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The passionate love with which the Nahuas cultivated song, music and the dance is a subject of frequent comment by the historians of Mexico.
Hueytlalpan, "at the ancient land," perhaps for Huetlapallan, a 1ocality often referred to in the migration myths of the Nahuas. Atloyan; see note to XIII, 6. The ceiba and cypress trees were employed figuratively to indicate protection and safeguard. See Olmos, Gram. de la Langue Nahuatl, p. 211. On tlailotlaqui, see note to XIII, 8.
The calculation by which it is found is quoted from the later portion of the “Codex Chimalpopoca” as follows: “Six times 400 years plus 113 years” previous to the year 1558 A.D. This is given as the date of a division of the land by the Nahuas.
The division was made 2513 years previous to 1558 A.D., or in 955 B.C. If this date could be accepted as authentic, it would follow that the Nahuas or Toltecs left Huehue-Tlapalan more than a thousand years previous to the Christian era, for they dwelt a long time in the country of Xibalba as peaceable settlers before they organized the civil war which raised them to power.
According to these writings, the country where the ruins are found was occupied in successive periods by three distinct peoples, the Chichimecs, the Colhuas, and the Toltecs or Nahuas. The Toltecs are said to have come into the country about a thousand years before the Christian era.
These instruments varied greatly in size, some being five feet in length, and others so small that they could conveniently be carried suspended to the neck. The teponaztli was the house instrument of the Nahuas. The word is derived from the name of the tree whose wood was selected to make the drum, and this in turn from the verb tepunazoa, to swell, probably from some peculiarity of its growth.
The Nahuas call it tozquitl, the singing voice, and likened it to the notes of sweet singing birds. The Nahuas were not acquainted with any stringed instrument. They manufactured, however, a variety of objects from which they could extract what seemed to them melodious sounds. The most important were two forms of drums, the huehuetl and the teponaztli.
They belonged in the country, and seem to have been originally an obscure and somewhat rude branch of the native race. It is very probable that the Colhuas and Nahuas or Toltecs of the old books and traditions, together with the Aztecs, were all substantially the same people.
Nopiltzin; the reference is to Quetzalcoatl, the famous "fair God" of the Nahuas, and in myth, the last ruler of the Toltecs. The term means "my beloved Lord." On Tezozomoc, see Introduction, p. 35. The text of the latter part or refrain of verses 5 and 6 is corrupt, and my translation is doubtful.
8. ximoayan; this word does not appear in the dictionaries of Molina or Simeon, and is a proof, as is the sentiment of the whole verse, that the present poem belongs to a period previous to the Conquest. The term means "where all go to stay," and was the name of the principal realm of departed souls in the mythology of the ancient Nahuas. yhuintia, causative form of ihuinti, to make drunk.
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