panahuia (Osu13r)
This painting from the Codex Osuna, folio 13 recto (or Image 28), shows a profile view of a Nahua man paddling a reddish-brown boat on some turquoise-blue water. The man wears a white shirt. He has black hair that just covers his ears. In the boat are three terracotta-colored ceramic jugs, each one with two short streams of water splashing out of the top. These little streams–also turquoise blue–have a line of current down the middle and a droplet at the upper end. Connected to the upper tip of the paddle (which is probably wooden) is a line connecting this scene with two horizontal rows of five small circles. They are also connected by a line to one another. This notation for the number 10 is explained in the Nahuatl text that ten men were required to transport by boat (panahuia) some water to Dr. Puga. We are including this example of iconography to provide for comparisons with hieroglyphs.
Stephanie Wood
The fully conjugated verb in this text is conpanahuilia, adding an object, a directional, and an applicative at the end, which emphasizes that the men in the canoes had to take the water over to the Spaniard. The contextualizing image includes a place glyph for Colhuacan; perhaps the ten men were drafted for this labor from that town, which was on the lakeshore. The root verb pano has several representations in this digital collection, some referring to crossing over water, such as a river. For other examples of Indigenous boats, see the glyphs for acalli.
Stephanie Wood
1551–1565
Jeff Haskett-Wood
acalli, boats, canoas, lanchas, cargar agua, cerámica, remar, servicio, trabajo
panahuia, to cross over in a boat (one of several meanings), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/panahuia
cruzar en una lancha
Stephanie Wood
Library of Congress Online Catalog and the World Digital Library, Osuna Codex, or Painting of the Governor, Mayors, and Rulers of Mexico (Pintura del Gobernador, Alcaldes y Regidores de México), https://www.loc.gov/resource/gdcwdl.wdl_07324/. The original is located in the Biblioteca Nacional de España.
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