Nahuan Supremacy and the Aryans: On T. S. Denison's "The Primitive Aryans of America"

T. S. Denison (1848 - 1911)

In 1908 Thomas Stewart Denison (1848 - 1911) published a book titled "The Primitive Aryans of America" in which he purported to demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that the Nahuas of Mexico were not indigenous to the American continent, but that they were descendents of people from Central Asia who spoke a language of the Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. In order to do so he used the method of comparative philology which had been originally used to establish the relationship between European languages such as Latin, Germanic, Celtic and Greek to the Indian (or Aryan as they were then sometimes called, before the term Aryan got its Nazi connotations) languages such as Sanskrit, Pali and Hindi. The book can be read here.

As scholarship the book is worthless, for reasons I will describe below, but what is really interesting about it is the way that it fits into a particular racial and political ideology about Nahuas, Aztecs and the Nahuatl language. This particular ideology was prevalent in the late 19th century, and is still sometimes found among scholars and cultural activists: the ideology of Nahua supremacy.

Denison himself at no point appears to make political statements, nor does he explicitly push any ideologies about race, but once it is clear that the argument has no actual empirical basis,it becomes clear that the only explanation that someone would write a several hundred page work trying to tie the Aztecs to an Indo-European past must be a certain ideological necessity (even if it is implicit and subtle).

At best the data that Denison musters to support his argument can be understood as chance resemblances and at worst as (unconscious?) data manipulation. This kind of work is well known to all historical linguistics who all at some point have had to deal with crackpots positing exotic linguistic connections based on bad evidence. I think the problem is inherent in the comparative method, because it relies crucially on creative thinking seeing new patterns in the data, this process itself invites a particular kind of creative mind to the process. And since there also is not a very well established set of criteria for the rigor with which claims should be supported (there are some guidelines of course, but interpretations of them vary widely) it is almost inevitable that creative thinkers will be able to mold the method to get the appearance of rigor while in fact simply using a kind of  reasoning that proves nothing but something about their own subjective world of ideas and associations.

The most basic criteria for using the comparative method is that at least the forms and meanings used for comparison should actually exist in the languages compared. Denison falls short of this criterion almost throughout the book, using non-existent invented nahuatl words, or changing their meanings subtly or not so subtly to make it easier to establish connections to Indo-European words. For example when he wants to compare Nahuatl cualli "good" to Sanskrit काल्य (kālya "agreeable", "auspicious") and Greek καλός (kalos, "good", "attractive") he invents the additional meaning "fair" to take the Nahuatl word closer to the Greek meaning. The Nahuatl word is more likely to be related to the verb cua "to eat" and have been derived from a word meaning "something edible".  When the form doesn't match the word, he invents a hypothetical proto-Nahuan form that looks closer to the one in the Indo-European language and then uses that for the purpose of comparison. For example when he compares Nahuatl comitl "pot" to Sanskrit  कुम्भ (kumbha, a kind of pot), he invents a proto-Nahuatl form *kombitl, adding the b, to make the word look more similar. Historical linguists do invent reconstructed proto-forms to be used for comparison with higher level families, but for this not to be merely wishful thinking these have to be based on evidence from the lower level of the language for which the proto form is propose,d not from languages outside of it with which it is compared. For example if any Nahuan language had a form of the word for pot that had the extra b he posits, THEN he could have proposed it. But none do, so he cannot. It is beyond the scope of a blogpost to recount the many ways in which he abuses the data and the methods of historical linguistics throughout the book, but perhaps someday I will have the time to do so. Just for the fun of it. As a taste of what Denison works like I give the snapshot below of his table comparing Nahuan placenames in the mythical account of the migration from Aztlan to places in the Central Asia. 

In order to understand why a man would spend all this paper and energy on a project like this we have to look a little at the time in which he lived and what ideas were circulating then. Historical linguistics was not a new science, but it had not yet really been applied to Native American languages. Many were unsure if it were even possible. It was not until 1913 that Edward Sapir first established the relationship between Nahuatl and the Shoshonean languages of the U.S. using the method in a rigorous fashion. 

At the same time many scholars believed in polygenic theories of human evolution. The theory that humans had emerged separately on the different continents. This would assign the different "continental races" to the status of what was essentially different species. If this were the case then there was no reason to suspect that Native American languages were related to languages form the Old world. Indeed many believed that probably they weren't even languages in the same sense as European ones with grammar and rules of pronunciation and syntax. In this sense showing that a New World language was related to an Old World one would be quite an important feat. But this is not the main feat that Denison seems to have had in mind, because he considered Nahuatl to be unique among the Old World languages in that it was not at all indigenous. It was to him a language of Aryans that had crossed into the New World and forcefully submitted the local primitives to their will establishing an empire to rule over them.

