Indian Languages Database
Record Details
The history of Mexico. Collected from Spanish and Mexican historians, from manuscripts, and ancient paintings of the Indians.
London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1787
Physical Description: 2 v. : ill., geneal. tables, maps, ports. ; 28 cm. (4to) v.1: xxxii, [4], 476 p., [26] leaves of plates (1 folded); v.2: [4], 463, [1] p., [2] leaves of plates (1 folded).
Call number: B787/ C617h/ 1-SIZE
Accession number: 07466
Notes: Contains Nahuatl vocabulary relating to natural history; religious, calendrical, and numerical systems; and abstract concepts.
Natural history vocabulary includes terms for flora, fauna, and minerals (v.1, p. 16-76) and a “Catalogue of American quadrupeds” (v.2, p. 316-326), a list of over 100 animals including many native terms.
Terms for deities, festivals, years, months, and days (v.1, p. 288-292, 296-297, [441]-456 [i.e. 445-460]) are supplemented by related vocabulary in “Explanation of the obscure figures” (v.1, p. 457-465 [i.e. 461-469]), an exegesis of symbols used for calendar wheels, cities, and kings (illustrated on leaves facing v.1, p. 295, 296, 461 [i.e. 465], and 462 [i.e. 466]), and in “Letter from Abbé Don Lorenzo Hervas, to the author, upon the Mexican Calendar” (v.1, p. 465-473 [i.e. 469-477]).
“Of the Languages of the Americans” (v.2, p. 394-400) contains Nahuatl numerical terms and a “Specimen of words in the Mexican language, signifying moral and metaphysical conceptions”, listing over 50 terms in Nahuatl with English equivalents in parallel columns.
A “Catalogue of some European and Creole authors, who have written on the doctrines of Christianity and morality, in the languages of New Spain” (v.2, p. 412-413) groups authors under 15 language headings: Mexican, Otomee, Tarascan, Zapotecan, Miztecan, Maya, Totonacan, Popolucan, Matlazincan, Huaxtecan, Mixe, Kiche’, Cakciquel, Taraumaran, Tepehuanan; a list of “Authors of grammars and dictionaries of the above mentioned languages” (v.2, p. 414-415) includes all the same languages with the exception of Kiche’.
Chiefly a synthesis derived from other published sources, especially Torquemada. Translated by Charles Cullen from the original Italian of the author’s Storia antica del Messico, first published Cesena, 1780.
To access digital facsimile copy of volume 1 of this book, click here.
For volume 2 of this book, click here.
Languages: Nahuatl
Genre: Vocabulary
Region: Spanish America
