The Popol Vuh Manuscript: The Book of the Council

Around 1701, a Dominican friar named Francisco Ximénez (born 1666) was parish priest of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango in the Guatemalan highlands. There he saw a book written in K'iche', the Maya language of his parishioners, in the Latin alphabet. He copied it in two columns, K'iche' on the left and Spanish on the right, into a volume of his own writings on the language and on Christian doctrine. The book he copied is lost. His copy is now in Chicago, and it is the only reason the K'iche' creation epic survives.

The manuscript

• Ximénez's copy, made between about 1700 and 1715, bound with his K'iche'–Kaqchikel–Tz'utujil grammar and other works. It is catalogued as Ayer MS 1515 at the Newberry Library.
• The lost original was written in the mid-sixteenth century, commonly dated c. 1554–1558, by K'iche' nobles of the old capital Q'umarkaj, after the Spanish conquest of 1524. They say why: they are writing now "amid the preaching of God, in Christendom", because the ancient book can no longer be seen. The phrasing here follows the sense of the standard English translations.
• They also say there had been an older book (popol wuj, "council book"). Whether it was a hieroglyphic codex like the Dresden Codex (V31) or a tradition in painted and spoken form is not known.
• The manuscript was found in the library of the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City by the Austrian Carl Scherzer, who published it in 1857. The French abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg published it with a French translation in 1861 and took the manuscript to France. It passed through the collector Alphonse Pinart to Edward E. Ayer, who gave his collection to the Newberry.

What it tells

The making of the world. In the beginning there is only sea and sky, still and silent. The creator gods, Tepew and Q'ukumatz (the "Sovereign Plumed Serpent") with Juraqan ("Heart of Sky"), bring forth the earth by speaking: "Earth", they say, and it arises.

Three failed peoples. The gods want beings who will speak their names and keep their days. They make animals, which can only howl. They make people of mud, who dissolve. They make people of wood, who speak but have no hearts or memory of their makers; these are destroyed by a flood and a rain of resin, and their survivors become the monkeys.

The Hero Twins. Before the dawn of the present world, the twins Junajpu (Hunahpu) and Xb'alanke (Xbalanque) defeat the vain bird-god Seven Macaw and his sons. They are summoned to Xib'alb'a, the underworld, as their father and uncle were before them. They pass the lords' trials of the Dark House, the Razor House, the Cold House, the Jaguar House, the Fire House and the Bat House, play the ballgame against death, allow themselves to be burned and ground to powder, return as wandering performers and defeat the lords of death. They rise as the sun and moon.

People of maize. At last the gods grind yellow and white maize and make the first four men from it. These people see and understand too much, so the gods cloud their sight "as breath clouds a mirror". The book ends with the history of the K'iche' lineages down to the time of writing.

Symbology and sacred encoding

Maize as flesh. Human bodies are made of maize. This is a central Mesoamerican idea, and the maize god's death and rebirth run parallel to the Hero Twins' descent and return.

The ballgame as cosmos. The rubber-ball game, played in real stone courts across Mesoamerica, is in the Popol Vuh a contest between life and death. Classic Maya art shows scenes that correspond to the Hero Twins' story centuries before the K'iche' text, including their father as the maize god.

Numbers and names. Lords of Xibalba bear calendar names such as One Death and Seven Death; the twins' father and uncle are One Junajpu and Seven Junajpu. These are day-names of the 260-day count.

Connections

The Maya (ch29), Creation & the First Order (ch46), Journeys to the Underworld (ch47), and the flood myths of The Flood (ch01). Compare the Dresden Codex (V31).

From The Divine Archives · https://getconexto.com/vault/popol-vuh-manuscript.html