Macehualli

[Mark Morris]

Speaking  of Nahua metaphors, I recently wrote up an argument about
macehualli being related to deserving that follows for those who might
have an interest.  Mark Morris


For example, Pilli the word for a noble, also means child, and is a
literal
metaphor; nobles are the children of the macehualli seen in a 1619
document from
Tlaxcala where the teixihuihuan (grandchildren) address the pilli
“timotatzintzinhua timocnomacehualtzintzinhua~ /We your fathers, We your

humble-deserving macehuales/ (AGET Fondo Historico, Coleccion Colonial
Caja 14
Exp. 20 Fjs 3 Ano 1619).  See also The Art of Nahuatl Speech: The
Bancroft
Dialogues (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1987)
edited by
Frances Karttunen and James Lockhart, 40-41 and the Florentine Codice
(see below )
for other examples of social metaphors such as, in cuitlapilli in
ahtlapalli (the
tail, the wing) to denote common people.  Following Horacio Carochi who
demonstrates in his Arte de la Lengua Mexicana (Mexico:  Juan Ruiz,
1645) the
difference between macehualli and the verb mahcehua (to deserve) with
the
statement, “Cuix molhuil, cuix momàcehual in tima:ce:hualli in
tin:entla:catl,
inic ina:huac titlaqua:z in motlàtòca:uh? /Merit you, common and useless
man to
eat with your master?/,  J. Richard Andrews and Frances Karttunen agree
that
phonetic differences of the glottal mah stop and the long vowel ma:
indicate
ma:ce:hualli and mahcehua are made of distinctly different morphemes, J.
Andrews,
Introduction to Classical Nahuatl (Austin: University of Austin Press,
1975) and
Frances Karttunen, Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Austin: University
of Austin
Press, 1983).  Thus, they distinguish the intransitive verb with a long
vowel
Ma:ce:hua (to dance) from the transitive with a glottal stop Mahce:hua
or
Màce:hua (to deserve), and thus break the logic of this parent-child
metaphor
that invokes deserving.  According to this model, then, the standard
forms are
Ma:ce:hua (intransitive verb), Mahce:hua (transitive verb) and
Ma:ce:hualli
(noun).  But, this separation does not hold up given that the
intransitive (to
dance) is also found as Mahcehua in the Cantares Mexicanos (Mexico:
Oficina
tipografica de la Secretaria de fomento, 1904), f. 39 v. line 24 and
Juan Jose
Rendon Monzon’s appendice to M. Swadesh Mil Elementos del Mexicano
Clasico
(Mexico: UNAM, 1966) where “ma’ceua” is bailar (80).  Moreover,
Carochi’s
examples themselves are inconsistent as when he drops the 2nd syllable
long vowel
from Mahcehua, seeming to emphasize its difference from Ma:ce:hualli.
In
contrast, a 1910 reprint of his grammar that otherwise attempts to
fastidiously
follow his diacritics entirely omits his diacritic marks in this section

(Compendio edited by Ignacio Paredes, 3rd printing, Puebla: El
Escritorio, 1910)
as does Faustino Chimalpopoca who glosses Carochi's reading of
“ilhuilti,
icnopilti and macehualti” in his Epitome o Modo Facile de Aprender el
Idioma
Nahuatl o Mexicano  (Mexico: V. de Murguía e hijos, 1869).
     The seeming confusing meanings ascribed to macehualli, mahcehua
etc.
originate in the linguistic work of the 16th-century the Franciscans,
none more
than Fray Alonso de Molina who gives the following entries in his
dictionary of
1571:

Maceua. ni. bailar, odançar. pre. onimaceuh
Maceua. nic. confeguir, o merecerlo deffeado. Prete. onicmaceuh.
Maceua. nitla. idem. o hazer penitencia. preteri. onitlamaceuh.
Maceuale. merecedor de mercedes.
Maceualyetoca. nino tenerfe por fieruo, o por pefona de baxa fuerte.
Maceualiztli. dança o baile.
Maceuallatoa. ni. hablar rufticamente.  Preterito onimaceuallato.
Maceuallatoani. hablador tal.
Maceuallatoliztli. habla defta manera.
Maceualli. vafallo.
Maceuallotl. vafallaje, o cofa de maceuales.
Maceualtia. nite. darvafallos a otro, o echar algo ala rebatiña. pre.
onitemaceualti.
Maceualtia. nitetla. dar a merecer, o dar penitencia o otro . Pre.
onitetlamaceualti
Maceualtia. ninote. hazer a otros vafallos mios. prete.
oninotemaceualti.
Maceuia. ninotla. merecer o alcançar lo deffeado. pre. oninotlamaceui.

Particularly helpful among these are macehuale and macehualli.  Both
derive from
the passive of the verb adding the suffix –lo.  In the first case, the
atavistic
verb –eh (to have) joins the statement “there is deserving”
(mahce:hualo) to
denote “one who has deserving.”  In the second, the absolutive noun
suffix –tli
joins “there is deserving,” to denote either “something deserving” or
“something
deserved,” and from this extending to mean a common person.  See R. Joe
Campbell’s morphological studies of the Florentine Codex posted at
<http://www.umt.edu/history/NAHUATL/SOURCES.htm.>  Jonathan Amith’s
analysis of ma:se:walxiw in Ameyaltepec Nahuatl suggests also that the
action of masehual
refers to the subject.  His entry is:  “mäsëwalxiw un rústico, indio
(como el
poseedor) (Cat. gram.: Sustantivo (relacional) Morfología: N+? Raices
(1):
mäsëwal; xiw )” in Analytical Dictionary of Ameyaltepec Nahuatl
<http://morph.ldc.upenn.edu/cgi-bin/hyperlex/nahuatl/hyperlex.cgi>  He
further
describes the suffix –xiw in Ameyaltepec as similar to the –po’ of
Classical
Nahuatl in the sense both that it is a statement of being like something
and only
appears with possessed nouns, giving these examples:

nosihuapo`              she is a woman like me
tinotla:capo`           you are a man like me  (Jonathan Amith, personal

communication)

Frances Karttunen affirms that po’ “can be thought of as a
preterit-as-present
verb of the irregular type which takes possessive rather than subject
prefixes
and occurs only in singular form, in whichcase it implies *POA: ‘to be,
become
like someone’" in Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl, 201.

