matl

[Galen Brokaw]

Dear Werner and Paul,
The second "matl" to which Werner refers means "hand." Evidently, the "i" got
elided from the original "maitl." In some indigenous land documents that have
both pictographic and alphabetic versions, you will find the measurement
written in Nahuatl as so many by so many "matl." And in the pictographic
version you will find a number of hand glyphs drawn on each side of the plot of
land that correspond to the number of "matl," that is the length of the border.
It seems that the indigenous measure was originally based on the distance
between outstretched hands, which the Spanish equated to the "braza."
I know this probably doesn't help you, Paul, unless the "matl" that you are
studying is also the elided form of "maitl" and had some kind of metaphorical
significance.
Galen


> I have what follows:
>         matl (=matl?)   measure, only applied by numbers up to 20.
>                         Castillo 1972:213. (matl=2,5027 m)
>                         cf. also Cline:1966:93.
>                         Hinz/Hartau/Heimann: Aztek.Zensus I, Molotla , add.
>                         Anderson,  Beyond the Cod. 26.
>                         ell of land     Molotla 12.
>                         span. braza, 6 feet, fathom (?= volume)
>  For now that is all.
> Hear from you?
> Werner Asche