In this way he drew on a long series of historical speculations about the relation between race and civilization. The most egregious example of such speculation is the French "count" Arthur de Gobineau (1816 - 1882). Gobineau was the first to use the word "Aryan" in a racial sense when he used it to describe what he believed was the supreme human race destined to destroy all other races with their superior might and intelligence, or else be destroyed by the envious petty masses of non-aryan underlings. Gobineaus main argument for Aryan superiority was that all civilizations had been created by Aryans, which he took to prove their innate superiority. To make that argument however he had to first find ways to describe all civilizations outside of Europe, including the Egyptians, Sumerians and Ancient Indian civilizations as somehow having been founded by "lost" Aryan tribes (whose wanderlust and entrepreneurial spirit was prone to take them on adventures in foreign lands).

Both Denison's use of the word Aryan, and his basic argument, namely that the Nahuatl language and the culture it represented were superior due to an European heritage, fits entirely into this pattern of white supremacist racial thinking, which could not conceive of indigenous cultures as being unable to make independent cultural achievements, and which saw history as an evolutionary process in which "less fit" cultures were gradually replaced by the more fit. 

In Mexico similar ideas thrived. Mexican linguist Francisco Pimentel (1832 - 1893) subscribed to the idea that some languages were innately superior than others, and that in a situation of contact the superior one would inevitably erase the inferior. For Pimentel this meant that of all Mexican languages Nahuatl, having imposed itself on other native peoples, was the superior, and also that in comparison to Spanish, Nahuatl was inferior and would have to eventually disappear. The same idea was common throughout the Mexican national establishment in the 19th century (this has also been described by Claudio Lomnitz). In his 1970 book Posdata, Octavio Paz refers to this view of Mexican history as "una pirámide trunca" (a truncated pyramid), where the Aztec civilization is seen as the platform on top of the pyramidal structure of Mesoamerican civilization, but a pyramid that still needs the peak, the summit, to reach fulfillment. Logically then in this view the Spanish conquest finally provides the conclusion of Mesoamerican history. Another metaphor that may work better today is that it is a kind of "World Cup" view of history where people face of on their local continents until a continental winner defeats everyone else on the continent and then they start playing between continental winners to find the final champion. Obviously the main group benefiting from this view would be the Spanish minded Mexicans who could put themselves in a situation of seeing their political ascendancy as natural and inevitable, and indigenous people crying for justice simply as sore losers. In this way inevitably the ideology of Aztec supremacy in Mesoamerica (through military might) leads to the corrollary of Spanish/European global supremacy. 

Unfortunately this view still exists in academia. In 2007, UNAM, Mexico's National Autonomous University published the book "El Primer Mestizaje" by the French archaeologist Christian Duverger. This book argues that contrary to the established consensus that the Nahuas were late comers to Mesoamerica, in fact they created Mesoamerican civilization by gradually conquering all the other peoples, erecting all the known monuments and being the prime movers of all known Mesoamerican societies where they dwelled as the sophisticated lords ruling over the dull and uncreative masses of Otomian, Zapotecan, Mixtecan, Totonacan, Mazahuan, and other non-Nahuan peoples. Duverger does not use the word "Aryan", but clearly his model is the same as the classical model from India that sees the lightskinned intelligent Aryans as conquering and ruling over the brown Dravidian masses whom they bring civilization. I will probably be writing more about Dugverger's book, its many many problems, and about some of its derivative works in the field of linguistics in later blogposts.

Xochicuicatl Cuecuechtli – the first contemporary opera in Nahuatl: A Review

Having just returned from the first performance of Xochicuicatl Cuecuechtli – billed as the first contemporary Opera with a libretto in Nahuatl, composed and directed by Gabriel Pareyón – I had to make this the topic of this blog post which will take the form of a review. [Edited: In fact it turns out that in 2005 the Opera "La Conquista" by Lorenzo Ferrero, premiered in Prague. Its libretto was partly in Nahuatl, written by the Nahuatl specialist Frances Karttunen. Thanks to Dr. Karttunen, for pointing this out to me!]

First a little background: The opera is written by Gabriel Pareyón, a Mexican polymath who works both as a composer, a musicologist, a linguist and a semiotician. He has previously written pieces of contemporary music with long titles in Otomí some of which can be heard on youtube, but this seems to be his first work featuring Nahuatl. In the program Pareyón describes that the work is part of a research project on how to understand indigenous musical traditions of Mexico, and give life to an aesthetic vision that harks back to Mesoamerica before European contact.

