as a
"horse-shoe" mark, is proved to be intimately connected with the ideas of
liquid falling from above, and constituting the drink of divinities and
symbols associated with the sacred vase, night and darkness, all
attributes of the Below. We shall next demonstrate that it was alternately
placed, on the Maya Caban glyph, with a curious sign consisting of a
pea-shaped black dot, to which a curved and wavy line is attached. This is
always figured as issuing from above the dot, then extending downwards and
half around it and terminating in a descending, undulating line.

I submit the following to the consideration of Maya specialists: It seems
to me that this sign presents an extremely realistic drawing of the seed
of a monocotyledonous plant, such as the maize or Indian corn, in its
first stage of germination, when the radicle, having issued from the apex,
turns downwards in characteristic fashion and penetrates into the earth.
Besides the realism of the native drawing there can be no doubt that the
image of a sprouting maize-seed is the most expressive and appropriate
accompaniment to the symbol of fertilizing rain, on an earth-symbol, and I
am unable to understand how Drs. Cyrus Thomas, Seler, Schellhas and
Brinton could have overlooked the realism in this image of a sprouting
seed, and concluded that it was a portrayal of "fermented liquor trickling
downward," a "nose-ornament," or a "twisted lock of hair," "a cork-screw
curl." The latter interpretation was made by Dr. Schellhas because he
found the sign in connection with female figures in the Codices, which
undoubtedly is a fact of extreme interest, as it furnishes a valuable
proof that the Mayas associated the earth with the female principle.

Dr. Schellhas, however, records his observation that the sign caban occurs
as a symbol of fruit-bearing earth, in the Codex Troano, as it is figured
with leaves of maize (p. 33) or with climbing plants issuing from it and
winding themselves around a pole (p. 32). Geheimrath Foerstemann connects
the day-name caban with "cab" to which Perez, in his dictionary, attaches
the meaning of "earth, world and soil" (Die Tages goetter der Mayas.
Globus, vol. LXXIII, no. 9) and adds that the hieroglyph decidedly
designates the earth. At the same time he interprets what I regard as the
maize-grain and its radicle, as possibly representing a bird in its flight
upwards, and he merely describes the accompanying inverted horse-shoe with
dots