Popol Vuh · 10 of 11

Early Spanish Authors & Metrical Composition and Bibliography

EARLY SPANISH AUTHORS AND THE "POPOL VUH"

It cannot be said that the early Spanish authors upon the affairs of Yucatan either corroborate or discredit the contents of the "Popol Vuh" in any way. To begin with, Landa, Cogolludo, and Las Casas confine themselves more to Yucatan proper than to Guatemala, and their remarks upon native belief, in so far as they illustrate the "Popol Vuh" at all, are really references to Mayan myths. Palacios is meagre in his references to any native beliefs, and the works of all four are so coloured by the phantasies of mediaeval theology that, although interesting, they possess little real value. So far, in fact, as they throw light upon the "Popol Vuh" they might be safely ignored, and they are only given as works of reference in the bibliography for the sake of completeness. They are, however, most valuable for the study of Mayan mythology proper, and for complete understanding of the "Popol Vuh" and of Kiché mythology in general, knowledge of Mayan myth is necessary.

Context

Diego de Landa, Cogolludo, Las Casas — the early Spanish authors Spence catalogs are a mixed inheritance. Las Casas (1484–1566) became the great defender of indigenous rights, writing furiously against Spanish atrocities. Diego de Landa (1524–1579), by contrast, is the man who in 1562 at Maní held an auto-da-fé that destroyed dozens of Maya hieroglyphic codices and tortured hundreds of Maya practitioners on charges of idolatry. Landa later wrote one of the most important sources for Maya hieroglyph decipherment — his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán preserves a partial alphabet that Yuri Knorozov used in the 1950s to crack the Maya script. So one of the men most responsible for destroying pre-Columbian Maya literature is also one of the men most responsible for the modern recovery of it. History is not tidy.Editorial — Diego de Landa Maní auto-da-fé 1562; Las Casas Brevísima Relación 1552

EVIDENCE OF METRICAL COMPOSITION

There is not wanting evidence to show that, like most barbarous compositions which depended for their popularity upon the ease with which they could be memorised, the "Popol Vuh" was originally composed in metre. Passages here and there show a decided metrical tendency, as:

"Ama x-u ch'ux ri Vuch

Ve, x-cha ri mama.

Ta chi xaquinic

Quate ta chi gekumarchic

Cahmul xaquin ri mama

Ca xaquin-Vuch" ca cha vinak vacamic.

which is translated:

"Is the dawn about to be?

Yes, answered the old man.

Then he spread apart his legs.

Again the darkness appeared.

Four times the old man spread his legs.

Now the opossum spreads his legs

Say the people.

The first line almost scans in iambics (English style), and the fifth is perfect, except for the truncation in the fourth foot. The others appear to us to consist of that alternation of sustained feet--musically represented by a semibreve--with pyrrhics, which is characteristic of nearly all savage dance-poetry. Father Coto, a missionary, observes that the natives were fond of telling long stories and of repeating chants, keeping time to them in those dances of which all the American aboriginal peoples appear to have been so fond--and still are, as Baron Nordenskjold has recently discovered in the Aymara country. These chants were called nugum tzib, or "garlands of words," and although the native compiler of the "Popol Vuh" appears to have been unable to recollect the precise rhythm of the whole, many passages attest its original odic character.

NOTE.--The pronunciation of x in Kiché equals sh. Ch is pronounced hard, as in the Scottish "loch," and c hard, like k.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX

THE various works which contain notices of the "Popol Vuh" and the kindred questions of Mayan and Kiché mythology are so difficult of access to the majority of readers that it has been thought best to divide them into two classes: (1) those which can be more or less readily purchased, and which are, naturally, of more recent origin; and (2) those which are not easy to come by, and which, generally speaking, are the work of Spanish priests and colonists of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. I

The work on the subject which is most easily obtained, and indeed the only work which gives the original Kiché text, is that of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, "Vuh Popol: Le livre sacré de Quichés et les mythes de l'antiquité Américaine." The Kiché text was translated by the assistance of natives into French, and the translation is more or less inaccurate. The notes and introduction must be read by the student with the greatest caution. It was published at Paris in 1861.

