Popol Vuh - narrative about the origins, traditions and history of the
Quiché (K'iche') Maya
nation told by an anonymous Guatemalan
Indian who produced
the document between 1554 and l558.
In Chichicastenango around
l7OO, a priest, Francisco Ximenez copied the manuscript, adding a Spanish translation.
Now there are several (perhaps
many) translations of the Popol Vuh, popol vuh including Goetz and
Morley's English translation of
Recinos' Spanish version, Munro Edmonson's scholarly
translation which reproduces
typescript of the original Quiché
(K'iche'), Dennis Tedlock's
translation done with the help
of a Quiche shaman (which is nicely annotated and footnoted,
but which lacks any
reproduction of the Quiché. A Native
speaker of K'iche' ( Chavez ) has
also provided a translation
into Spanish, and Allen Christenson has perhaps the most recent
translation (2000).
Part I Part I of Popol Vuh consists of two stories.
• l. A
narration of the failure of the gods to create earthly beings
who will adore, obey, and sustain
them (three chapters).
• 2.
tells how two mysterious twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque
destroy an arrogant celestial
being, Vucub-Caquix, and his two
sons,
Zipacna and Cabracan, who refused to adore, obey,
and sustain their creators.
The first story of Part I opens
with a description of what it was like before the first creation began.
"All was empty..., all was in
silence..., all was motionless...there was only the sky and the
sea".
In the sea, surrounded with light, hidden
under green feathers, was
Gucumatz.
In the sky was "the Heart of Heaven, or God- as he is called."
All was in suspense
Then came the word, like a
lightning bolt it ripped through the sky,
penetrated the waters, and fertilized the
minds of the Earth-Water
Deities, Tepeu and Gucumatz
Then the creator couple said "let it be
done", and it was done: The
earth emerged from the sea; plants put
forth shoots; wild animals came to be.
And then the Gods made three
frustrated attempts to create humankind; first out of animals,
then out of mud, and finally out of wood. The Wood men were killed off too,
however, and their descendants
are today's monkeys.
The second story opens with a
vain Lucifer figure named Vucub-Caquix, who had two sons;
Zipacna and Cabracan, both of whom made the earth shake
as they burrowed under mountains.
The Hero Twins (Hunahpu and Xbalanque), out hunting, shoot Vucub
Caquix in the jaw
with a blowgun, while he is in
a tree eating fruit. Angered, Vucub
Caquix tears off Hunahpu's
arm.
To recover the arm, the twins
pose as dentists, go to Vucub Caquix' house, and dupe him into
letting them pull his teeth and
replace them with white corn kernels (while they retrieve the arm).
With his new corn dentures,
Vucub Caquix no longer looked like a lord, so he died in
poverty.
Then the Hero Twins set out to
kill Zipacna. (( Zipacna had himself
just finished killing "the 4OO
young men". He had feigned death when the four hundred
young men tried to do him in by having
him dig a hole in the ground so
that they could plant a pole on him, but he escaped, and while they
were celebrating his death,
they were then crushed by Zipacna, becoming stars in the
sky.)) The Hero Twins made a crab to lure Zipacna,
who found the crab and was killed in its
embrace of
death.
Next, the Hero Twins poisoned a
bird with white earth, and when Cabracan ate the bird, he
died.
Part II PART II
comprises the next l4 chapters.
The first two of these 14 chapters introduce two
brothers, Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu,
sons of Xpiyacoc and Xmucane (the diviners), one of
whom (Hun Hunahpu) is the father of the hero
twins.
Hun Hunahpu and his wife Xbaquiyalo have two sons; Hun Batz' and Hun Chouen
(we
find out later that Hun Hunahpu and
another woman, Xquic ["Ms. Blood"]
are
the parents of the Hero Twins)
Hun Hunahpu teams up every day with his
bachelor brother to play the
ballgame with his sons, the
"Monkey Twins" (Hun Batz' and Hun Chouen).
One day the noise of their ballgame
annoyed the Lords of Hell (Xibalba), who
summoned the Hunahpu brothers to come
and play ball.
The Hunahpu brothers came down to
Hell, and after a series of tortures
they were sacrificed and buried.
On the spot where the brothers were
buried, a tree sprang up,
loaded with skulls for fruit, and
among the fruit was the head of Hunahpu, in skull form.
Along came Xquic, daughter of one of
the Lords of Hell. She reached up
to pick one of the fruits, and the skull of
Hun Hunahpu spat in her hand.
This
made her pregnant with the Hero Twins.
When her pregnancy was noticed, her father
ordered four messengers to
take her out into the woods and
sacrifice her and bring back her heart for burning.
Xquic talked the messengers into
letting her live, so they brought back a false heart in a gourd.
Xquic went up to earth to the home of her new
"mother-in-law, Xmucane, where she gave
birth to the Hero Twins
The Monkey Brothers, half brothers of
the Hero Twins (having the same
father, Hun Hunahpu) envied the Hero
Twins, and tried to kill them with
ants and with thistles. But the Hero Twins survived being placed on an anthill,
and also being placed on thistles while
still infants.
