of Dos Pilas, the defeat of the army of Nun Ujol K’awiil is recorded as:

11Kab10 Sotz’

Jubuy utook’ Upakal Nun Ujol K’awiilOn 11 Kab, 10 Sotz’ the flint and shield of Nun Ujol K’awiil were brought

down.

The bringing down of an opponent’s f lint-shield is a metaphor for prevailing in battle in Classic period texts.

This same “f lint, shield” dyad also occurs in the Postclassic Paris Codex (page 7) and is common to other post-Conquest writings, where we find not only the same kenning but also parallel verbal phraseology. For instance, in the Colonial Yukatekan Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin, the same kenning (with “arrow” sometimes substituting for “f lint”) clearly refers to war:

Figure 3.5. a–c: Examples of the locative kenning te’nib-took’nib: (a) te’-ni-bi took’-ni-bi, te’nib took’nib, ‘wood place god, f lint place god’, from a wooden mirror backing from the site of Topoxte, after a drawing by Nikolai Grube; (b) ti-took’ ti-PakaL ix-Winaak-ki te’-ni-bi-k’uH took’-ni-bi k’uH ka-ta-wi-tzi-WitZ-aJaW, ti took’ ti pakal ixwinaak te’nib k’uh took’nib k’uh kat witz witz ajaw, ‘with the f lint, with the shield, Lady Winaak. Wood-place god, f lint-place god, (at) kat-hill, Lord of Witz’, on Xunantunich Panel 2, drawing by Nikolai Grube; (c) the “f lint, shield” kenning, read took’-PaLaL, took’ pakal, on Tikal, Structure 5D1-1, Lintel 3, draw-ing by Simon Martin.

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Emom chimal e Descended are the shields,Emom halal Descended are the arrows

(Edmonson 1982: 22, linEs 355–356)

Sisip ahau Twice blamed was the lord,Sipob ix hol can la e And blamed were those captains— Tihaulah i Who rested

T u thubob In the bottoms of the hammocks—Ti noclah i Who had dropped there

Chimali The shields,Ti noclah i Who had dropped there

Nab te The lances(ibid.: 53, linEs 1103–1110)

In the first example, the chimal (‘shield’, a Nahuatl loanword) and the halal (arrows) of the enemy are said to have emom, or “descended”—exactly the type of language used to describe military defeat in the Classic period: ‘his f lint-shield was brought down’.

Finally, a similar expression in the Título de Totonicapán mentions a war in Tekpan in which kich’ab’ kipokob’, “their arrows, their shields” were abandoned (kinoq), leading to the deaths of some fighters while others escaped (Carmack and Mondloch 2007: 83, lines 13–14).22 Once again, losing a battle is described in poetic terms as the lowering of one’s f lint/arrow-shield, a metaphor with roots deep into the Classic period.

Bread/Water

The ancient Mayan term for bread or tortillas was waaj. It most commonly occurs on painted vessel texts and in the Postclassic codices, often paired with the word ha’, ‘water’ (though ‘water’ has a much broader temporal dis-tribution and variation in its use in texts recorded on various types of media). While other, very similar pairings occur in hieroglyphic texts, such as ‘food’ and ‘drink’, they can take on very different (indeed contradictory) meanings at times compared to the “bread, water” dyad. For example, Edmonson notes that in Yukatek, “bread, water” can be a metaphorical reference to “fate” (2008 [1986]: 19). Yet a more common meaning associated with this pairing can be found in the narrative of the creation of the world in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel: “their bread is lacking, their water is lacking” (Roys 2008 [1933]: 60). In this context the pairing of bread and water creates a kenning referring to ‘famine’. In other cases “bread, water” seems to have a different meaning altogether (Edmonson 1982: 29, lines 439–440):

Tan coch hom u uah Halfway clear was his food [bread];Tan cock hom u ya aal Halfway clear was his water

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The prophecy for this K’atun cycle (2 Ajaw) was essentially ‘so-so’ rather than strictly bad or good. In this and other instances, “bread, water” describes “the general character” of the particular K’atun, according to Edmonson (ibid., foot-note 440).

In Yukatekan sources there is sometimes variation in the terms used in this kenning, such as substituting the terms for ‘food’ or ‘bread’ or ‘drink’ for ‘water’ yet retaining the meaning of ‘famine’:

Auat uiil Crying foodAuat ukul Crying drink,

(ibid.: 52, linEs 1065–1066)

Y ok u uah Tears were his food,Y okol y aal And weeping his drink.

(ibid.: 165, linEs 4617–4618)

In the first example the terms uiil (food) and ukul (drink) are used, but later in the text the couplet is expressed with uah (bread) and aal (water), both meaning a time of famine.

This same type of variation and mixing occurs in the Postclassic codices of the Yucatan Peninsula. Thus on page 52 of the Dresden Codex the terms ha’ (water) and waaj (bread/tortilla) are paired in a positive augury, not that of fam-ine (Boot 2005; Carrasco and Hull 2002: 26–27; García-Campillo 1998). Also, on Uxmal Capstone 1 the same collocation appears written as:

ti’ waaj (At) the mouth of bread,ti’ ha’ (At) the mouth of water.

