The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 11: Latin-American

by Hartley Burr Alexander

PLATE XIX.

Map of Yucatan, showing sites of ancient cities. After Morley, BBE 57, Plate I.

Each of the earlier periods is marked by the appearance of new sites and the foundation of new cities as well as by advance in the arts; and as a whole the Old Empire is marked by the high development of its sculpture and the use of the more complete mode of reckoning, while in the cities of the New Empire architecture attains to its highest development.

Such are the more plausible theories of Mayan culture history, although there are others (those of Brasseur de Bourbourg, for example) which would place the age of Mayan greatness earlier by many centuries.

II. VOTAN, ZAMNA, AND KUKULCAN

From their remote beginnings, as with other peoples whose traditions lead back to an age of migrations, the Mayan tribes remembered culture heroes, tutors in the arts as well as founders of empire, priests as well as kings, who may have been historic,[79] but who in origin were probably gods rather than men—gods whom time had confused with the persons of their priestly or royal worshippers, and in whose deeds cosmic and historic events were distortedly intermingled. Tales of three such heroes hold a central place in Mayan mythology: Votan, the hero of Tzental legend, whose name is associated with Palenque and the tradition of a great "Votanic Empire" of times long past; Zamna, or Itzamna, a Yucatec hero; and Kukulcan, known to the Quiché as Gucumatz, who is the Mayan equivalent of Quetzalcoatl. All three of these hero-deities are reputed to have come from afar—strange in costume and in custom,—to have been the inventors or teachers of writing, and to have founded new cults.

The Tzental legend of Votan,[80] describing him as having appeared from across the sea, declares that when he reached Laguna de Términos he named the country "the Land of Birds and Game" because of the abundant life of the region; and thence the Votanides ascended the Usumacinta valley, ultimately founding their capital at Palenque, whose older and perhaps original name was Nachan, or "House of Snakes." Shortly afterward, no less astonishing to the Votanides than had been their own apparition to the rude aboriginal, came other boatloads of long-robed strangers, the first Nahuatlans; but these were peaceably amalgamated into the new empire. Votan ruled many years, and, among other works, composed a narrative of the origin of the Indian nations, of which Ordoñez y Aguiar gives a summary. The chief argument of the work, he says, aims to show that Votan was descended from Imos (one of the genii, or guardians, of the days), that he was of the race of Chan, the Serpent, and that he took his origin from Chivim. Being the first man whom God had sent to this region, which we call America, to people and divide the lands, he made known the route which he had followed, and after he had established his seat, he made divers journeys to Valum-Chivim. These were four in number: in the first he related that having departed from Valum-Votan, he set out toward the House of Thirteen Serpents and then went to Valum-Chivim, whence he passed by the city where he beheld the House of God being built. He next visited the ruins of the ancient edifice which men had erected at the command of their common ancestor in order to climb to the sky; and he declared that those with whom he there conversed assured him that that was the place where God had given to each tribe its own particular tongue. He affirmed that on his return from the House of God he went forth a second time to examine all the subterranean regions which he had passed, and the signs to be found there, adding that he was made to traverse a subterranean road which, leading beneath the Earth and terminating at the roots of the Sky, was none other than the hole of a snake; and this he entered because he was "the Son of the Serpent."

Ordoñez would like to see in this legend (which he has obviously accommodated to his desire) a record of historical wanderings in and from Old World lands and out of Biblical times. Yet the narrative, even in its garbled form, is clearly a cosmologic myth—at the least a tale of the sun's journey, and probably this tale set in the general context of Ages of the World (the four journeys of Votan?) analogous to those of Nahuatlan myth and of the Popul Vuh. When it is added that Votan was known by the epithet "Heart of the People," that his successor was called Canam-Lum ("Serpent of the Earth"), and that both of these were venerated as gods at the time of the Conquest, no word need be added to emphasize the naturalistic character of the myth; although there may be truth in a legend of Votanides, or Votan-worshippers, as founders of Palenque and possibly as institutors of Mayan civilization.

Zamna (Itzamna, Yzamna, "House of the Dews," or "Lap of the Dews")[81] was the reputed bringer of civilization into the peninsula and the traditional founder of Mayapan, which he was said to have made a centre of feudal rule. Like Votan he was supposed to have been the first to name the localities of the land, to have invented writing, and to have instructed the barbarous aborigines in the arts. "With the populations which came from the East," Cogolludo writes, "was a man, called Zamna, who was as their priest, and who, they say, was the one who gave the names by which they now distinguish, in their language, all the seaports, hills, estuaries, coasts, mountains, and other parts of the country, which assuredly is an admirable thing if he thus made a division of every part of the land, of which scarcely an inch has not its proper appellation in their tongue." After having lived to a great age, Zamna is said to have been buried at Izamal, where his tomb-temple became a centre for pilgrimage. In fact, Izamal is but a modification of a name of Itzamna, since its older form is Itzmatul, which means, says the Abbé Brasseur, "He who asks or obtains the dew or the frost." The ancients of Izamal, Lizana declares, possessed a renowned idol, Ytzmatul, which "had no other name ... although it was said that he was a powerful king in this region, to whom obedience was given as to the son of the gods. When he was asked how he was named and how he should be addressed, he answered only, Ytzen caan, ytzen muyal, 'I am the dew, the substance, of the sky and clouds.'"