pipixahui (TR42v)
We are calling this iconographic example pipixahui ("snow falls"), drawing the verb from the Spanish-language gloss, "In this year, there were big snowfalls." The image is of six somewhat rounded, somewhat horizontal, gray-and-white clouds with a scalloped upper edge (see examples of mixtli, below). Coming down from the clouds--in a triangular pattern--are six short streams of water, each one painted turquoise blue, and at the end of each little stream is a round white circle with a black dot in the middle. This looks something like rain (see quiyahuitl, below), but if we can trust the Spanish gloss, it is snow. If not, then the verb would be to mist or to sprinkle, which are other translations for pipixahui. But the darkness of the clouds might support the reading of snow.
Stephanie Wood
The staggering of the pieces of this falling snow, at different heights, provides a type of visual movement, as though they are falling through the air.
Stephanie Wood
Eneste año vuo grandes
nieves
En este año, hubo grandes nieves.
Stephanie Wood
1578
Jeff Haskett-Wood
snow, nieve, xiuhpohualli, año, turquesa, xihuitl
pipixahui, to mist, to sprinkle, or for snow to fall, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/pipixahui
nevar
Stephanie Wood
The Codex Telleriano-Remensis is hosted on line by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8458267s/f110.item. We have taken this detail shot from the indicated folio.
This manuscript is not copyright protected, but please cite Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France or cite this Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities Projects, 2020–present).