Popol Vuh

The Popol-Vuh (or rather Pop Wuh , literally “time delivers” or “delivers events” in Quiché) is the most important document of which we lay out on the myths of the Maya Civilization. It is acted in fact of a kind of “Maya Bible” (knowing in addition that it comprises elements similar to the Bible) reporting the origin of the world and more particularly of the people Maya-quiche (it is about an ethnos group among the many Maya tribes, whose center of radiation corresponds to the Western part of the current Guatemala).

Origin of the Book

The version of the Book of the Council of the Maya-quiches which we know does not date in fact not from the time pre-Colombian but rather from the years 1550 (i.e. 30 years after the Spanish Conquest). This anonymous version, whose author is probably a Maya seeking to preserve a trace of a very old oral tradition and pictographic monk, was written in Maya language but in Latin characters. The manuscript was “discovered” only at the beginning of the XVIIIe century by a Dominican monk, the father Francisco Ximenez, who succeeds in obtaining it Indians quiches living close to Chichicastenango. It made of it then a translation, while keeping the original text Quiché, which safeguarded the original text, the manuscript having then disappeared.

Matter

Popol Vuh is separate in three distinct parts:

The first part is dedicated to the genesis of the world which resembles the Bible curiously. Original nothing, the Gods decided to create the world, to make it material and to populate it creatures in order to be adored. After the traditional creation of the ground, mountains, flora and fauna, they created the first men starting from clay. This first test being revealed unfruitful, one second attempt was carried out starting from wood, but these wood men resulted frivolous, conceited and lazy. The Gods thus made them perish by the means of a Déluge. At the end, an ultimate attempt made them work the men starting from corn, the human race finding there its substance final. then four women. But they took fear by seeing the capacities which they had conferred on these new human, that the latter seek to supplant them. This is why they decided to restrict their direction, and to limit their sight and their intelligence. These eight human is the origin of all the human race, which then will divide and lose the capacity of speaking a single language, in an episode similar to the Tower of Babel.

The second part is devoted to the peregrinations of two twin brothers, Hunahpú and Ixbalanqué, who play of ball will destroy the inhabitants by the means of the malfaisants of a mythological kingdom named Xibalbá (kind of dark Hadès located under the ground). It is interesting to note the history of their design by a virgin teenager, fertilized by the simple contact of its hand with saliva resulting from the head of another character killed by the inhabitants of Xibalbá.

The third part, as for it, starts with the creation of the four corn men mentioned previously. Once these human perfect created, the Gods took fear which their creatures do not supplant them. Then they decided to make their creatures less perfect, in their limiting the directions and obliging them to procreate then to die. This is why they also created four women. These eight human is the origin of all the human race. After an episode similar to the Tower of Babel, where humanity will divide and lose its capacity with speaking a single language, the text connects on a genealogical history recalling the life of the descendants of the first men to the sovereigns of the Maya people of the Quiché. This part, more “history” and less mythological, gives many interesting details on the political structuring and the competitions between tribes. It ends in a cruel sentence, explaining that all that the book describes does not exist any more, which the nation quiche does not exist more and that them village is called from now on Santa Cruz .

Extracts

Here first lines of the book, in a modernized orthography and a punctuation (of the edition of Sam Colop):

Are uxe `ojer tzij

waral K `iche `ub `I `.

Waral

xchiqatz`ib`aj wi

xchiqatikib `has `wi ojer tzij,

utikarib `Al

uxe `nab `Al puch rnojel xb `year Pa

tinamit K `iche `

ramaq `K `iche `winaq.

“It is the root of the old word

of this place named Quiche

Here

we will write,

we will install the antique word,

the origin

the beginning of all that was made in the

nation quiche

country of the people quiche. ”

Here the beginning of the history of creation:

Are utzijoxik wa `E

K `has katz `ininoq,

K `has kachamamoq,

katz `inonik,

K `has kasilanik,

K `has kalolinik,

katolona puch upa kaj.

“It is the account showing how

all was outstanding,

all was calm,

in silence;

very motionless,

all vibrated,

and vacuum was the extent of the sky. ”

Internal bonds

Maya Religion
Maya Civilization

External bonds

downloadable Spanish Version
a page on the version of Pierre DesRuisseaux and Daisy Amaya
El Popol Vuh. Spanish version
Popol Vuh is the “Bible” of Old the Maya-Quiches. Like other Bibles, it describes creation, the catastrophes, and the rebirth of the World.

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