The Hero twins, once grown, tricked
their Monkey half-brothers into
climbing a tree, where they turned into
monkeys while the tree grew
taller and
taller.
The next scene deals with the Hero Twins as cultivators of
maize.
In spite of their efforts at clearing
the fields during the day, their work was undone
at night by wild animals including rat,
rabbit, and deer, telling the plants, "rise up trees,
rise up vines".
They catch the rat (and the other
animals) in the act one night,
and the rat tells them where their
father's ball playing gear is.
The Hero Twins find the ball game gear and
start playing ball,
so the Lords of Hell summon the Hero
Twins. The message is
relayed (from Xmucane) by means of a
louse that on the way
is swallowed by a toad; the toad is then swallowed by a
snake
and the snake by a hawk, which is then shot down by the
Twins'
blowgun.
When the Twins cure the hawk it vomits
the snake, which vomits the
toad, which ejects the louse, which
tells the message.
The Hero Twins go to Xibalba (sending
a mosquito ahead to sting the
lords of Hell, and that is how the
Hero Twins learned their names,
thus gaining power over them. Upon entering Xibalba the twins
call the assembled lords of Xibalba
by their real names).
The Trials - The Lords of Xibalba then put the twins to a
series of
tests, putting them in various
"houses": (between Houses, the twins play ball
with the Lords of Hell, always
winning or tying with them)
House of Gloom - twins sent to hold
lighted pitchpine sticks and
smoke a cigar. They succeed with the
help of fireflies.
House of Knives - twins sent to gather
flowers in the house of knives.
They escape being cut to pieces with
the help of ants.
House of Cold
House of Jaguars
House of Fire - as with the previous ones, the Twins
survived.
House of Bats - twins slept inside
their blowguns and were not
bitten until along came Camazotz (Death Bat) from the sky, and
when Hunahpu
poked his head out Camazotz cut off
his head.
During the ball game the next day,
Xbalanque, through trickery, got
Hunahpu's head head back onto his
body.
Then in the final story of PART
II, the Lords of Hell set up a contest
where the
twins are supposed to jump four times
over a bonfire without getting burned
The Twins deliberately jump into the fire and
die.
Shortly afterwards they arise
miraculously and re-appear as old men.
They present themselves disguised
first as dancers, then as
magicians. They kill a dog and restore it to life, then
they
kill themselves and are
resurrected.
Seeing this, the envious Lords of
Hell ask to be sacrificed and
brought back to life. The twins sacrifice them, but don't
restore them to
life.
The Twins then give a farewell speech
and are lifted into the sky
to become the sun and the
moon..
PART III - It is time for humans to appear on the
earth.
In part III is the beginning of when
the first true humans appeared. The
first
four men (called in the Popol Vuh the
four fathers, who were also
the Quiche forefathers) were
made this time from corn dough.
Heart of Heaven blew mist into their eyes
so that they could only see
what
was close, thus checking their desires
to become gods.
Then the first four women were
created as wives for the first 4 men.
Jaguar Quiche (Balam Kitze) got Red Sea Woman
Jaguar Night (Balam Aqab) got Beauty
Woman
Naught (Mahuq'utah) got Hummingbird
Woman
Wind Jaguar (Iq'i Balam) got Parrot
Woman.
They all spoke the same language. And they went to Tulan-Zuiva
(city of the seven caves) where they
received their god, Tohil.
They had no fire, and by this time
they could no longer understand
one another. Tohil gave them fire, and in return he wanted
more
than just their
blood.
At first Tohil wanted only men's blood,
that is, before the Quiche
came to Tulan. "Bleed your ears, prick your elbows;
this will be your thanks toGod."
Later, after he had given them fire,
he demanded their hearts
("their waist and their armpits")
also. Symbolic wounding was
not enough. Death was the perfect
offering.
Tohil was the Quiche god, and he had
to be hidden from the Quiche's
enemies, who were pressing in from
all sides. The Quiche nation
held together, but Tohil had turned
to stone, and the priests and
sacrificers had to use trickery so
that the people would not know.
His image would appear to speak and
to command.
PART IV Part Four describes the total victory of
Tohil, who operated upon the Lords of the
Earth through the
instrumentality of the priests and sacrificers.
His dominion, however, was the
reason for the destruction of
the Quiche.
The story begins with the
priests and sacrificers who began the abduction of the men of the tribes,
and who went to sacrifice them
before Tohil. The tribes became aware of
this and tried to overcome
Tohil by various ruses and
temptations, but failed.
The Quiche founded the city of Gumarcah, and here Gucumatz
(the feathered serpent), a most
magnificent Lord, raised the Quiche
Mayans to their greatest peak of
power.
Gucumatz could foresee things, and could
change himself into different animals.
Among other things he instituted an
elaborate ritual of fasting and
other abstinence rites.
Part Four of the Popol Vuh ends with the
genealogies of the tribes of
the Quiche "who finally came to an
end".
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