Note 7 — THE TONALAMATL AND THE SOLAR CALENDAR

Although the tonalamatl has been called the “ritual calendar,” most of the feast-days theoretically vested in the “months” of the solar calendar and were called after them; but certain of the festivals appear to have been connected with the tonalamatl, to have vested in it, so to speak. We know these by their names, as they are called after the several tonalamatl dates on which they fall. Thus a festival taking the name of a day-sign theoretically belongs to the tonalamatl, and one called after a month-name to the solar calendar proper. Moreover, the former were known as “movable,” the latter as “fixed,” feasts. Occasionally these clashed, as Sahagun states, with the result that the tonalamatl feasts usurped the place of the calendar celebrations.7