ixtlahua/debt

[Daniel Thomas]

debt-payment - nextlahualiztli -- ixtlahua/debt

gentlemen: it is enlightening to me to witness your "etic" discussion.
Thank you.

yours truly, another tlacuilo

>From: Carlos Santamarina Novillo <carlossn at ui.boe.es>
>To: Richard.Haly at Colorado.EDU
>CC: nahuat-l at mrs.umn.edu
>Subject: Re: ixtlahua/debt
>Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 11:12:38 +0100
>
>Yes, I think too that the “metaphysical considerations” had obscured the
>social reality about human sacrifice. I think that about this issue is
>very appropriate the use of  pike’s terms emics (the native sources’
>reasoning) and etics (the scholar’s conclusions), as in many other
>cases.
>I am very interested about teteuctin as teteo, or rulers as gods. Can
>you specify your sources about the divine consideration of rulers? Thank
>you
>                                                                 - Carlos
>Santamarina <carloss at ui.boe.es>
>
>"Richard Haly" ha escrito:
>
> > Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 09:22:05 -0700
> > Subject: Re: ixtlahua/debt
> > From: richard haly <Richard.Haly at colorado.edu>
> > To: Frances Karttunen <karttu at nantucket.net>, <nahuat-l at mrs.umn.edu>
> >
> > I can likewise take issue with most representations of sacrifice as
> > debt-payement to gods when concepts such as debt, payment, and gods go
> >
> > unexamined. From my research, nextlahualiztli makes most sense as
> > payment to
> > the rulers (likewise teotl). When people say that the Aztecs thought
> > the
> > Spaniards were "gods" - teules- it makes them (the Aztecs) seem pretty
> >
> > credulous when we think of "gods" in any Judeo-Christian manner.
> > Nonetheless, when one considers that they called their own rulers
> > "gods" and
> > treated them as such - not looking in to the brightness of the face of
> > the
> > emperor/sun - then any debt-payment to gods can be a debt-payment to
> > rulers. All sacrifice phenomena - and all festival and pilgrimage
> > phenomena
> > as well - make much more sense when one tries to understand them in
> > this
> > world and not in some metaphysical or "religious" way. (Religious is
> > in
> > quotation marks because most people think religion is about
> > "spiritual"
> > stuff and not "material" stuff because that is what their own
> > religions have
> > told them. That is not the case in a culture of embodied ancestors -
> > Mesoamerica, for one.) Sacrifice is much more like kula-exchange among
> >
> > Trobriand islanders. An explanation of sacrifice whose dynamics do not
> > rely
> > on metaphysical language or a transcendent agent has a greater chance
> > of
> > making real sense.
> >
> > Richard




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