Ximenes' translation into Spanish of the "Popol Vuh and that of Gavarrete are about of equal value, rather inaccurate, and accompanied by scanty notes. The title of the first is "Las Historias del Origin de los Indios de Guatemala, par el R. P. F. Francisco Ximenes (Vienna, 1856), and of the second, "El Popol Vuh," (San Salvador

1905). This exhausts the list of works written exclusively concerning the "Popol Vuh." The other works of Brasseur and those of Brinton contain more or less numerous allusions to it, but references to it in standard works of mythology are exceedingly rare. The only other works which have a bearing upon the subject are those upon Mayan and Kiché mythology or which, among other matter, historical or political, refer to it in any way. The most important of these are:

DR. OTTO STOLL--"Ethnographie der Republik Guatemala."

Ethnologie der Indianer Stämme von Guatemala."

SCHERZER--"Die Indianer von Santa Catalina Istlavacan."

MÜLLER--Geschichte der Amerikanischen Ur-religion " (1855).

E. FÖRSTEMANN--"Commentary on the Maya Manuscript," in the Royal Public Library of Dresden. Translation from the German by S. Wesselhoeft and A. M. Parker (Harvard University, 1906).

E. SELER--"Uber den Ursprung der Mittelamerikan Kulturen" (1902).

"Ein Wintersemester in Mexico und Yucatan" (1903).

"Codex Fejerváry-Mayer " (Berlin, 1901).

P. SCHELLHAS--"Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts," translated by S. Wesselhoeft and A. M. Parker (Cambridge, Mass., 1904).

CYRUS THOMAS--"The Maya Year," Washington, 1894. "Notes on Maya and Mexican Manuscripts."

W. FEWKES--The God 'D' in the Codex Cortesianus," (Washington, 1895).

All these works relate more or less entirely to Mayan mythology, and are chiefly valuable as illustrating the connection between the Kiché and Mayan mythologies. It must be understood that this is not a list of works relating to Mayan antiquities, but only a list of such works as refer at the same time to Mayan and Kiché mythology.

The brief essay of the late Professor Max Müller upon the "Popol Vuh" is of little or no value except as a statement in favour of its authenticity. It gives little or no information concerning the work, and is, indeed, chiefly concerned with the authenticity and nature of North American picture-drawings. II

The principal works of the older Spanish authors, which in any way relate to the myths of Maya-Kiché peoples, are:

LAS CASAS--"Historia de los Indias" (1552).

COGOLLUDO--"Historia de Yucathan" (1688).

DIEGO DE LANDA--"Relacion de los Cosas de Yucatan " (translated into French, and edited by Brasseur).

Insight

Diego de Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán is referenced here in passing, but the book it refers to is one of the most important and most haunted sources in Mesoamerican studies. Landa was the Franciscan friar who in 1562 at Maní burned somewhere between twenty and forty pre-Columbian Maya codices and hundreds of cult objects — an act that effectively ended pre-Columbian Maya literature. Only four pre-Columbian Maya codices survive today (the Dresden, Madrid, Paris, and Grolier codices). Everything else is gone. This is part of why the post-Conquest Latin-script manuscripts like the Popol Vuh matter so disproportionately. They are what survived the burning. The K'iche' scribe who copied this in alphabetic K'iche' was, knowingly or not, an act of preservation against catastrophic textual loss.Editorial — Maní codex-burning 1562; Dresden, Madrid, Paris, Grolier codices

XIMENES--"Escolias à los Historias del origèn de los Indios" (Circa, 1725).

PALACIOS--l'Description de la Provincia de Guatemala" (in the collection of Ternaux-Compans).

JUARROS--"Historia de Guatimala."