The libretto is based on one of the Cantares Mexicanos, which is a collection of songs in Nahuatl, written sometime in the 16^th century. The text are considered by most Nahuatl specialists to be among the most intrigueing texts written in colonial Nahuatl, and among the most challenging. The particular songtype is what in Nahuatl is called a Cuecuechcuicatl, which John Bierhorst translates into English as “Ribald Flowersong” and philosopher and Nahuatl scholar Patrick Johansson translates as “Canto florido de travesuras” (flowery song of naughtiness). Based on descriptions of the songtype in ethnohistorical sources which describe it as being sexually inappropriate for a good Christian audience, Johansson reinterprets the flower and nature images of the song as sexual metaphors. This interpretation forms the basis of Pareyón's work which is built around an erotic theme.

The music is written for an ensemble of instruments of types known to have been used by pre-contact Mesoamerican musicians (this kind of music is increasingly beoming known as pre-cuauhtemic music in Mexico, alluding to Cuauhtemoc the last independent ruler of Mexihco-Tenochtitlan). These instruments include large standing drums (huehuetl) and smaller lying slit-drums (teponaztli), as well as other percussion instruments and different types of flutes and conch trumpets. The music is written for and performed by the pre-cuauhtemic ensemble Kuauhkiyahuitzintli/Lluvia de Palos led by percussionist José Navarro.

The plot of the work, created by Pareyón based on the song, evolves around an erotic relation between a Huastec by the name Tohuenyo (performed by Ricardo Diaz Mendoza, known from Mel Gibson's Apocalypto), three ahuianimeh “pleasure girls”(performed by Silvia Moreno, Abril Mondragon and Priscella Uvalle) and a cuicamatini “knower of songs” (performed by César Juarez-Joyner) who at the end of the work turns into the Aztec god of sexual debauchery Xochipilli.

Unfortunately I missed the conference that was given by the composer and several Nahuatl specialists, including Patrick Johansson before the performance, and I arrived to take my seat just before the curtain went up.

It was not the first time that I had heard pre-cuauhtemic music, but I was very surprised at the enormous range of expressivity that Lluvia de Palos were able to create with their limited means. In spite of clearly being in the genre of “contemporary” compositional music, the sound was not easily associated with any specific place or time in the world. At times it was reminiscent of Japanese music, as I know it from Kurosawa movies, or of balinese gong music. But at other times it sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. In a good way. I particularly liked the part where the three Ahuianime use the metates (grindstones for grinding corn) as musical instruments, the sound of stone grinding against stone creating a rich texture with the wooden sounds of the slit drums.

The singing was something else. In an interview given to the diariodigital, Pareyón explained that he had worked consciously to try to arrive at a singing style that was not based on European singing. In the same interview Enid Negrete, coordinator and scenographer stated that “The Nahuatl language gave opportunity to, provoked and required a different vocal technique, completely distinct from the European technique which is based on articulation rather than embodiment, and which is also used in order to make sure the Nahuatl is intelligible and retains its intonation.” The vocal technique was definitely very different from any European technique (and also from any non-European technique I have heard). The technique involved singing in a high-pitched highly glottalized (what linguists would call “creaky voice”) register, where the voice frequently breaks into falsetto. It was at times difficult to distinguish the composition from the vocal technique. The singers seemed to repeat a small number of melodic figures most of them based on a rising falling melodic contour, with different accentuations and phrasings, chopping them up into staccatos with strong accent on each syllable, breaking into violent falsettos on the high point of the phrase, or glottalizing the descending phrase into a fading shriek. The goal of creating a completely distinct vocal aesthetic was certainly achieved. The other goal of making a technique suited for Nahuatl I think was less well achieved. I was able to hear quite a bit of the libretto and recognize parts of the poem, which were repeated in the voices of the different singers. But many times I was unable to hear what was being sung at all – perhaps this is a result of the technique being focused on embodiment rather than on articulation, and I certainly also cant always hear what is being sung in a European opera, so that may not be so big of a deal. But also the intonation of the language was completely changed, a lot of the times the speech rhytm was weirdly staccato sounding like no variety of Nahuatl I have ever heard, and frequently stress was placed on syllables where they would never occur in spoken Nahuatl. Overall the delivery of the language came across to me as extremely artificial and unnatural (in a not good way). 