It is important to recognize that the friars’chief purpose was to
translate the
Christian faith and Spanish government to Nahuatl, not to explore the
most
internally accurate translation.  This has shaped our understanding of
Nahuatl
and Nahua culture in countless ways.  It is  suggestive then that
ma:ce:hua (to
dance) is used in the Florentine Codex in rituals of earthly and social
renewal, whereas the more common verb to dance ihtotia is used more
broadly (though frequently in religious contexts) and cuicoanaliztli
(singing and dancing) is perhaps the most generic.  Examples of macehua
as dancing include:

auh inic mamacehuaya quehuaya. in naye in naye tla achi
in metzal,.
(Nahuatl text standardized and machine coded by R. Joe Campbell)

and as they kept on dancing they chanted: "when i do,
when i do, [give me] a little of thy etzalli. (b.2 f.4 p.84).
(trans. Charles Dibble and A.J.O. Anderson, Santa Fe, N.M.: School of
American
Research and Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1950-1982.


auh in cequintin papaquini, in ahahuieni: ihuan in
cequintin tiacahuan, mamacehua

and some of the happy ones, the pleasure girls, and some of the
brave warriors danced from time to time. (b.2 f.4 p.84)


in macehualiztli, in papaquiliztli, inic quimellacuahua,
inic quinyollalia, in ixquichtin tlatoque, ihuan pipilti,
ihuan teteucti, ihuan tiacahuan: ihuan in ixquich in
cuitlapilli, atlapalli, in macehualli:

the ruler was greatly concerned with the dance, the rejoicing, in
order to hearten and console all the peers, the lords, the
noblemen, the brave warriors, and all the common folk and
vassals. (b.8 f.3 p.55)


And so following a thought suggested by Penny Lernoux, who recounts that
“One of
the early missionaries in Guatemala told all of the new missionaries
that the
first thing they had to do was to teach the Indians to dance the
Gospel,” in Cry
of the People: The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America--the
Catholic
Church in Conflict with U.S. Policy  (New York: Penguin Books, 1982),
381, I
propose we use the root gloss of “to pray” to explore connections among
intransitive, transitive specific and transitive non-specific mahcehua
using the
paradigm of calaqui:

Intransitive
A.  Calaqui  ~ to enter
B.   Mahcehua ~ to pray i.e. to dance

Transitive Specific Object

A.    Quicalaqui ~ to enter it. i.e. to put it in e.g. niquicalaqui
noichcatl
ihtic yolcamehpiyalocan
B. Quimahcehua ~ to pray it i.e. to merit or deserve it

Transitive Generic Object

A.  Tlacalaqui ~ to enter something i.e. to pay tribute
B.  Tlamahcehua ~ to pray something i.e. to do penance


 Although these two verbs have their own tendencies and connotations,
this
paradigm shows at least a couple things.  First, the shift in the force
of the
action between intransitive and transitive and transitive non-specific
is
similar.  Thus, as the action shifts from the subject to the object, in
shifting
from intransitive to transitive specific object, calaqui (to enter)
turns to mean
something more like “to put,” and mahcehua (to dance-pray) to merit what
is
supplicated, in a sense to put the force of prayer on an object.  When
the
transitive is non-specific, in each case the force of the statement
shifts back
toward the subject who performs a general-type of activity, in the one
case
paying taxes, in the other doing penance.
There is no known reason why in shifting from verb to noun the mah of
mahce:hua
would become the ma: of ma:ce:hualli, and this accounts for the prudence
of
Carochi’s et. al. analysis.  However, as Molina suggests in his
Vocabulario and
many examples in Nahuatl attest, glottal stops and vowel length are not
always
fixed morphemic elements, emphasizing that this difference is not a sure

guarantee of disparate morphological origins.  Still, the analysis
Andrews gives
of ma:ce:hualli underscores that both intransitive ma:ce:hua and
ma:ce:hualli
would latently have a glottal stop according to his view since the basic
morpheme
ma:i[tl] (hand) “has two stem forms,” according to Frances Karttunen and
R. Joe
Campbell in the Foundation Course in Nahuatl Grammar (Austin: Institute
of Latin
American Studies, 1989), vol. 2, 12.   Andrews analyzes ma:ce:hualli as:

(MA:I)-TL  > (MA:)-0 = hand ......
(MA:CE:HUA)  > (MA:-CE:UH)  = to
rest the hands, i.e. to dance; (MA:-CE:HUA-L)--LI  =
commoner, plebian, peasant.  (J. Richard Andrews, Introduction to
Classical
Nahuatl, 450.


Finally, the prevalence of macehui, macehua, macehual and mahcehua
related to
deserving in everyday correspondence between indigenous officials during
the
18th-century shows the verb to be a common symbol in colonial discourse.
When
people then spoke of being someone’s vassal or macehualli, it seems
natural that
the idea of merit and the verb mahcehua would resonate with such a
statement as
nimomacehualli (I am your vassal).