This is reminiscent of a passage from the Dresden Codex on page 68a:

ti’ we’ (At) the mouth of food, ha’ water.

Since the augury for this particular time period was positive, we are not deal-ing with a reference to famine in this case. We could also therefore assume that Capstone 1 at Uxmal likewise refers to sufficient ‘sustenance’,23 as I have previ-ously suggested (Hull 2003: 441–442).

Positive auguries, however, usually do not indicate simply having enough to get by but rather having an abundance of food or other desirable things. Thus we find positive auguries expressed as ux wi’il, ‘abundance of food’, throughout the Dresden Codex (such as on page 2a). Furthermore, when the dyad “food, drink” appears in Classic period inscriptions, the meaning also suggests a bounty rather than a scarcity of food. Indeed, in the Classic period, when the glyphic forms ‘eat’ and ‘drink’, we’ and uk’, respectively, are paired,

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Erik Boot (2005) suggests that this refers to feasting. Also, on the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Copan, Block 67: 5, the standard DNIG sign is replaced by the two signs representing bread and water, which I would interpret as ‘complete’, that is, having everything one needs, from food to drink.

Thus the combination of ‘food-bread’ and ‘water-drink’ in a polyvalent metaphor can indicate both feast and famine as well as describe the character of individual K’atuns.

green/yeLLoW

In Nahuatl the pairing of two colors can represent several layers of metaphori-cal meaning. For example, in tlilli in tlapalli (black, red) is a kenning that refer-ences painted codices; however, the metaphor can extend even further to refer to ‘wise ones’ (that is, people who can read such codices) (Montes de Oca 2008: 230). The most common associations with color are with the four principal directions for the ancient Maya: red (chak) for east, black (ihk’) for west, yellow (k’an) for south, and white (sak) for north. The ‘fifth direction’, or center, was linked to the color green/blue (yax). Individually, color terms also have met-aphorical associations, as they do in most languages. However, when placed together, two color terms can also have specialized meanings. For the ancient Maya we find several cases of color term pairs. For example, on the West Side of the Platform of Temple XIX at Palenque, at D4, the regular main sign of the DNIG is replaced with the signs for yax-k’an, “green-yellow”24 (figure 3.6a). In other DNIG glyphs, the meaning of whatever appears in the main sign seems to always relate to ‘completeness’ or ‘whole’. Stuart (2005: 100) observes that yax-k’an “most certainly refers to the life cycle of edible plants, with the more direct meaning of ‘unripe-ripe’.” Once again, the notion of complementary extremes—here, ripe and unripe—fulfills the semantic requirements of the DNIG (the ‘complete’ life cycle of plants) as well as of a conceptual (not lexical) kenning.

The yax-k’an pairing also appears lexically on page 19c of the Dresden Codex, where the text reads “2”-yax-k’an u-ku-chu itZaMnaaJ “Moon Goddess”, 2 yax k’an ukuch itz’amnaaj “Moon Goddess,” ‘2 yax k’an is the burden of Itzamnaaj, the Moon Goddess’. In this scene, the Moon Goddess is shown seated while carrying her “burden” on her back—the yax-k’an hieroglyphs. The intended augury is likely positive in this case. It is significant in this regard that in a discussion of the meaning of the DNIG “green, yellow” substitution, Stuart (2005: 100) pointed to a Q’eqchi’ entry of raxal-k’anal (lit. green-yellow) that means “abundance” (Haeserijn V. 1979: 282; cf. Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006: 25). I would suggest that this is a close approximation to its meaning here in the Dresden Codex as well as in all other cases of this pairing in the hiero-glyphic script.

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Another intriguing possibility for the yax-k’an compound has recently been suggested by John Robertson, Danny Law, and Robbie Haertel (2010) and Law (this volume). These authors have noted that this same dyad appears repeatedly in the late–seventeenth-century Morán Manuscript, written in the extinct Ch’olti’ language. In addition to the early date of this text, the language it is written in, Ch’olti’, is also important since Houston and his colleagues (2000) have convincingly argued that Ch’olti’ was the nearest language to that of the Maya hieroglyphic script. Based on solid intertextual clues as well as

crucial entries in Poqomam, these authors conclude that Morán associated the concept of k’anal-yaxal with the Christian concept of ‘grace’ or ‘glorious’ (for a more complete summary of these ideas, see Law, this volume).

