hief=the head, and the precious bird with the tribal tree
also explains the frequent representation, in the native Codices, of one
or two serpents entwined around the tree, since the serpent was the symbol
in Mexico of the dual rulers or high-priests of the Above and Below. There
is ample proof, which shall be presented in full in my monograph on this
subject, that the above metaphorical images were as intelligible to the
Mayas and other tribes, as to the Mexicans themselves, for the identical
metaphors and imagery were in widespread general use. The following data
will corroborate this statement.

A Maya native drawing, copied by Cogolludo in 1640 from the MS. of the
Chilan Balam or Sacred Book of Man, which relates the history of the
Mayas, has been recently reproduced in Dr. Daniel G. Brinton's Primer of
Maya Hieroglyphics, p. 47. It displays a rectangular stone slab like a
table, on the centre of which rests a circular bowl, the symbol, as I have
shown, of the earth and centre. Growing from this is a spreading tree.

It is a curious and undeniable fact that the Maya name for table is mayac,
and that the dictionaries contain the words mayac-tun, stone-table, and
mayac-che, wooden, literally, tree-table. Familiarity with the native
modes of rebus-writing leads to the inference that this picture of a tree
and table, expressing the sounds mayac-che, actually signified the tree of
the Mayas and therefore figured in the book relating their history. Bishop
Landa records that the Mayas believed in a beautiful celestial tree,
resembling the ceiba and named yax-che, literally, green tree, under whose
shade they would repose in after-life. Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg surmises
that this tree was the same as the beautiful shade tree which grows in
Yucatan and Mexico and is named, in the latter country,
tonacaz-quahuital=tree of our subsistence, _i. e._, life.

A Maya name for the "tree of life," ua-hom-che, next claims our
attention.(48) A valuable old manuscript dictionary of the Maya language,
quoted by Dr. Brinton, records that the word uah means "a certain kind of
life." The word _hom_ is an ancient term for an artificial elevation,
mound or pyramid, hence _homul_, the pyramid on which a temple was built.
Combined with che, tree, the word seems to signify "the elevated or high
tree of life," the idea of the celestial tree "on high," being possibly
intended. In connection with this it is interesting to reexamine fig. 20,
IV,