Indian Languages Database
Record Details
Historia de la benida do los Yndios apoblar Mexico delas partes remotas de Occidente los sucessos y perigrinaçiones del camino su govierno, ydolos y templos dellos ritos y cirimonias y sacrificios, y sacerdotes dellos fiestas, y bayles, y sus meses y calandarios delos tiempos, los reyes, que tuvieron hasta el postrero [que fue Ynga,] con otras cosas curiosas sacadas delos archivos y tradicciones antiguas dellos hecha por el Padre Juan de Tovar de la Compañia de Jesus inviada al rey n[uest]ro s[eñ]or en est original mano escrito.
[Mexico]: [s.n.], [between 1582 and 1587]
Physical Description: [5], 145, [13] leaves, leaves of plates : ill. ; 22 cm. (4to)
Call number: Codex/ Ind/ 2
Accession number: 30289
Notes: Ms. codex. Manuscript codex in ink and watercolor on European paper, with paintings strongly influenced by Aztec picture-writing. Includes an exchange of letters between Jesuit missionaries José de Acosta and Juan de Tovar concerning the composition of the manuscript; the first part of the "Historia," with caption title "Relacion del origen de los Yndios que havitan en esta Nueva España segun sus Historias" (leaves 1-58, 2nd count); "Tratado delos ritos y ceremonias," also considered part of the "Historia" (leaves 59-81); 29 full-page illuminated illustrations of Mexican scenes, Indian dances, etc., with a numbered blank leaf inserted before each painting (leaves 85-140); calendar wheel (leaf 142); "los meses" (leaves 144-145); the Aztec calendar coordinated with the Christian calendar, with descriptive text and 19 painted illustrations of Aztec rites and feasts (leaves [2-12], 3rd count). One of the most important source books on Mexico, contemporaneous with the Codex Ramírez; an earlier manuscript composed by Tovar was lost. Tovar drew on Diego Durán, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España (Codex Durán) as source material; this codex was in turn used extensively by José de Acosta in the preparation of his Historia natural y moral, Seville, 1590. Date from Parry, J.H., "Juan de Tovar and the History of the Indians", in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, v. 121, no. 4. A portion of this ms. was published in a limited edition (1860) by Sir Thomas Phillips. The most complete edition, with 32 facsimile leaves of plates, was edited by Jacques Lafaye: Manuscrit Tovar. Origines et croyances des Indiens du Mexique. Relación del origen de los Yndios, que havitan en esta Nueva España segun sus historias, published Graz, 1972. The last section of the codex was reproduced in facsimile in a monograph by George Kubler and Charles Gibson: The Tovar calendar: An illustrated Mexican manuscript, New Haven, 1951.
Languages: Nahuatl
Genre: Specimen
Region: Spanish America
