The so-called “metropolitan” dialects are those spoken relatively near the city of Guatemala, and include the Cakchiquel, the Quiche, the Pokonchi and the Tzutuhil. They are quite closely allied, and are mutually intelligible, resembling each other about as much as did in ancient Greece the Attic, Ionic and Doric dialects. These closely related members of the Maya-Quiche family will be referred to under the sub-title of the Quiche-Cakchiquel dialects.
The civilization of these people was such that they used various mnemonic signs, approaching our alphabet, to record and recall their mythology and history. Fragments, more or less complete, of these traditions have been preserved. The most notable of them is the National Legend of the Quiches of Guatemala, the so-called Popol Vuh. It was written at an unknown date in the Quiche dialect, by a native who was familiar with the ancient records. A Spanish translation of it was made early in the last century by a Spanish priest, Father Francisco Ximenez, and was first published at Vienna, 1857.[[127]] In 1861 the original text was printed in Paris, with a French translation by the Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg). This original covers about 175 octavo pages, and is therefore highly important as a linguistic as well as an archæologic monument.
Both these translations are open to censure. It needs but little study to see that they are both strongly colored by the views which the respective translators entertained of the purpose of the original. Ximenez thought it was principally a satire of the devil on Christianity, and a snare spread by him to entrap souls; Brasseur believed it to be a history of the ancient wars of the Quiches, and frequently carries his euhemerism so far as to distort the sense of the original.
What has added to the difficulty of correcting these erroneous impressions is the extreme paucity of material for studying the Quiche. A grammar written by Ximenez has indeed been published, but no dictionary is available, if we except a brief “Vocabulary of the Principal Roots” of these dialects by the same author, which is almost useless for critical purposes.
It is not surprising, therefore, that some writers have regarded this legend with suspicion, and have spoken of it as but little better than a late romance concocted by a shrewd native, who borrowed many of his incidents from Christian teachings. Such an opinion will pass away when the original is accurately translated. To one familiar with native American myths, this one bears undeniable marks of its aboriginal origin. Its frequent obscurities and inanities, its generally low and narrow range of thought and expression, its occasional loftiness of both, its strange metaphors, and the prominence of strictly heathen names and potencies, bring it into unmistakable relationship to the true native myth. This especially holds good of the first two-thirds of it, which are entirely mythological.
As a contribution to the study of this interesting monument, I shall undertake to analyze some of the proper names of the divinities which appear in its pages. The especial facilities that I have for doing so are furnished by two MS. Vocabularies of the Cakchiquel dialect, presented to the library of the American Philosophical Society by the Governor of Guatemala in 1836. One of these was written in 1651, by Father Thomas Coto, and was based on the previous work of Father Francisco Varea. It is Spanish-Cakchiquel only, and the final pages, together with a grammar and an essay on the native calendar, promised in a body of the work, are unfortunately missing. What remains, however, makes a folio volume of 972 double columned pages, and contains a mass of information about the language. The second MS. is a copy of the Cakchiquel-Spanish Vocabulary of Varea, made by Fray Francisco Ceron in 1699. It is a quarto of 493 pages. I have also in my possession copies of the Compendio de Nombres en Lengua Cakchiquel, by P. F. Pantaleon de Guzman (1704), and of the Arte y Vocabulario de la Lengua Cakchiquel, by the R. P. F. Benito de Villacañas, composed about 1580.
Father Coto observes that the natives loved to tell long stories, and to repeat chants, keeping time to them in their dances. These chants were called nugum tzih, garlands of words, from tzih, word, and nug, to fasten flowers into wreaths, to set in order a dance, to arrange the heads of a discourse, etc. As preserved to us in the Popol Vuh, the rhythmical form is mostly lost, but here and there one finds passages, retained intact by memory no doubt, where a distinct balance in diction, and an effort at harmony are noted.
The name Popol Vuh given to this work is that applied by the natives themselves. It is translated by Ximenez “libro del comun,” by Brasseur “livre national.” The word popol is applied to something held in common ownership by a number; thus food belonging to a number is popol naim; a task to be worked out by many, popol zamah; the native council where the elders met to discuss public affairs was popol tzih, the common speech or talk. The word pop means the mat or rug of woven rushes or bark on which the family or company sat, and from the community of interests thus typified, the word came to mean anything in common.
Vuh or uuh is in Quiche and Cakchiquel the word for paper and book. It is an original term in these and connected dialects, the Maya having nooh, a letter, writing; uoch, to write.
There is a school of writers who deprecate such researches as I am about to make. They are of opinion that the appellations of the native gods were derived from trivial or accidental circumstances, and had no recondite or symbolic meaning. In fact, this assertion has been made with reference to the very names which I am about to discuss.