o the contrivance of their painted wheels, Ce (1) Tecpatl
was but once the commencement of the four cycles" [meaning--began a
cycle but once in four cycles. But the fact is not so: both in the
Mexican and the Yucatec calendar, every cycle of 52 years begins with
the same initial character of the year]; "for which reason, any
character of those initial signs placed in their history means that
four Indian cycles of 52 years each have elapsed, which makes 208 years
before they can again occur as initial, because, in this way, no
account is taken of characters which are in the body of the four
cycles; and though the same characters are found there, they have not
the same value."

Veytia affirms that he did not find any similar explanation, or
anything alluding to the system of Boturini, in any of the ancient
monuments which he had collected or examined, or mentioned by any
Indian historian, not even in order to designate the epochs of the most
remarkable events. But I believe that, in answer to this remark of
Veytia, it may be said that Boturini, as Veytia states elsewhere, had
examined the calendars used in old times by the Indians of Oaxacac,
Chiapas, and Soconusco, and these being similar to that of the
Yucatecos, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they, like the
Yucatecos, computed by cycles greater than the Mexicans employed; and
that Boturini took from them the idea, though confused and incorrect,
of our Ajaus, or great cycles. This incorrectness might arise either
from his not understanding the mechanism of their mode of computing,
owing to the defective explanation given by the Indians, or from the
manuscripts which Boturini had before him being mutilated, or, finally,
from the possible fact that the Indians in those provinces had a
particular custom of counting by cycles of four indictions, or of 208
years, which, notwithstanding the difference observed in their
calculation, and the number of years which it produces, have a great
analogy with the Yucateco cycles of 312 years. The only thing for which
Boturini may be censured, if the Mexicans had no knowledge of that
cycle, and did not use it, was the ascribing of it to them as being in
common use for the computation of the greater periods of time.

The great similarity between the names of the days in the calendar of
Oajaca, Chiapas, and Soconusco, and those of the Yucatecos, has been
mentioned, and appears clearly by comparing the latter with those of
the sa