I think I understand the choice of this strange vocal aesthetics – simply because using any singing style that could be identified as “European” would have clearly marked the attempt to attain a truly “autochtonous” aesthetics as half-assed an hypocritical. But on the other hand I have a hard time believing that the style though very “foreign” and unknown was in fact a closer approximation of how pre-cuauhtemic singing sounded like. In me, the choice of vocal technique produced a very strong verfremdungseffekt, that provoked me to think critically about the whole project and the way it depicted the indigenous people as completely exotic (and savagely erotic) others. This made me ask myself the question whether the pursuit of the aesthetic other of European music in an imagined pre-cuauhtemic Mesoamerica does not easily turn into a kind of “occidentalism”.

Another aspect that bugged me a bit regarding the treatment of the language was the fact that the Nahuatl libretto was nowhere represented in writing – neither in the program nor in the running light titles above the stage. Anyone who was not able to understand the sung Nahuatl (I would estimate that would be about 98% of the audience) only had acces to the “supertitles” in Spanish above the stage. The “supertitles” also written by Pareyón, had a very indirect relation to what was actually being sung in Nahuatl. At times the titles approximated Johanssons translation, but at other times it deviated completely from the Nahuatl words, creating dialogue between the characters, or adding sexual innuendo such as “we women do not subsist on corn and beans alone, we also need chili” or “I erect my flowery pole” neither of which was present in the sung words. The supertitle in that way was more of a guide to the plot, and an representation of the composers interpretation of the poem than an actual translation of the sung text. This made the Nahuatl text stand alone isolated from the meaning of the plot, and to me gave the impression that the language was only an instrument to achieve an aesthetic effect, but not meant to be a language of actual communication. Kind of like a meaningless soundscape, that the Spanish supertitles then inscribed meaning onto. So is this cultural translation or is it colonizing and erasing the Nahuatl text and the voice of the Nahuas who wrote it?

While this performance was the official premiere, the opera had in fact already been performed for an audience of Nahua people in Arcelia, Guerrero. This was done, according to the composer, in order to show indigenous people that also non-native speakers can use the Nahuatl language. It does seem that  other than this, no native speakers were directly involved in the production. Sometimes it is difficult to be sure when the usage of cultural signs across cultural borders are demonstrations of friendship and brotherhood and when they are appropriations. Here a few hours after having seen the performance, I still havent settled on one of those two interpretations.

I'll finish by giving some examples of different translations of the first stanza of the poem, as you will see hey are quite different:

Hue nache niehco. Ya nihuehuetzcatihuitz.
Ye nixcuecuech, Aya, xochitl in ye nocuic.
Momamalina zan ic ya totoma, ho Ohuaya, nicalle.
Ye ompa nihuitz xochitl iztac ihcacan,
anca ye mochan in quiquizcalihtic
in amoxtonaticac, Ohuaya, nicalle.

Hey Brother! I'm arriving. I come laughing. I'm a leering ribald! My songs, these flowers, They are whirling and I set them free.

I come from where white flowers stand. And now it seems these pictures stand up shining in your home

this trumpet house. (Bierhorst 1985:369)

Mi gran jefe, llego: yo vengo a reír. / My great chief, I arrive, I come to laugh
Soy cara traviesa, flor es mi canción./  I am a naughty face, flower is my song
Se va tramando y luego se despliega. ¡Ah, soy el casero! / It goes weaving and then unfolds. Ah! I am the one who lives here.
Llego a donde la flor blanca está erguida: / I arrive to where the white flower stands erect:
ésa es tu casa y entre las trompetas / This is your house and among the trumpets
tus libros relucen como el Sol. ¡Ah, soy el casero! / books shine like the sun. Ah! I am the one who lives here

Á.G. Garibay K. (1955)/ (my translation to English)

Oh gran jefe, llegué, vine a reír./     O great chief, I arrived. I came to laugh.
Soy cara traviesa, aya, esta flor es mi canto. / I am a naughty face, aya, this flower is my song
Se va tramando y luego se despliega. ¡Soy el dueño de la casa! / It goes weaving and then unfolds. I am the owner of the house!
Llegué a donde la flor blanca está erguida: / I arrived at where the white flower stands erect.
ésa es tu casa entre las trompetas / That is your house among the trumpets,
donde se calienta el musgo, ¡soy el dueño de la casa! / Where the moss is warm. I am the owner of the house. 

 P. Johansson (2002)/ My translation into English

• Pre-premiere coverage of the work at newser.com with interview w. the composer.

