Nauati, to speak clearly and distinctly.
Nauatlato,
an interpreter.
38. I believe that no one can carefully examine these lists of words, all taken from authorities well acquainted with the several tongues, and writing when they still retained their original purity, without acknowledging that the same radical or syllable underlies them all; and further, that from the primitive form and rich development of this radical in the Zapotec, it looks as if we must turn to it to recognize the origin of all these expressions, both in the Nahuatl and the Maya linguistic stocks.
The root na, to know, is the primitive monosyllabic stem to which we trace all them. Nahual means knowledge, especially mystic knowledge, the Gnosis, the knowledge of the hidden things of nature; easily enough confounded in uncultivated minds with sorcery and magic.[133]
It is very significant that neither the radical na nor any of its derivatives are found in the Huasteca dialect of the Mayan tongue, which was spoken about Tampico, far removed from other members of the stock. The inference is that in the southern dialects it was a borrowed stem.
Nor in the Nahuatl language—although its very name is derived from it[134]—does the radical na appear in its simplicity and true significance. To the Nahuas, also, it must have been a loan.
It is true that de la Serna derives the Mexican naualli, a sorcerer, from the verb nahualtia, to mask or disguise oneself, "because a naualli is one who masks or disguises himself under the form of some lower animal, which is his nagual;"[135] but it is altogether likely that nahualtia derived its meaning from the custom of the medicine men to wear masks during their ceremonies.
Therefore, if the term nagual, and many of its associates and derivatives, were at first borrowed from the Zapotec language, a necessary corollary of this conclusion is, that along with these terms came most of the superstitions, rites and beliefs to which they allude; which thus became grafted on the general tendency to such superstitions existing everywhere and at all times in the human mind.
Along with the names of the days and the hieroglyphs which mark them, and the complicated arithmetical methods by means of which they were employed, were carried most of the doctrines of the Nagualists, and the name by which they in time became known from central Mexico quite to Nicaragua and beyond.
The mysterious words have now, indeed, lost much of their ancient significance. In a recent dictionary of the Spanish of Mexico nagual is defined as "a witch; a word used to frighten children and make them behave,"[136] while in Nicaragua where the former Nahuatl population has left so many traces of its presence in the language of to-day the word nagual no longer means an actor in the black art or a knowledge of it, but his or her armamentarium, or the box, jar or case in which are kept the professional apparatus, the talismans and charms, which constitute the stock in trade or outfit of the necromancer.[137]
Among the Lacandons, of Mayan stock, who inhabit the forests on the upper waters of the Usumacinta river, at the present day the term naguate or nagutlat is said to be applied to any one "who is entitled to respect and obedience by age and merit;"[138] but in all probability he is also believed to possess superior and occult knowledge.
[133] The Abbé Brasseur observes: "Le mot nahual, qui vet dire toute science, ou science de tout, est fréquemment employ & pour exprimer la sorcellerie chez ces populations." Bulletin de la Socétè de Géographie, 1867, p. 290. In another passage of his works the speculative Abbé translates naual by the English "know all," and is not averse to believing that the latter is but a slight variant of the former.
[134] See an article by me; entitled "On the Words'Anahuac' and 'Nahuatl,'" in the American Antiquarian, fur November, 1893.
[135] Manual de Ministros , p. 50.
[136] Jesus Sanchez, Glosario de Voces Castellanas derivadas del Idioma Nahuatl, sub voce.
[137] "Nagual—el lugar, rincon, cajon, nambira, etc., donde guarda sus talismanes y trajes de encanta la bruja." Berendt, La Lenqua Castellana de Nicaragua. MS.
[138] Emetorio Pineda, Descripcion Geografica de Chiapas y Soconusco, p. 28 (Mexico, 1845).
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