Notes.
Reading edition
The god Tlaloc shared with Huitzilopochtli the highest place in the Mexican Pantheon. He was the deity who presided over the waters, the rains, the thunder and the lightning. The annual festival in his honor took place about the time of corn-planting, and was intended to secure his favor for this all-important crop. Its details are described at great length by Diego Duran, Historia de Nueva España, cap. 86, and Sahagun, Historia, Lib. II., cap. 25, and elsewhere. His name is derived from tlalli, earth. Tlalocan, referred to in v. 5, “the place of Tlaloc,” was the name of a mountain east of Tenochtitlan, where the festival of the god was celebrated; but it had also a mythical meaning, equivalent to “the earthly Paradise,” the abode of happy souls.
It will be observed that v. 10 is a repetition of v. 6. The word ayauicalo refers to the ayauhcalli, “house of mist,” the home of the rain god, which Sahagun informs us was represented at the annual festival by four small buildings near the water’s edge, carefully disposed to face the four cardinal points of the compass (Sahagun, ubi supra).
In v. 8 the expression tetzauhpilli (tetzauhqui, to frighten) may be explained by the figure of Tlaloc, whose statue, says Duran, was that of un espantable monstruo, la cara muy fea (ibid.).
The compound in v. 10, nauhxiuhtica, “after four years,” appears to refer to the souls of the departed brave ones, who, according to Aztec mythology, passed to the heaven for four years and after that returned to the terrestrial Paradise,—the palace of Tlaloc. (See my paper, The Journey of the Soul, in Proceedings of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, 1883.)