THE
SEVEN-DAY WEEK
The 7-day period, like the 5-day
period, is conjugated differently than are other periods of days: wukub ’ih
“seven days,” wukubix “a week from today,” wukbixir “a week ago.”
Actually, the future term is being replaced by Spanish except where associated
with ritual periods, so that both 7-day and 5-day compounds are now used almost
exclusively to refer to “last week.” Some speakers seem to use wukbixir,
others hobixir, while still others use a contracted form which combines
the two: hukbixir. Since the 7-day term occurs throughout the Maya area,
and since the Spanish use ocho días “8 days” to refer to the week, it is
obviously not a borrowed term. Its authenticity is further validated if
Thompson’s bix glyph (glossary, glyph Nos. 9-11) which he found only
with coefficients of five or seven, actually represents 5-day and 7-day periods
as he supposed. However, I have severe misgivings about this interpretation in
view of the elements which occur with it in compounds which relate the main
glyph to the sun in the southern hemisphere; in this case, the coefficients of
five and seven would probably refer to the 5-uinal and 7-uinal periods which
precede the winter solstice at the end of the Yaxkin (see Fig. 5), counting
back (notice anterior indicators on all bix forms of glyphs 9-11 in
glossary) to zenithal sun position in Pop (seven uinales) or equinoctial sun
position in Zip (five uinales).
An explanation of the cognation
of bih (b’ih) “name” and ih “day” is facilitated by
Troike’s (1978:559) discussion of the common origin of the terms in
Proto-Mixtec (Longacre and Millon 1961) due to the practice of naming
individuals for the day name and number of the 260-day cycle on which they were
born. Since this practice was common in the Maya area, we may assume a common
proto-term. The phonetic change of h to x is standard, especially
in deriving intransitive from transitive forms (bih “to name,” bix
“to be named”).
As to the semantic basis for the
7-day cycle, the context in which it is most frequently used is that of the
7-day moon phase: four phases compose a month, plus a burial period of the moon
for from one to three days, a pre-Columbian awareness which is concisely
expressed in the full lunar glyph showing four phases (glossary, glyph 15).
Wukubix cwartah panok, pa quince dias ca c’iso. “In seven days begins the fiesta
and in fifteen days it will finish.” (“Seven-days-ahead it-is-slept over there”
is an archaic expression for the first night of ritual.)
Wukubixir, rih i ka tit, xc’is
i oxib ic’. “Seven-days-back, (when was) old our grandmother, were-finished
three months (of pregnancy).”
Even though the Achi have not
adopted the Gregorian month names into their system of “counting days,” they
have found the names of the days of the week to be convenient markers of moon
phases:
Ca c’is i oxib ic’ chupam i
martes ca c’unic. “It will be three months on this coming Tuesday.” (“It
finishes the three months during the Tuesday it is-coming.”)
Some young girls have grown
indolent about watching their grandmother’s journey and count time by the week
only:
Xin coh ta retatil wach xo’on
ka tit; xa pa semana weta’am chi ya xc’is i cahib, ch’apom chic i ho’ob. “I
put not attention-to what she-did our grandmother; only by weeks I-know that
already it-finished the four (months) and has-grabbed already the five
(months).”
Nabe semana chupam ocho meses are xin tzakic. “It was the first week of my
eighth month when I aborted.” (“First week inside-of eight months when I
fell.”)
Ya ca c’is cahib semana pa
lunes wukubix ca c’unic. “Four weeks will be up a week from this coming
Monday.” (“Already it finishes four weeks on Monday seven-days it comes.”) (Helen
Neuenswander, “Glyphic Implications of Current Time Concepts of the Cubulco Achi
(Maya)” [Prepublication draft submitted for publication to the Centro de
Estudios Mayas, Universidad Nacional Autónomo de México, February 1981], 10-12)
Further Reading:
Helen
Neuenswander on knowledge of a 7-day week in Mesoamerica
