HEAVEN BORN MERIDA AND ITS DESTINY - Histomesoamericana

INTRODUCTION
and Barrera (1948: 65) interpret these expressions as referring to diseases,
but from the contexts in which they occur I am convinced that they allude
to the calendar round and its sacrifices (see below).
As gods, but again also as priests, the yearbearers are identified as Fathers
of the Land [ba cabob) and as rain gods [chacob], and they may also
be identical with the four Stone Giants [pauah tun), the four winds [ikil),
and the four death gods [tenel ahau). They are also closely associated
with the four Burners [ah toe). All these sets of deities, then, are in charge
of time, rain, death, the sky, and fire, and they are conceived in various
connections as bearing the burden of the sun and holding up the four corners
of the sky.
Because of their directional associations, the yearbearer priests also appear
to be given color titles: red, white, black, and yellow for east, north,
west, and south, respectively. They may all be referred to by the suffixed
title chac 'rain priest', but the prefixed title chac 'red' refers to the East
priest. | Chac may also mean 'boil, fuzz, appear, trample, big' and is the
name of a lineage and a village as well, so it is not always easy to determine
which meaning is intended.) In some contexts a fifth priest is added
to the basic four, identified with the color yax 'blue/green' and the direction
of the center. Unlike Roys (1967: 139, notes), I regard this usage as a
Mexican aberration.
The rain priests, who apparently wore ceremonial necklaces, are referred
to as necklaced rain priests [yuuan chac). They were also identified
by honorific kinship terms (father, mother's mother, and younger brother
rain priest). The yearbearer ceremonies of 11 Ahau are described in detail
in chapter 15.
4. Kin tun y abil 'day stone year period' and ma ya cimlal 'no pain
death, Maya death'. These two expressions have commonly been interpreted
on the basis of colonial dictionaries as 'drought' and 'pestilence',
respectively. I believe that this interpretation is usually (though perhaps
not always) wrong as a reading oí the Chumayel text. The phrases occur
as a couplet in lines 5039-5040 (and in the Tizimin, lines 319-320,
2615-2616). Kin tun y abil occurs alone in lines 1247, 5158, 5224, and
6178; and ma y a cimlal occurs in lines 112, 338, 2643, 4922, 5325, and
6283 (also in the Tizimin, lines 675, 722, 2770, 2920, 3646, 3932, 4090,
4537, 4637, 4771, and 5269). I read them as 'calendar round' and 'no pain
death', respectively, and I consider the latter expression as a euphemism
for sacrifice, perhaps specifically for calendar round sacrifices.
If the calendar round in the Mayapan calendar (see below) began on 1
Kan, as I believe it did, there are eight such beginnings in the twenty
katuns between 1441 and 1848. If the calendar round began on 1 Ik, as I
believe it did in the Tikal calendar (see below), there are eight such beginnings
in the same time span, but they land in different katuns. Four katuns
oí the twenty do not correspond to the beginning of a calendar round
in either system.
Six of the eight calendar round beginnings in the Tikal calendar correspond
to katuns in which either kin tun y abil or ma ya cimlal or both
are mentioned in the Chumayel or the Tizimin. The calendar rounds be-