The Poqoman (Feldmann 2004) entry cited by Robertson and his col-leagues under “kanalraxa” contains definitions such as “premio” (reward), “de las buenas obras mérito” (of good works, merit), and “gracia” (grace) and under “ahkan. ah rax” meanings such as “dichoso” (happy, blessed). We find further confirmation of this kenning’s meaning in an early–eighteenth-century Cakchiquel source containing the entry q’anal, raxal,25 “Las Riquesas o el Reyno celestial” (riches or the celestial kingdom) (original orthography retained) (Guzmán 1984: 62). In addition, in the early–seventeenth-century dictionary of Cakchiquel known as the Vocabulario de la lengua cakchiquel u el guatemalteca, Thomás de Coto recorded numerous nuanced definitions that are highly instructive relating to the “yellow, green” kenning (all with original orthography retained, except for changing the ‘reverse 3’ for /q’/) (Coto and Acuña 1983):

q’anal, raxal “Bienes de fortuna; por la Gloria (good things of fortune; for the Glory) (p. 68)

Figure 3.6. (a) Distance Number Introductory Glyph (DNIG) allograph consisting of a “yellow, green” pairing, drawing by David Stuart (2005: 100, figure 71a); (b) ha-o-ba yax-k’uH-la yax-aJaW-wa, ha’oob yax k’uhul, yax ajaw, ‘They are the Green Gods, the Green Lords’, from K1440, drawing by the author, after photo by Justin Kerr; (c) u-BaaH-ji-[u]-cH’aB-ba yax-k’uH-? yax-aJaW-wa, ubaah uch’ab yax k’uh, yax ajaw, ‘It is his image, his creation, the Green God, the Green Lord’, from Copan Stela P, E3–F4, drawing by Linda Schele; courtesy, Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Crystal River, FL.

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q’anal, raxal “prosperidad” (prosperity) (p. 29)

nima q’anal, raxal “gloria; la Gloria de q[ue] gozan los bienbenturados” (glory; the Glory that those in bliss enjoy) (p. 249)

q’anal, raxal “paraíso celestial, la gloria” (celestial paradise, the glory (p. 393)

Ah q’an, ah rax, ah cah “por los bienabenturados q[ue] ya están goçando de Dios” (for those in bliss who are already enjoying God). “Bienabenturanza, lugar de la Gloria” (Bliss, place of the Glory) (p. 67)

q’anal, raxal “Estos nombres sig[nific]an abundançia de bienes y riquezas, y q[ue] no falta con cosa alguna, con abundançia de gusto y contento. Y así, p[ar]a dar a entender el cumplimiento q[ue] de todo ay en el çielo, se les aplica este modo de deçir o declarar” (These names signify abundance of good things and riches and that one doesn’t lack anything, with an abundance of pleasure and happiness. And thus, to make known the fulfillment of every-thing there is in heaven, this form of speech or declaring is used.) (pp. 67–68)

ru raxal, ru q’anal “tu bendiçión” (your blessing) (p. 66)

There are also numerous references to the “yellow, green” kenning in K’iche’, starting with two occurrences in the Popol Vuh, which Allen Christenson translates as “abundance and new life” (2007: 289). Christenson also notes that the K’iche’ priests still pray to a deity addressed as “green shoul-der, yellow shoulder of the world,” said to be “the procreative powers of the earth” (see ibid., footnote 832). Adrian Recinos, Delia Goetz, and Sylvanus Morley also translate “ganal raxal” as “abundance of riches” in this case (1950: 226). Elsewhere, Charles Brasseur de Bourbourg renders the same phrase (“ganal-raxal”) as the “magestad de Dios” (majesty of God) (1862: 64).

Robert Carmack and James Mondloch (1983: 205, footnote 9) state that in the Título de Totonicapán, a K’iche’ manuscript from the early nineteenth century, the three terms Rulewal, K’anal, and Raxal refer to the world as a “paraíso terrenal” (terrestrial paradise) and symbolize “su aspecto fructífero y bello por medio de los colores amarillos (k’anal) y azul-verdes (raxal)” (its fruit-ful aspect and beauty through the colors yellow [k’anal] and blue-green [raxal]. The combination of yellow and blue-green, according to these authors, means “riquesas” (riches), “fertilidad” (fertility), and “esplendor” (spendor) (ibid.: 213, footnote 71). They also note that the expression “K’analaj juyub, raxalaj ujuyub, “Del cerro amarillo, del cerro verde” (From the yellow hill, from the green hill), is used to describe “el Paraíso Terrenal” (the Terrestrial Paradise) and that

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it is used for “Tulán, el hogar legendario quiche” (Tulan, the legendary K’iche’ home) (ibid.).

These various definitions are easily associable with the positive augury mentioned on page 19c of the Dresden Codex of “2-green-yellow.” Similar numbered yax-k’an glyphs are found on Classic period stelae such as Seibal Stela 3 (see Law, this volume, figure 10.2) and on capstones such as Capstone 3 at Dzibilnocac, where the god K’awiil is shown seated on a jaguar cushion sur-rounded by food such as cacao and tortillas. Here the numbered yax-k’an glyphs appear before K’awiil and on a bag of food behind him, which, when the above-mentioned meanings are taken into account, is highly suggestive of the notion of abundance. Indeed, the hieroglyphic text accompanying the scene contains several mentions of ux-wi’il, the metaphor for ‘abundance’ discussed previously.

