ixtlahua/debt

[Frances Karttunen]

In Estudios de cultura nahuatl 32 Ulrich Köhler takes issue with the concept
of nextlahualiztli 'sacrifice' as literally debt-repayment, despite its
obvious derivation from the verb ixtlahua.  He is exercised about this and
states that , "this article is written in English, because most of the
erroneous recent statements on an alleged Aztec debt-repayment to their gods
have been published in that language.  Hopefully, further diffusion of this
nonsense can still be stopped."

The main targets of K's criticism are elaborated hypotheses about Aztec
belief systems, but he traces the roots of these hypotheses back to what he
believes are etymological misunderstandings, particularly a mistranslation
by Simeon of what Molina meant by "pagar lo que se debe."  K feels that
Dibble and Anderson misrepresented the sense of nextlahualiztli in their
English translation of the Florentine Codex and that we English speakers
have all followed D&A down the primrose path first blazed by Simeon.

K's arguments are well worth examining.  If they have merit, interpretations
of blood sacrifice as debt-repayment should be reined back.

It would be good to get a list from Joe of contexts in which ixtlahua is
used in order to help evaluate K.'s criticism.

Fran Karttunen