18/44 which was the first of the Maya week of thirteen days.[1] The remaining Bacabs were the Red, assigned to the East, the White, to the North, and the Black, to the West, and the winds and rains from those directions were believed to be under the charge of these giant caryatides. _Hobnil_ is the ordinary word for belly, stomach, from _hobol_, hollow. Figuratively, in these dialects it meant subsistence, life, as we use in both these senses the word "vitals." Among the Kiches of Guatemala, a tribe of Maya stock, we find, as terms applied to their highest divinity, _u pam uleu, u pam cah_, literally Belly of the Earth, Belly of the Sky, meaning that by which earth and sky exist. |