Note 42 — INTRODUCTION.

In a passage already quoted,42 Sahagun imparts the interesting information that the more important songs were written down by the Nahuas in their books, and from these taught to the youth in the schools. A certain branch of the Mexican hieroglyphic writing was largely phonetic, constructed on that method to which I have applied the adjective ikonomatic, and by which it was quite possible to preserve the sound as well as the sense of sentences and verses.43 Such attention could have been bestowed only on the sacred, royal, or legendary chants, while the compositions of ordinary poets would only be disseminated by oral teaching.