Mixtec/Chinese Cardinal Directions
and Possibly Aztec and Maya

I just finished reading excerpts from a journal article that was tied linguistically to the four cardinal directions. It had many linguistic formulas that referred a Sino-Tibetan expert in Chinese, Tibetan, and the languages of India. The article itself, naturally, has little to do with Mesoamerica, but references to the line art of the ancient characters, expecially the Japanese and Chinese forms, may be helpful in determining the migration of the Mixtex, Aztec and Maya variants. The characters can be evaulated as art forms, not words, and it is only in this respect they may be relevant even to Mesoamerican cosmology.

East and West are fairly well defined and understandable in most cultures. East = "rising" vs West = "settling down." Since Mr. Sagart used the linguistic patterns to establish his conclusions, there is no problem here.

References to Mesoamerican concepts are not very clearly stated, but ithe possibilities are endless.

I personally use four references for ancient Chinese. Three are Dover Reprints from another time frame. Of the other two: one is the Japanese Kanji, and the last is from a Chinese manuscript, called the Moho, now known as the Dongba of the Naxi nationality.

I have been told that Dr. Wieger is no longer a valid source, however, I believe that he learned to read the Chinese characters just like Chinese and Japanese children begin to learn them: by their ancient forms, not by their linguistic compontents.

The reason for this is the same reason that the Maya language groups cannot be departmentalized into "proto-Cholan" any more than Chinese characters can be departmentalized into "Mandarin." Just as the Maya language groups have splintered into village and country dialects, so, too, China has a great variety of dialects. Even though many Chinese read the same characters as the Mandarin group, there is little chance of reconstructing their language from linquisitic components of any one of the diverse dialects without spending yearr trying to track down their various origins.Dr. Wieger realized the futility of such a pan-dialectic searchs and concentrated on concepts of the original characters and their line drawings.

When I first went through Dr. Wieger's book, I found several ancient versions of the characters that appears to match what I had drawn out in the Maya glyphs. I came to the conclusion that the Maya glyphs may have been the origin of the Chinese characters. Finding a copy of the Chinese Moho manuscript convinced me that I was at least on the right track.

"East" is the most prominent of the four characters that seem to agree with the Mixtec art of Mesoamerica found in the Nuttall Codex. The Chinese version of "east", shown next to a Nuttall version shows the same configuration as the Mixtec codex. The sun caught in the branches of a tree, over what Weiger believed were roots of the tree. However, the Left hand is also a symbol for water, and while the hand has been simplified in Chinese to have only three "fingers," this symbol is directly under the tree as in the Mixtec version. The correct Maya glyph for "east" is above the Chinese variations. It contains the Sun, the Water (or wind) element and a glyph for "lord" or "ahau" that is upside down, similar to the Mixtec sun "lord"down in the tree, at the water's edge.

West is a different matter. The Maya glyph shows a hand above the sun, with the water or wind element. Japanese/Chinese version which shows a "bird returning to its nest."

The more ancient Chinese version of the character, has a form for the "assumed" bird that could be "a bird with a long tail" or the flow of "water" or of a great "wind." Because Sagart calculated (there is no other word for linguistics any more) a prefix for West which indicated "the place where one shoot with a bow and arrow" the concept found in the Popol Vuh comes to mind. As a "bird with a long tail" the Mesoamerican image that that phrase seems to identify is the description of Seven Macaw, who was shot by the the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalenque. His nest is described as being of "iron." His teeth were "blue" until the Twins replaced them with ordinary corn. . . an indication that the "blue nova" of the northwest became benign and a common white star.

The Japanese Kanji, just as the Chinese versions, give approximately the same information for the West, just as for the East. West is the bird going to roost and East is the sun rising on the horizon.

North is pretty standardized in all Oriental variants that I have. It infers that two people are seated back to back, and when looking at a Chinese map, North is the "back" of South that is in our northern position..Mr. Sagart claimed that since South is placed to the north in most early Chinese cartography, their magnets also "pointed" southward. The only way that could happen is if the magnetic needle were painted on the south end instead of the northern pointing end. The Mixtec version, as seen above also show opposite entities. The star personages in the sky vs images of the Xolotl dog who entered into the underworld to save the sun.

I left South until the last because in Canton (Guangdong), a city in Southern China, there is a famous monument of five goats in the park. I did not get the story of the five goats but when I saw the Chinese character for South and its ancient component, I was reminded immediately of that statue. The ancient Chinese character shows the flowing grasses around the stick image of the animal. I could, without hesitation, visualize the goat browsing (and eating) the luxuriant vegetation of the south.

The Kanji version implies that the vegetation was so thick that it was similar to attempting to pass the butting head and horns of the goat: impossible to pass by. Was this an early attempt to enter China through the southern ports? The modern Chinese version appears more to likely to be a goat guarding the open gate of a courtyard. Whichever way it is, the goat form is very prominent just as it is an important image in the city of Canton, the southern gateway (or port) to China.

Nevertheless, there is no similar image for South or West in Mixtec or Maya, only North and East. It would be much too great a stretch of the imagination to say that the Southern Maya glyph might be misconstrued as an animal head. Yet, the northern glyph, (see above) as a monkey head does turn up in a Chinese manuscript 2 with a secondary Aztec symbolism; that of the excrement of the gods (that in Aztec symbolism refers to both gold and silver).A great monkey figure in the sky can be found expelling dung in the Mojo manuscript of Southern China.

As for the Mixtec north/south images (back to back) the two sets that are here (that of two star persons in opposition to the Xolotl dog images) are only two of several opposites that relate to star entities and their opposites, one of which is a skeletal Death entity. They can be found in the Nuttall.

That the references to Chinese characters (not the words themselves) may actually have some relationship to the Mesoamerican glyphic and symbolic imagery. Not many monkeys in the symbolic world expell turds on to the earth; even the Peruvian/Oaxacan "radish" and the Aztec Tezcatlipochtli is there with his circle (mirror?) instead of a foot.

1 Wilder, G. D., & Ingram, J. H. (1974) Analysis of Chinese Characters, New Yok: Dover Publications, Inc.
Wieger S. J., D. L. (1965) Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Significantion, New York: Dover Publications, Inc./Paragon Book Reprint Corporation.
Karlgren, B. (1974) Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese, New York: Dover Publications, inc.
Dykstra, Andrew, (1977) The Kanji ABC, Los Altos, California: WIlliam Kaufmann, Inc.

2 de la Couperie, A. E. J. T. (1965) Beginnings of Writing in Central and Eastern Asia, or Notes on 450 Embryo- Writings and Scripts (Reprint of the 1894 Edition ed.). Osnabrook, Germany: Otto Zeller.