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Kan B'ahlam was originally called Chan-Bahlum because this is "Snake-Jaguar" in modern Ch'ol, a Mayan language spoken in the environs of Palenque today. But this glyph from the East Panel of the Temple of the Inscriptions shows a phonetic prefix that signals a reading of KAN rather than CHAN. The sign in question is the fish fin, representing the syllable ka, on the snake-jaguar's forehead. This contributes the k in KAN. Kan is "snake" in Yukatek Mayan, and Yukatekan words show up in the inscriptions of Palenque because "there was close language contact between Ch'olan and Yukatekan speakers in the northwest lowlands during Classic times, if not earlier (Stuart 2000; available online)". The phonetic complement ma signals that the two words being spelled together probably ended with m, so we suspect that this ruler's name was Kan B'ahlam, not B'ahlam Kan.

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Note 1: In the drawing, the jaguar-snake appears to have the logogram for WINIK, "man", in its mouth. (Jaguars are not known to be man-killers, although some of their feline relatives have a taste for human flesh.) Schele and Mathews (1993) suggest that the mouth holds the syllable na, as a phonetic complement to KAN. But Simon Martin (personal communication, 2001) has determined from Maudslay's casts of the inscription in the British Museum that that the drawing is in error. What appeared to be something in the jagaur's mouth is actually spots on its lower jaw.

Note 2: While David Stuart's point about Yukatekan words at Palenque is not necessarily intended to apply to kan "snake", it may well do so. It is worth quoting Stuart at length for a better understanding of the general principle. Here he refers to a spelling on the stucco panel from Palenque's Temple XIX:

The spelling k'a-ma raises an important issue about linguistic variation in the Classic inscriptions. We are accustomed to reading this "receive" verb in its expected Ch'olan form ch'am, which has for several years been the more established value of the "ajaw-in-hand." This was based originally on an example from Panel 2 from Piedras Negras, where the logograph takes the prefix ch'a- and the suffix -ma as phonetic complements, clearly indicating the Ch'olan pronunciation. K'am, however, is the Yukatekan cognate. The situation is not unique, for Palenque is unusual for its occasional use of Yukatekan spellings in place of expected Ch'olan forms. Other examples include zu-ku for zukun, "elder brother" (elsewhere spelled as Ch'olan za-ku, zakun) and ka-b'a for kab', "earth" (in Ch'olan this would be chab'). These words alone do not indicate that Palenque was a Yukatekan site, for the overwhelming phonological and morphological patterns in Palenque's inscriptions are decidedly Ch'olan (Houston, Robertson and Stuart, in press). Rather, such spellings are best seen as subtle indications of close language contact between Ch'olan and Yukatekan speakers in the northwest lowlands during Classic times, if not earlier. The same connection is reflected in Chontal, a Ch'olan language, where "earth" is kab' instead of chab' (Kaufman and Norman 1984), exactly as indicated in Palenque's texts.

However, ancient Palenque's predilection for borrowing words from Yukatekan is not the only way to account for the spelling of this ruler's name. It has been suggested that kan was an ancient word for the Vision Serpent or a related supernatural, and a distinction is being made here between a common snake and a deity (Simon Martin, personal communication, 2000).

Note 3: It was Terry Kaufman who pointed out that the word for "jaguar" in the Classic Period was bahlam, not b'ahlum (Schele and Mathews 1993).