What is more, in Classic period times the pairing of the signs for yax and k’an appears in the iconography as an object dropped from the hand during scat-tering rites. We can therefore conjecture that yax-k’an is both a kenning on the linguistic level meaning ‘glorious’, ‘abundant’, ‘riches’, or ‘blessed’ and an icon with similar connotations. Furthermore, its iconic use together with the for-mal and religious nature of the language found in the Ch’olti’ liturgy strongly suggests that we are dealing with a core conceptual association between these colors, green and yellow, in Maya thought. Thus as Stuart noted, the life cycle of plants from green to yellow fully explains the use of yax-k’an as a DNIG substitute. Furthermore, the plentiful linguistic support from early Mayan lan-guage sources significantly clarifies both the native intuition of the term in all its profundity as well as evidence for the co-opting of this metaphor for distinct yet equally complex Christian theological concepts, all of which illuminate the possible meanings of the yax-k’an kenning in Classic and Postclassic period ico-nography and hieroglyphic texts.

god/Lord

The color green also appears in another interesting, albeit rare, context in a couplet with k’uh, ‘god’, and ajaw, ‘lord’. It occurs in one of the most poetically elaborate examples of verbal artistry among Maya texts: K1440 (figure 3.6b). Rendered in nearly complete poetic form, this painted text offers a tantalizing insight into what was surely the essence of Late Classic poetry, not just the stra-tegic use of occasional poetic devices. (For a fuller discussion, see Hull 2003: 494–496.) I will limit the discussion, however, to the couplet at hand (ibid.: 495):

Ha’oob yax k’uhul yax ajawThey are the Green Gods, the Green Lords

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Another instance of this couplet is on the Left Side of Copan Stela P at E3–F4 (figure 3.6c):

ub’aah It is his image of, uch’ab his creation

yax k’uh The Green God, yax ajaw The Green Lord.

In both cases the gods and lords were modified with yax, which means ‘green/blue’, ‘first’, or ‘new’, any of which could have been the intended meaning here.26

The yax, ‘green’, element is not a necessary component of the core pairing, however. For example, on page 10 of the Paris Codex the “god, lord” pairing appears in a semantic couplet:

chamal k’uh The gods are dead,chamal ajaw The lords are dead.

In Colonial Yukatekan sources, we also find this same pairing of god and lord.

Bee ku e Ah tepal e“Come then, God! Ruler!

(Edmonson 2008: 230, linEs 5417–5418)

Ku en ba ca Ah tepal en i ba caAm I a god someplace? Am I a ruler someplace?

(ibid., linEs 5437–5438)

Ku exAh tepal ex e

“You are a god!You are a ruler!”

(ibid.: 231, linEs 5449–5450)

It is often difficult to determine if a metaphorical extension is intended in many cases with this pairing.

tHrone/Mat

The woven mat was a powerful symbol of authority and rulership throughout Mesoamerica beginning in Preclassic times. Among the Aztecs, the pairing of petlatl (mat) and icpalli (throne) in Nahuatl formed a diphrasitic kenning for ‘authority’ (Marcus 1992: 61). In post-Colonial times, leaders of the K’iche’ lin-

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eages carried the title of ahpop, lit., ‘he of the mat’ (Recinos, Goetz, and Morley 1950: 204, footnote 4). Mats were one of the pieces of regalia K’iche’ rulers held as symbols of their status (cf. Christenson 2007: 257, footnote 691). The derived forms of the term pop also relate to ‘council’, since K’iche’ council discussions were held on such mats by nobles (cf. Brinton 1885: 36). In Yukatek the popol na was a place where “se reunían para discutir asuntos de orden público y apre-nder bailables para las fiestas del pueblo” (they would meet to discuss matters concerning the public and to learn dances for town festivals) (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980: 666). Indeed, few images could be considered more regal for the ancient Maya than that of a ruler seated on a woven mat. It is therefore not surprising that the ubiquitous “mat, throne” kenning is found throughout Mesoamerica as one of the core idioms used to refer to ‘rulership’.

In Yukatek Mayan the word pop is applied to both ‘woven mat’ and ‘throne’ (ibid.). A second term linked to actual thrones in Yukatek is tz’aam. Both forms regularly appear paired in couplet form in Yukatekan literature to produce a kenning for ‘authority’ (Edmonson 1982: 58, lines 1259–1262):

Ba ix ti nacomal e And as captainsTi ualac y ahaulil Who were to rise to lordship

T u pop On the mat,T u tz’am On the throne

Here, the obtaining of rulership power and authority by the captains (nocomal) is visualized as them taking their place “on the mat, on the throne.” The Colonial Vienna dictionary of Yukatek Mayan actually gives “pop ts’am” as a term for “estrado, asiento de reyes y señores” (platform, seat of kings and nobles) (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980: 666).

In the Postclassic period the term pohp is also attested in the hieroglyphic script and is used in ways that parallel what we find in many post-Conquest sources. For example, on page 46c of the Dresden Codex the “mat, throne” ken-ning appears:

Pohp Mat,Tz’am Throne

While no Classic period examples of this kenning are known in the writing system (though they are present in the iconography), its use in the Postclassic Dresden Codex attests to the clear linguistic correlations between pre-Conquest and post-Conquest era poetics for this fundamental metaphor among the Maya.

