will be evident to
every archaeologist and linguist what a rich and unexplored mine of
information about this interesting people they may present. It is my
intention in this article merely to touch upon a few salient points to
illustrate this, leaving a thorough discussion of their origin and
contents to the future editor who will bring them to the knowledge of
the learned world.

Turning first to the meaning of the name "_Chilan Balam_," it is not
difficult to find its derivation. "_Chilan_," says Bishop Landa, the
second bishop of Yucatan, whose description of the native customs is an
invaluable source to us, "was the name of their priests, whose duty it
was to teach the sciences, to appoint holy days, to treat the sick, to
offer sacrifices, and especially to utter the oracles of the gods. They
were so highly honored by the people that usually they were carried on
litters on the shoulders of the devotees."[7-*] Strictly speaking, in
Maya "_chilan_" means "interpreter," "mouth-piece," from "_chij_," "the
mouth," and in this ordinary sense frequently occurs in other writings.
The word, "_balam_"--literally, "tiger,"--was also applied to a class of
priests, and is still in use among the natives of Yucatan as the
designation of the protective spirits of fields and towns, as I have
shown at length in a recent study of the word as it occurs in the the
native myths of Guatemala.[7-+] "_Chilan Balam_," therefore, is not a
proper name, but a title, and in ancient times designated the priest who
announced the will of the gods and explained the sacred oracles. This
accounts for the universality of the name and the sacredness of its
associations.

The dates of the books which have come down to us are various. One of
them, "The Book of Chilan Balam of Mani," was undoubtedly composed not
later than 1595, as is proved by internal evidence. Various passages in
the works of Landa, Lizana, Sanchez Aguilar and Cogolludo--all early
historians of Yucatan,--prove that many of these native manuscripts
existed in the sixteenth century. Several rescripts date from the
seventeenth century,--most from the latter half of the eighteenth.

The names of the writers are generally not given, probably because the
books, as we have them, are all copies of older manuscripts, with merely
the occasional addition of current items of note by the copyist; as, for
instance, a malignant epidemic which prevailed in the peninsula in 1673
is mentioned as a pr