In accordance with the general object of this series of volumes–which is to furnish materials for study rather than to offer completed studies–I have prepared for this number the text of the most ancient authentic record of American religious lore. From its antiquity and character, I have ventured to call this little collection the RIG VEDA AMERICANUS, after the similar cyclus of sacred hymns, which are the most venerable product of the Aryan mind.
As for my attempted translation of these mystic chants I offer it with the utmost reserve. It would be the height of temerity in me to pretend to have overcome difficulties which one so familiar with the ancient Nahuatl as Father Sahagun intimated were beyond his powers. All that I hope to have achieved is, by the aid of the Gloss–and not always in conformity to its suggestions–to give a general idea of the sense and purport of the originals.
The desirability of preserving and publishing these texts seems to me to be manifest. They reveal to us the undoubtedly authentic spirit of the ancient religion; they show us the language in its most archaic form; they preserve references to various mythical cycli of importance to the historian; and they illustrate the alterations in the spoken tongue adopted in the esoteric dialect of the priesthood. Such considerations will, I trust, attract the attention of scholars to these fragments of a lost literature.
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