Coming Soon to a Church Near You: The Catholic Mass in Nahuatl

Report from the 7th Pastoral Workshop on Nahuatl Language and Culture

From Monday the 9th to Thursday the 12th of June 2014, the 7th Pastoral Workshop on Nahuatl Language and Culture took place in Tehuipango, in the Sierra de Zongolica in Central Veracruz. The workshop was organized and presided over by Monsignor Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel, Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas. I was fortunate enough to be invited and be present during two days of the workshop, and to be able to interview the Bishop and talk to several of the participants.

The decorated entrance to the church
of Tehuipango during the workshop

This objective of this series of workshops which has been going on since 2012 is to create an official, translation approved by Rome of the catholic mass into Nahuatl, and as a secondary objective create a unified liturgical language to be used in the many dioceses with Nahuatl speakers. The initiative was started under Pope Benedict, but according to Bishop Arizmendi, Pope Francis has already expressed his interest in the project and his willingness to let translation work take place in the countries in which the linguistic expertise is found instead of in Rome.

The translation is a collective work of a group of Nahuatl speaking priests representing different dialect areas. Most of the priests are native speakers, although some have acquired the language as a second language when arriving in their parishes.  At the workshop they work conjointly on a a version that is meant to be acceptable to speakers in all regions requires many deep discussions of local usage, and semantics. Originally the aim was to have a couple of different versions, perhaps three, but at the first workshop in 2012 at Tepeyac, a consensus formed among the delegates that it should be possible to make a single authorized version in a new variety of Nahuatl that would be widely acceptable. The first workshop translated the Pater Noster and succeeded in creating a version that was satisfactory to the participants representing the different dialect areas at the meeting. This led to a decision of working towards creating a single version in a kind of Nahuatl that they describe as Unified Nahuatl. The Bishop described this consensus among the priests as a miracle performed by the virgin of Guadalupe.

To take into account dialectal variation the translation does include footnotes allowing for substitutions of certain terms in cases where meaning or pronunciation differs too much to reconcile all speakers into a single version.

Bishop Arizmendi several times underscored that the translation was not an academic or specialist work, but rather a work of service to the Nahuatl speaking communities, and they should be the final arbiters of the translation. The translation draft the participants were revising had already been used by the priests in their parishes and many of them brought comments from speakers about the intelligibility.

The orthography settled upon at the first meeting uses the letters k, s, h and hu – a kind of compromise orthography using elements of the two main contending orthographies. There are still some advocates of using w instead of hu among the participants.

It is likely the first time in several centuries that the Catholic Church has taken any official interest in the Nahuatl language, and the result will be the first official translation of the mass into Nahuatl ever.

Many interesting topics of Nahuatl grammar stirred discussion among the participating priests. Among the many discussions were questions such as:

• Whether to use honorific forms when referring to and adressing God. Some variants, such as those of the Isthmus, do not have honorific forms, except for the -tzin suffix that for them expresses something closer to endearment than respect. In other varieties reverential forms cannot easily be omitted when adressing God, or any superior. 
• Which imperative form to use in the supplications to god, with xi-, with xi- and honorifics, or with the optative particle ma. 
• Whether to translate Aleluya into a Nahuatl expression for example yolpakilistli or leave it as is. Proponents of yolpakilistli noted that this expression has been used for Aleluya in several Nahuatl translations already, whereas others doubted that yolpakilistli had a sufficiently sacred and enthusiastic connotation, given that the same word may be used to refer to drunken happiness at a party, or just general contentedness.
• Whether to use the verb motlalihtok or sehuihtok when referring to Jesus seated at the right hand of God. In some varieties tlalia means something closer to “put” and is considered a rude way of referring to God's son, whereas in others “mosehuia” means something similar to “relaxing” which also isnt deemed to describe the attitude of Christ at his fathers right hand.
• How to translate the words prophet and king, angel – which easily end up having similar sounding or opaque translations in Nahuatl.
• Whether the verb iknoitta can be used to translate the supplication to have “mercy on us”. Some find it to be selfcontradictory as even though iknoitta in many varieties now is understood too mean pity or compassion the root of iknoitta is iknotl, meaning orphan, and the meaning of the request “ma titechiknoitta” could be literally translated as “please see us as orphans” - some participants suggest that this may not the best way to request mercy from our heavenly father. 

It will be interesting to see when the work of the priests come to fruition and masses in Nahuatl will begin to be held all across Mexico. It will also be interesting to see the impact the existence of a Unified Nahuatl backed by Rome will have on the vernacular varities.

Tehuipango is located on a tall mountain ridge in the cold sierra of Zongolica
in the corner between the states of Veracruz, Oaxaca and Puebla.