Land/WeLL

One kenning of great antiquity is the pairing of “land” and “well,” for which we have examples from the Early Classic, the Postclassic codices, and the Colonial

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period. In the hieroglyphic inscriptions the terms are kab and ch’een for ‘land, earth, ground’ and ‘well, spring, cave’, respectively. I will use “land, well” for the sake of simplicity, though “cave” is closely bound conceptually since caves are often places where water was found in the Maya region. In fact, on page 33b of the Dresden Codex the expression kab-ch’een appears in the text above the rain god Chaak as he emerges from a waterhole, or cenote. From the Classic period, the “land, well” expression is recorded at Tonina on Monument 83 as ukab, [u]ch’een, ‘his land, his well’ (figure 3.7a). The meaning of this couplet has been the topic of numerous scholarly conversations in the field. One of the first pub-lished observations by Stuart and Houston (1994: 12) held that this pairing had a “locational association.” More recently, Stuart has suggested the metaphorical meaning of ‘territory, land, or polity’ (personal communication, 2002), which I find convincing. Applying this interpretation, the glyphic sequence on K1398 of pi-a cHan-na-cH’een-na, pia chan ch’een would reference ‘the town of Pia’ (or Pipa’) (figure 3.7b).

We can assess this meaning in the context of another Classic period occur-rence of the “land, well” kenning found on an unprovenanced stela in the Musée Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels (see Mayer 1995: plate 74):

i-pas tu kab Then it dawns in his land,tu ch’een at his well

The uninf lected verb pas could refer to ‘opening’ or ‘dawning’, the two core meanings of the term. In many cases, however, i-pas substitutes for i-uht, ‘and then it happens’, with the expression ‘and then it dawns’. In this context a likely interpretation is ‘Then it dawned/happened in his territory/town’. The Dresden Codex (page 48b) also has this kenning in the same grammatical construction: tu kab, tu ch’een, ‘in his land, at his well’.

There are numerous Postclassic examples of the “land, well” kenning in the Maya codices; for instance, the Dresden Codex (e.g., pages 24 and 66a), the Madrid Codex (e.g., pages 34, 35, 37, 78), and the Paris Codex (e.g., pages 5, 8, 23, 24). An especially elegant construction is found on page 24 of the Dresden Codex in this expression (see Hull 2003: 426):

Umu’k kab yaj? naal Bad omen for the land, pain?, maize godUmu’k uch’een yaj? pat? Bad omen for their well, pain?

Umu’k uwinik yaj? “god” Bad omen for their men, pain?, god

The first two lines form the kenning ‘Bad omen for their territory’, which then serves as the first line for a nested couplet with the next line “Bad omen for their men,” that is, bad news for the town and its inhabitants.

One particularly revealing occurrence of the “land, well” kenning is found on page 38b of the Dresden Codex (as well as on page 40c). Here, K’an Chaak is shown standing on the hieroglyphic signs for ch’een, ‘well’, and kab, ‘land’. In

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addition, the text above K’an Chaak’s head explicitly states the action in the scene is

taking place ti-kaB-cH’een, ti kab ch’een, ‘in the town/territory’. The same expression appears in the neighboring scene of page 38b as well as on the next page (39b), where Chak Chaak is shown planting seeds.

Alfonso Lacadena (in press) first noted that the semantics of this expression nicely parallel the Nahuatl concept of altepetl (atl = water, tepetl = hill), which itself is a diphrastic kenning meaning ‘town’ or ‘city’. Lacadena also keenly observed that this same poetic pairing appears in the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin (Edmonson 1982: 77, lines 1711–1714):

Tu kin y an Ah Uuc Chu Uah In the time of 7 priest Chu UahElom u u ich Burned was his face

T u cab On the groundT u ch’enil At the wellside.

Thus we have documented evidence for the “land, well” kenning extend-ing through the Early Classic, the Late Classic, the Postclassic, and Colonial times. A metaphorical extension takes place by the act of pairing the two terms, with a resulting meaning of ‘territory’. The fact that these two elements had become completely fused in a single concept is hinted at by the “mistake” by the scribe who wrote page 5 of the Paris Codex, where the phonetic comple-ments for each individual sign of the kenning are miswritten in reverse fashion as u-cH’een-ba-kaB-na.

sky/WeLL or sky/cave

One of the most widely dispersed kennings in the hieroglyphic inscriptions is the pairing of chan, ‘sky’, and ch’een, ‘well, cave, spring’. Stuart and Houston

Figure 3.7. (a) The “sky, well” kenning as found on Tonina Monument 83, Right Section, as u-kaB-[u]-cH’een, ukab, uche’een, ‘his land, his well’, drawing by David Stuart; (b) pi-a cHan-na-cH’een-na, pia chan ch’een, ‘the town of Pia’, on K1938, drawing by Michael D. Carrasco, after photo by Justin Kerr; (c) Late Classic example: u-ti-ya-LakaM-Ha’ cHan-na-cH’een-na tu-cH’een-na, uhtiiy lakam ha’ chan ch’een tu ch’een, ‘it happened at Lakam Ha’ sky-well (com-munity) by its cave’, from the Temple of the Foliated Cross, M14–M15, at Palenque, drawing by Linda Schele; courtesy, Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., Crystal River, FL.

