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    Rig Veda Americanus (Illustrated): Sacred songs of the ancient Mexicans, with a gloss in Nahuatl
    Rig Veda Americanus (Illustrated): Sacred songs of the ancient Mexicans, with a gloss in Nahuatl
    Rig Veda Americanus (Illustrated): Sacred songs of the ancient Mexicans, with a gloss in Nahuatl
    Ebook83 pages34 minutes

    Rig Veda Americanus (Illustrated): Sacred songs of the ancient Mexicans, with a gloss in Nahuatl

    By Daniel G. Brinton

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    In accordance with the general object of this series of volumes--which is to furnish materials for study rather than to offer completed studies--I have prepared for this number the text of the most ancient authentic record of American religious lore. From its antiquity and character, I have ventured to call this little collection the RIG VEDA AMERICANUS, after the similar cyclus of sacred hymns, which are the most venerable product of the Aryan mind.

    As for my attempted translation of these mystic chants I offer it with the utmost reserve. It would be the height of temerity in me to pretend to have overcome difficulties which one so familiar with the ancient Nahuatl as Father Sahagun intimated were beyond his powers. All that I hope to have achieved is, by the aid of the Gloss--and not always in conformity to its suggestions--to give a general idea of the sense and purport of the originals.

    The desirability of preserving and publishing these texts seems to me to be manifest. They reveal to us the undoubtedly authentic spirit of the ancient religion; they show us the language in its most archaic form; they preserve references to various mythical cycli of importance to the historian; and they illustrate the alterations in the spoken tongue adopted in the esoteric dialect of the priesthood. Such considerations will, I trust, attract the attention of scholars to these fragments of a lost literature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStargatebook
    Release dateAug 3, 2017
    ISBN9788822806734
    Rig Veda Americanus (Illustrated): Sacred songs of the ancient Mexicans, with a gloss in Nahuatl

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      Rig Veda Americanus (Illustrated) - Daniel G. Brinton

      GLOSSARY

      PREFACE

      In accordance with the general object of this series of volumes--which is to furnish materials for study rather than to offer completed studies-I have prepared for this number the text of the most ancient authentic record of American religious lore. From its antiquity and character, I have ventured to call this little collection the RIG VEDA AMERICANUS, after the similar cyclus of sacred hymns, which are the most venerable product of the Aryan mind.

      As for my attempted translation of these mystic chants I offer it with the utmost reserve. It would be the height of temerity in me to pretend to have overcome difficulties which one so familiar with the ancient Nahuatl as Father Sahagun intimated were beyond his powers. All that I hope to have achieved is, by the aid of the Gloss--and not always in conformity to its suggestions--to give a general idea of the sense and purport of the originals.

      The desirability of preserving and publishing these texts seems to me to be manifest. They reveal to us the undoubtedly authentic spirit of the ancient religion; they show us the language in its most archaic form; they preserve references to various mythical cycli of importance to the historian; and they illustrate the alterations in the spoken tongue adopted in the esoteric dialect of the priesthood. Such considerations will, I trust, attract the attention of scholars to these fragments of a lost literature.

      In the appended Vocabulary I have inserted only those words and expressions for which I can suggest correct--or, at least, probable-renderings. Others will have to be left to future investigators.

      INTRODUCTION

      As in a previous number of the Library of Aboriginal American

      Literature I have discussed in detail the character of the ancient Mexican poetry, I shall confine myself at present to the history of the present collection. We owe its preservation to the untiring industry of

      Father Bernardino de Sahagun, one of the earliest missionaries to Mexico, and the author of by far the most important work on the religion, manners and customs of the ancient Mexicans.

      By long residence and close application Sahagun acquired a complete mastery of the Nahuatl tongue. He composed his celebrated Historia de las Casas de la Nueva España primarily in the native language, and from this original wrote out a Spanish translation, in some parts considerably abbreviated. This incomplete reproduction is that which was published in Spanish by Lord Kingsborough and Bustamente, and in a French rendering with useful notes by Dr. Jourdanet and M. Rémi Simeon.

      So far as I know, the only complete copy of the Nahuatl original now in existence is that preserved in the Bibliotheca Laurentio-Mediceana in Florence, where I examined it in April, 1889. It is a most elaborate and beautiful MS., in three large volumes, containing thirteen hundred and seventy eight illustrations, carefully drawn by hand, mostly colored, illustrative of the native mythology, history, arts and usages, besides many elaborate head and tail pieces to the chapters.

      There is another Nahuatl MS. of Sahagun's history in the private library of the King of Spain at Madrid, which I examined in May, 1888, and of which I published a collation in the Mémoires de la Sociètè Internationale des Américanistes, for that year. It is incomplete, embracing only the first. six books of the Historia, and should be considered merely as a borrador or preliminary sketch for the

      Florentine copy. It contains, however, a certain amount of material not included in the latter, and has been peculiarly useful to me in the preparation of the present volume, as not only affording another reading of the text, valuable for comparison, but as furnishing a gloss or Nahuatl paraphrase of most of the hymns, which does not appear in the Florentine MS. As evidently the older of the two, I have adopted the readings of the Madrid MS. as my text, and given the variants of the Florentine MS. at the end of each hymn.

      Neither MS. attempts any translation of the hymns. That at Madrid has no Spanish comment whatever, while that at Florence places opposite the hymns the following remarks, which are also found in the printed copies, near the close of the Appendix of the Second Book of the Historia:--

      "It is an old trick of our enemy the Devil

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