chiyantli (FCbk11f171r)

This iconographic example, featuring chia seeds (chiyantli), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex, even though the source does not include the absolutive ending (-tli). There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a woman grinding chia seeds on a grinding stone (metlatl) and using a hand-held grinding stone (metlapilli). The seeds are simple dots. The text notes that the seeds are called “chien” (a variant spelling), again without the absolutive. In fact, one rarely finds the noun bearing the absolutive that linguist Frances Karttunen asserts is there. She notes that Alonso de Molina does not use the absolutive, and she also admits that the intervocalic “y” is not 100% certain (and it is rare in textual attestations in our Online Nahuatl Dictionary). The contextualizing image shows one woman grinding and another holding a bowl that presumably contains some of the ground mixture. The text explains that these seeds are put in atolli, a maize gruel, that includes ground maize kernels, ground opossum tail, and water. Another mixture includes the chiyantli root and the root of the quetzalhuexotl. Women about to give birth were given these mixtures.