Note 1891 — Chapter VI · (continued 3)

A considerable body of literature in this language has come down to us. Bancroft (iii. 728) enumerates a number of the principal religious manuals, etc. Icazbalceta in the first volume of his Bibliografia Mexicana (Mexico, 1886), in cataloguing the books issued in Mexico before 1600, includes all that were printed in the native tongue. Brinton gives some account of such native authors in his Aboriginal American authors and their productions, especially those in the native languages. A chapter in the history of literature (Philad., 1883). Cf. his paper in the Congrès des Amér., Copenhagen, 1883, p. 54. Bancroft (iii. 730) gives some citations as to its literary value. Brinton has illustrated this quality in some of his lesser monographs, as in his Ancient Nahuatl Poetry (Philad., 1887); and in his Study of the Nahuatl language (1886), in which he gives specimens and enumerates the dictionaries and texts. He says there are more than a hundred authors in it (Amer. Antiquarian, viii. 22). Icazbalceta has collected many Nahua MSS., and his brother-in-law, Francisco Pimentel, has used them in his Cuadro descriptivo y comparativo de las Lenguas indigenas de México (1862), of which there is a German translation by Isidor Epstein (N. Y., 1877). This is based on a second augmented edition (Mexico, 1874-75), in which the tongues of northern Mexico are better represented, and a general classification of the languages is added. Pimentel (i. 154) asserts that it is a mistake to suppose that the Chichimecs spoke Nahua. Cf., however, Bancroft (iii. 724) and Short, 255, 480. Pimentel’s opinions are weighty, and follow in this respect those of Orozco y Berra, Sahagún, Ixtlilxochitl; but later, Veytia had maintained the reverse.