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(1994) first identified it as a toponymic reference, though our precise under-standing of the term has progressed since that point. Stuart later suggested that the compound term refers to a larger space, such as ‘world’ (personal commu-nication, 2003), something similar to my independent conclusion at about the same time.27 One of the best translations is likely something close to ‘commu-nity’ or ‘region’. Note this example from the Tablet of the Temple of the Sun at Palenque (O14–N15) (figure 3.7c):

uhtiiy lakam ha’ chan ch’een tu ch’een it happened at Lakam Ha’ sky-well (community) by its cave.

The first ch’een forms part of the kenning; the second ch’een could be a ref-erence to a cave, or it could be a metaphorical reference to an area of the city or the city itself. The very same expression appears much earlier on Tikal Stela 39. While I am not aware of a “land, well” kenning in the Maya codices, the vari-ous related expressions such as ch’een-tuun (well-stone), kab-ch’een (land-well), and chan-kab-ch’een (sky-land-well) show this to be part of a nuanced group-ing of kennings that seem to refer to more abstract spatial locations. The last one just mentioned from this category of expressions, chan-kab-ch’een (sky-land-well), appears on Tikal Stela 31at E28b–F28. It combines the three main terms associated with this class of kennings—sky, land, and well—in contexts very similar to the other expressions. Therefore it probably has a meaning close to ‘town’ or ‘territory’.

WeLL/sPring

The final kenning in this group is “well, spring.” In Colonial Yukatekan docu-ments it appears as ch’en [ch’e’n] and ac tun [aak-tun]. As noted earlier, ch’e’n in Yukatek means “well” (Bricker, Po’ot Yah, and Dzul Po’ot 1998: 82), whereas aaktun refers most generally to a ‘cave’ (see ibid.: 2). However, the nineteenth-century Yukatekan dictionary by Pío Pérez contains the entry aktun ch’e’n, meaning “piscina” (pool) or “pozo cuyo manantial está bajo de cueva” (well whose spring is below a cave), so the relationship to water becomes much clearer when the terms are used in tandem (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980: 7).

First, let us view several Yukatekan passages containing the “well, spring” pairing from the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin:

T u cal ch’en In the pass of the well,T u cal y ac tun In the pass of the spring

(Edmonson 1982: 94, linEs 2319–2320)

U pec t u ch’enil On the move to the wells, T u y ac tunil To the springs

(ibid.: 75, linEs 1653–1654)

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According to Edmonson (ibid.: 19), the meaning of the kenning “well, spring” in these cases is “settlement.” In fact, the ancient Maya customarily constructed settlements near springs and other water sources, which probably gave rise to this kenning. Thus in the second example Edmonson summarized the passage as “The people came back to the town (wells) and villages (springs) from the wild” (ibid.: 75, footnote 1653). The Book of Chilam Balam of Mani (Persson 2000: 153) also contains a revealing passage with this kenning:

ti uchan may cu u yeedz u chibal te tu ch’eenile tu yactunile

where the descendants of the Itzas were establishing their lineage at their wells and caves.

This establishment of the Itza lineage at “their wells and caves” leaves little doubt as to the kenning’s significance as a reference to a territory or a settlement.

This same metaphoric sense of “settlement” for the “well, spring” kenning may also relate to a similar expression found in a Late Classic inscription from an unprovenanced stela (see Mayer 1995, plate 118). In this scene, a warrior is shown standing in full battle attire next to a fragmented text that reads PuL-yi tuun-?-cH’een-na, puluy tuun ch’een, ‘The stone-well got burned’. If the term tuun, ‘stone’, here is substitutable for aaktun, ‘cave’ or ‘spring’, this could then be referring to the burning of a settlement in war. The “stone, well” ken-ning has a long history of use, with the earliest known appearance on an Early Classic celt in this phrase (figure 3.8):

ubaah tu-tuun It is his image on his stone, tu-ch’een at his well.

I believe “stone, well” and all the similar forms discussed here are seman-tically related and represent creative (or perhaps nuanced) variations on a key cultural metaphor for settlements or towns. The presence of many of these forms in the Colonial literature speaks to the profound continuity of these poetic constructions, often stretching back into Early Classic times.

concLusion

Kennings are an integral part of Maya expressive discourse. The highly varied and numerous kennings attested in the hieroglyphic script and their counter-parts in post-Conquest sources enable us to identify elements of an established poetic tradition dating back to the Early Classic and surviving to the present day. As I have shown here, the process of pairing multiple individual terms to create a distinct metaphorical meaning is commonplace for the ancient and modern Maya. However, couplet terms are organic, having a natural association with a

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particular culture. Every kenning took its first breath as a pairing of two asso-ciated terms, though not necessarily with a metaphorical sense. Once a dyad extends its meaning into the metaphorical realm, however, it does not follow that a complete semantic shift occurs, resulting in the abandonment of the ear-lier meaning. Previous, more literal ties can remain side by side with the more abstract meanings of kennings, as is commonly the case throughout Mayan languages today.

