History of the Manuscript.
In the interest of authenticity it is much to be regretted that neither the name of the author, his residence, nor the date when the Manuscript was written, are known to us, and we are also ignorant of other matters of moment; whether the Manuscript is an original or a copy, or how often copied, or by what family or person it may have been preserved before it came into the hands of Don Juan Pio Perez. That Yucatecan gentleman had retired from Mérida, the capital, to the District of Peto, to devote himself to his favorite studies, the ancient language and the history of his nation. The unusual interest that he showed in this direction, united to his influential position as first officer of the district, enabled him to obtain many small manuscript documents known to have been written by the natives in their vernacular language, the Maya, soon after the time of the conquest, which, for the most part, contained historical reminiscences of the time of the supremacy of their ancestors. Among these manuscripts there was a so-called Chilam Balam Calendar, which, in the form of an appendix, contained, besides, the outlines of the primitive history of Yucatan. It was, indeed, but a brief epitome of historical events, accompanied by the corresponding dates. But its value consisted in the circumstance that these dates were catalogued according to successive epochs; and it required only slight inspection to disclose the fact that they extended back to a period not very distant from our Christian Era.
This was a discovery to the learned world as welcome as any that could be made. It was unique in its kind. All attempts, thus far, had vainly sought to learn something about the history of the builders of those palaces and temples with whose ruins the peninsula was covered at the date of the arrival of the Spaniards, and which pointed to a long past and to the unceasing activity of a numberless population, which, while it was skilled in the most important branches of art and industry, and familiar with a luxury such as only ancient Asia and India had displayed, was yet governed by a despotic and hierarchical power. The native, when asked whose work the ruins were, would answer nothing but that they owed their origin to men who, in ancient times, had immigrated from far distant countries.
The Manuscript disclosed at once the history of these strange immigrants, showed the progressive march of the conquest, and the contemporaneous foundation of the largest cities then in ruins, and furnished in the Maya language the chronology of each event and its corresponding epoch. By means of his extensive antiquarian knowledge Señor Perez made an exact translation of this Manuscript into Spanish, and afterwards undertook a critical interpretation of its contents, and accompanied the whole with an introductory explanation of the system of ancient Maya chronology.
In the midst of these labors he was surprised by the arrival of the celebrated American traveller and archæologist, John Lloyd Stephens, and was induced to entrust to him a copy of the MSS. and interpretations to be embodied in his work on Yucatan, in order to bring them more fully before the world. His wishes were scrupulously complied with, and the Spanish translation has been rendered into literal English by Mr. Stephens in “Incidents of Travel in Yucatan,” vol. I., Appendix, pages 434–459, and vol. II., Appendix, pages 465–469.
Mr. Albert Gallatin, who, of all American students, has made himself most thoroughly acquainted with what remains of the historical elements of the Nahuatl and Maya people, has brought together the results of his investigations in a lecture published in the “Transactions of the American Ethnological Society,” New York, 1858, vol. I., pages 104–114. The information therein contained attests an entire familiarity with the method pursued by Señor Perez in his commentary, without, indeed, undertaking any severe criticism of it. In our opinion Mr. John L. Stephens and Mr. Gallatin are the only Americans who have recognized Señor Perez’s merits in an unequivocal manner, and have brought them to the knowledge of the world.
This is all we could learn about the Manuscript, nor have we been able to form a supposition, much less to discover in the text itself any clue to the source from which the unknown Maya author could have drawn his data. At the end of the Manuscript Señor Perez gives his opinion that the whole was written from memory, because it must have been done long after the conquest, and after Bishop Landa had publicly destroyed much of the historical picture-writing of the Mayas by an auto-da-fé, and because the whole narration is so concise and condensed that it appears more like an index than a circumstantial description of events.
These opinions of Señor Perez might cast a well grounded suspicion on the authenticity of the manuscript. We shall try to remove such doubts, at once, by presenting the following considerations. We do not believe that Bishop Landa succeeded in burning the entire treasures of Maya literature at the notorious auto-da-fé in the town of Mani in 1561. The authorities[[32]] to which we have access describe the number of the destroyed objects so precisely that we have every reason to confide in their correctness. We read of 5,000 idols of different size and form, 13 large altar stones, 22 smaller stones, 197 vessels of every form and size, and lastly of 27 rolls (sic) on deerskin covered with signs and hieroglyphics, given to destruction at that time and place. We may believe that the terrorism exercised by Bishop Landa had a powerful influence on the minds and on the newly converted consciences of the natives, and the Bishop no doubt used every possible means to get into his hands as much as he could of what he considered to be “cabalistic signs and invocations to the devil.” But we can never believe that these 27 rolls represented the entire Maya literature, collected for hundreds of years with the greatest care and held sacred by the natives. Such a wholesale destruction would have been an impossibility. We could refer to a similar occurrence that took place in Mexico; and though Bishop Zumarraga has the bad reputation of having destroyed all the picture treasures of the Nahuatls by an auto-da-fé, there were notwithstanding so many of them in existence soon after his time in the possession of native families that Ixtlilxochitl, Tezozomoc, and others, were able to build up their detailed accounts of the primitive history of their country from these original sources. Possibly numbers of them may have been preserved among the Maya tribes, for only under such favorable conditions could Cogolludo, Villagutierre and Lizana have obtained the valuable information and material which form the chief interest of their labors and researches, and which enabled also Pio Perez in the year 1835, to discover material from which to interpret so complete a description of the system of Maya chronology. Nay, even, we have a suspicion that Bishop Landa may have laid aside the most important part of these records, or what was the most intelligible to him, for we cannot comprehend how he would have been able without these pictures before his eyes to present in his work the symbols for the days so correctly, and also those for the months, or how otherwise he could have written his work in Spain, so far removed from all sources of information and from consultation with the natives.
No reason, therefore, exists why the Maya author should not have remained in possession of some painting, which exhibited the annals of his forefathers. If, however, he was compelled to write his “Series of Katunes” from memory, there is no reason for not relying on the accuracy of his retentive faculties alone. The noble Indians, and he belonged undoubtedly to this class, were very particular in training their sons to learn by heart songs expressing the glorious deeds of their ancestors. It is a fact attested by the Spanish chroniclers, that these songs were recited publicly in the temples and on solemn religious occasions. They were the only kind of positive knowledge with which we know the brains of the Indian pupils were burdened. In either case, therefore, the accuracy of the written Maya report needs not be doubted, at least not on the grounds alleged. Had it been composed in the Spanish language instead of Maya, we should have viewed this circumstance with a more critical eye. But as the native under Spanish rule expressed it in his native language, this kind of loyalty appears to us to give a certain warranty of dealing with a man who described the traditions of his oppressed race, and who wished to perpetuate its memory by handing down to posterity the principal events of the past history of his nation.
At this place, we should not like to omit pointing out an interesting suggestion which the clear headed and sagacious author, Señor Eligio Ancona[[33]] made in his before mentioned work, that Bishop Landa and the author of the Manuscript agree so often in their mention of historic dates, in the manner as well as the matter, as to lead to the idea that both drew their information from the same source. Whatever be its origin, we agree with the views of Señor Perez, that, in spite of the deficiency and breaks occurring in the Manuscript, it deserves critical attention as the only document thus far discovered that gives information of the early history of Yucatan.