The Body Nahua

A major characteristic of the Nahuatl language is its tendency, called agglutination, to string shorter nouns together into polysyllabic jawcrackers. Most languages allow this compound formation to an extent, but Nahuatl (language of the Mexica or Aztecs and many other groups) surprisingly so.


As a passionate but amateur Nahuatl-learner, and scholar of literary representations of the body in Latin America, I peruse the text and diagrams of Alfredo López Austin's excellent Cuerpo humano e ideología: Las concepciones de los antiguos nahuas (UNAM, 1984) and decode the following agglutinations, which I present here as mathematical sums:


macpalli (hand) + yollotl (heart) = macpalyollotli (palm)
chichihualli (breast) + yacatl (nose) = chichihualyacatl (nipple)
cuitlapantli (lower back) + atetl (testicle) = cuitlapanatetl (kidney)


Nipple, nose of the breast: an intriguing equivalency, no less astounding for its inherently arbitrary relation. It may be easy to discard any similarity other than shape between testicles and kidneys, but the signifier seldom circumscribes the signified; in English we continue to use the term grapefruit when referring to what we know to be a citrus fruit that has very little in common with the grape.

I also learn from López Austin's careful scrutiny of the extant sources that the following sets of body parts were (and in some cases still are) common conceptualizations:


mayahuia = the throwers or projectors (hands, feet, eyes)
tlaczayatl = the runners (soles, elbows)
tlecallotl = the smokeholes (nostrils, mouth, anus)


The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis posits that language dictates thought. If I grow up accostumed to these terms and their meanings, perhaps I think more consciously about the looks I throw from my eyes, about efficient elbow movement when running, or about the sometimes fetid quality of speech? Does language dictate thought? It may not dictate, but it certainly influences to a large extent.


Just as fascinating is the author's elucidation of the three "entidades anímicas." The tonalli (in or from the head), teyolía (in or from the heart), and ihíyotl (in or from the liver) overlap various Western ideas such as will, lifeforce, fate, soul, or spirit. López Austin occupies several chapters with the philosophical as well as social ramifications of these concepts, which are complex human ideas resulting from centuries of thought and practice. Their contextualizations did not disappear with the Iberian invasion; in fact, in one form or another the above concepts, among many others and their derivatives, show up in Spanish every day in emergency rooms across the United States. To attempt to understand cultural backgrounds is to identify and evaluate alternative points of view--in this case, the perspectives of Mesoamericans about their own bodies.