I have here stressed the origin of the DNIG allographs as “complementary extremes,” two terms paired for the inherent associations, which are at once polar opposites and complementary partners—not contradictory for the Maya. The meanings I and others have proposed for some of the dyads discussed in this chapter, however, may not always have an unbroken thread of meaning from the Classic period through the Colonial period and into modern Mayan languages. Viewing the “timeless” existence of the Maya as a heterogeneous group that barely changed from the earliest times is certainly a fallacy. The upheavals of the political system in the Peten in the Late Classic period and the enormous changes that occurred in the Postclassic period alone discredit this idyllic notion, not to mention the half millennium under foreign rule and religious indoctrination after the Conquest. Some conceptual couplets of the Classic period were likely deeply entrenched with specialized meanings bound to cultural understandings of the time. Their use more than a thousand years later may have evolved in some instances as society and its understanding of them concurrently changed.

Despite this proviso, in many cases the semantic controls we have over the texts suggest a very close retention of many diphrastic kennings, which I would attribute primarily to their use in formalized speech in many cases. Indeed,

Figure 3.8. Earliest attested “stone, well” kenning on a jade celt from Costa Rica (B5–B6) that reads (shown in scansion): u-BaaH tu-tuun tu-cH’een, ubaah tu-tuun, tu-ch’een, ‘It is his image on his stone, at his well’. Drawing by Nikolai Grube.

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the preservation of the fourteen kennings/pairings studied in this chapter (and many others not discussed here [cf. Helmke n.d.; Kettunen 2005]) illustrates a surprisingly robust connection overall in form, meaning, and usage across the different time periods in Maya recorded history. As conceptual metaphors, kennings reside more deeply in the cultural psyche, which likely explains the resilience of these core associations.

notes1. I think there are considerably more parallel structures in Maya hieroglyphic

writing that many researchers would recognize; it is just that semantic parallelisms in lines are used more judiciously in the hieroglyphic script than in formal Maya dis-course in many Mayan languages today. There are numerous other paralleled forms in the hieroglyphic script that are generally not recognized, though their counterparts in Colonial documents such as the Books of Chilam Balam often are (cf. Edmonson 1982, 2008 [1986]). For example, Calendar Round (CR) expressions should be treated as binary units that form couplets. Similarly, larger parallel structures are also found in a Distance Number (DN) followed by a CR, where the DN is one means of locating a specific time referent and the subsequent CR is another, both indicating the same date in an appositive relationship. Therefore all such DN and CR clauses are also paral-leled forms of discourse. In addition, if we look more closely at grammatical parallel-ism in texts, we find scores of new pairings that have not received the attention they merit. In a forthcoming book, I will detail these and many other cases that, when prop-erly understood, allow us to appreciate the highly embedded nature of parallelism in ancient Maya writing (Hull, in prep).

2. In all transcriptions from Colonial and post-Colonial texts, I retain the original orthography and translations unless otherwise noted.

3. Stross (1983: 211) has argued that the twenty day names of the Maya Tzolk’in calendar “can be divided into two decimal subsets based on oppositional pairing,” which would suggest yet another level of binary complementary extremes in the hiero-glyphic script.

4. An understudied aspect of parallelism is its appearance in the names of rulers attested in the hieroglyphic script (or post-Colonial documents for that matter). For example, the name Kan Bahlam II, the ruler of Palenque from AD 684–702, consists of the kan, ‘snake’, and bahlam, ‘ jaguar’. This snake-jaguar pairing in modern Tzeltal is kenning for “animal.” We also find the name muyal chan (cloud-sky) on Stela 21 of Yaxchilan, a pairing found in couplet in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (Roys 1967: 47) and the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin (Edmonson 1982: 81, lines 1847–1848, 2419–2420). Numerous other examples could be cited.

5. The kenning “older brothers, younger brothers” can also be a reference to “peasants and nobles” (see Edmonson 1982: 55, lines 1197–1198).

6. All “K” numbers refer to Justin Kerr’s on-line Maya Vase Database at http://research.mayavase.com/kerrmaya.html.

7. The hieroglyphic form y-il-il is directly cognate to the Ch’orti’ uwirib’ir (u-(w)ir-ib’-ir) except for the instrumental suffix in the latter.

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8. Other occurrences of the “day, year” kenning can be found on K8017 (from Xcalumkin) and page 24 of the Dresden Codex.

9. As Stuart has noted, paired allographs of the DNIG retain the same reading of tz’ak as T573, as is apparent from the -ka phonetic complementation that occasionally accompanies these terms (2003: 4; cf. Hull 2003: 445–446). This is informative in that it indicates that we are dealing with a conceptual, not a lexical, pairing that allows the substitution of complementary extremes for the tz’ak logogram.

10. The head glyph in this phrase may read tzuk, which could refer to partitions or divisions in other contexts. In Yukatek and Chontal, however, it can also mean ‘town’ or ‘province’ (cf. Grube and Schele 1991).

11. Edmonson (2008 [1986]: 147) opts for translating Tulis kin, Tulis akab as “Returned is the day; Returned is the night,” assumedly based on another meaning of tul in the phrase in Yukatek, tul pach, meaning “to turn back” (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980: 819), though the meaning of “full, round, whole” given by Bricker and colleagues (1998: 284) seems considerably more appropriate in this passage.

12. The root tz’ak in Ch’orti’ means “be sufficient” and “get better,” that is, “be made whole” (Hull 2005: 109), “cure, heal” in Yukatek (Bricker, Po’ot Yah, and Dzul Po’ot 1998: 47), “cure” in Itzaj (Hofling 1997: 632), “to cure” in Ch’ol (Schumann 1973: 97), and “complete” in Tzotzil (Laughlin 1975: 99). In these and other entries from other languages, perhaps the common thread that runs through all of them is the idea of ‘becoming whole’.

13. The term ajaw is not gender-specific and refers to both men and women. In some modern languages the female prefix ix- appears in women’s names, likely because the vast majority of rulers throughout the history of the Maya have been male.

14. Among all the paired forms in the Rabinal Achi, Monod Becquelin and Becquey (2008: 140–141) calculate that the pairing of kam/sach (death/loss) was the eleventh-most common in the text.

15. Michael Coe once went as far as to suggest that the Maya elite may have lived in wooden structures because of a lack of clearly identifiable elite residences archaeo-logically (1956: 387).

16. In the Books of Chilam Balam, another common way to refer to an “idol” is using only the word “tun,” ‘stone’ (Edmonson 1982: 87, lines 2085–2086):

Ca ix emec tun Kin Chil And when he shall have felled the stone of Kin Chil

Ah Chac Chibal Of Chac Chib

17. In his early–eighteenth-century dictionary of Cakchiquel, Fray Thomás Guzmán (Guzmán 1984: 86) records the kenning “Ah çiqui che: Ah çiqui abah” for “el Ydolatra” (idolatry), which also pairs the terms “che”, ‘wood’, and “abah,” ‘stone’ (origi-nal orthography retained).

18. Flints and trees are paired in the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel in the Ritual of the Four World-Quarters (Roys 2008 [1933]: 20–21), where colored f lints and trees are associated with the four cardinal directions, though with no relation to warfare. For example, for the color black the text reads: “The black f lint stone is their stone in the west. The black ceiba tree is their arbor” (ibid.: 21).

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19. The “arrow/shield” (ch’ab’/pokob) pairing in the Rabinal Achi ranked ninth in terms of frequency of occurrence compared with other paired couplets (Monod Becquelin and Becquey 2008: 140–141).

20. Stuart (1995: 304) notes that the earliest occurrence of the took’-pakal pair-ing for the Maya is in AD 674, whereas Helmke (n.d.: 3, footnote 3) finds the earliest Mexican example in iconography to date roughly between AD 300 and 500, which he takes as evidence of a Mexican origin for the expression.

21. The took’-pakal, ‘f lint-shield’, can also be ‘captured’ (chuk), as on Bonampak Panel 4 at D6 (chuhkaj utook’ [u]pakal, ‘his f lint and shield were captured’).

22. Compare to the ch’ab, pokob, which Sam Colop (this volume) translates as “arch, shield” from the Rabinal Achi. The term ch’ab means both ‘bow’ and ‘arrow’ in K’iche’ (Christenson n.d.).

23. Cf. Nahuatl Ca nah, ca notlacual, ‘it’s my drink, it’s my food’, as a kenning for ‘drink and sustenance’ (Morales 2002: 39).

24. Individually, both yax “green/blue” and k’an “yellow” were connected to pre-cious stones. The term k’an in Yukatek means “piedra preciosa” (precious stone), and k’antixal refers to a “ joya del pecho, adorno” (chest jewel, adornment) (Barrera Vásquez et al. 1980: 374). Both yax and k’an also share the notion of change of state, from unusable to usable and therefore valuable. The root yax can mean ‘to turn green’, referring to the maturing process of leafy plants or the result of watering. It was also directly associ-ated with maize—the most important food of the ancient Maya, as well as “a sign of the renewal of life” (Miller and Taube 1993: 102). K’an, on the other hand, means ‘to ripen’ when used with fruits and other edible plants. One more association that was surely invested in the Classic period term yax-k’an was the one with jade, the most precious stone among the ancient Maya. Thus while alone each term related to notions of beauty and importance, apparently, when used together this combination elevated each term’s semantic force exponentially to represent perhaps the epitome of preciousness.

25. The /r/ of raxal in Cakchiquel is directly cognate to the /y/ (proto-Mayan *r> y [cf. Justeson et al. 1985: 12]). It is also notable that the order of the terms can be reversed, as they are later in the same work, as raxal: q’anal (orthography altered) (Guzmán 1984: 103).

26. The Aztecs metaphorically referred to ‘tobacco’ (Nicotiana tabacum) (picietl in Nahuatl) as “green divinity” (Heyden 1986: 36).

27. Carrasco (2005: 146–147, 2010: 620), on the other hand, has argued that chan-ch’een is a reference to a pyramidal superstructure that is more closely associated with the “cave,” the other common meaning of ch’een. He links the chan-ch’een to the “artifi-cial sites that purport to be the location of the Maize God’s birth” as physical represen-tations of the architecture of Maya creation.

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