III. THE HERO BROTHERS
The deeds of the Hero Brothers in the Popul Vuh take place in an epoch of the world previous to the rise of the present Sun. Apparently they fall in an Age of Giants just succeeding the destruction of the manikins, for the narrative proceeds from the tale of the annihilation of these beings to the overthrow, by the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, of the Earth Titans, stating that the events occurred in the days of the inundation. Vukub-Cakix was the first of the Giants, and his sin was the sin of hubris, for he boasted: "I shall be yet again above all created beings; I am their sun, I am their dawn, I am their moon. Great is my splendour; I am he by whom men move. Of silver are the balls of my eyes, gleaming like precious stones; and the whiteness of my teeth is like the face of the sky. My nostrils shine afar like the moon; of silver is my throne, and the earth liveth when I step forth from it. I am the sun, I am the moon, the bringer of felicity. So be it, for my gaze reacheth afar!" This is obviously a hymn to the sun; and it is possible that it refers to a mythic "Sun of Giants," although the narrator clearly takes it in another sense: "In reality his sight ended where it fell, and his gaze did not embrace the entire world." It was, in fact, because of his riches (metals and precious stones) that Vukub-Cakix thought to emulate the sun and the moon.
PLATE XXIV.
Image of a youthful deity with elaborate head-dress seated in the mouth of the "Dragon of Quirigua" (see [frontispiece]). After a photograph in the Peabody Museum.
It was for their pride and arrogance that Vukub-Cakix and his sons, Zipacna and Cabrakan, were successively overcome and destroyed by the hero brothers. "Attention, it is I who am the sun," cried Vukub-Cakix; "it is I who move the earth," said Zipacna; "and it is I that shake the sky and overturn the the whole earth," quoth Cabrakan. Indeed, such was their strength that they could move mountains, great and small, at will; and since such orgulous Titans could be overcome only by craft, even with demi-gods for their adversaries, it was by craft that Hunahpu and Xbalanqué conquered them.
Vukub-Cakix possessed a tree the fruit of which was his food, and the twins, concealing themselves in its branches, shot the giant in the cheek with a poisoned arrow when he came for his meal, though they did not escape uninjured, for he tore away one of Hunahpu's arms. The monster went home, roaring with pain, and the two plotters, disguising themselves as physicians, came offering to cure his malady and saying: "You suffer from a worm but you can be cured if your jaw is altered by removing the bad teeth." "It is by my teeth alone that I am king; all my beauty comes from my teeth and the balls of mine eyes." "We will put others in their place," they said; and so they substituted teeth of maize for the emerald teeth of the giant and flayed the splendour from his eyes. The splendour faded from him; he ceased to appear like a king; and soon he died, while Hunahpu recovered his arm, which Chimalmat, the wife of Vukub-Cakix, was basting on a spit; and the twins turned away in triumph. Zipacna was the next victim. First, the brothers conspired with four hundred youths (doubtless the same as the "Four Hundred Southerners" of the Huitzilopochtli myth) to lure Zipacna into a pitfall, where they tried to destroy him by hurling huge trees upon him; and when all was quiet, the plotters erected a house on the spot, making merry with drink and celebrating their triumph. But the giant was only craftily biding his time, and, rising suddenly, he cast house and revellers high into the heavens, where the four hundred became stars and constellations. The twins then decided upon another decoy. Since the food of Zipacna was sea-food, especially crabs, they modelled a great crab, and painting it cunningly they put it into a deep ravine. Encountering the giant on his food search, they pointed out this fine crab; he leaped after it, and they—wiser by experience—hurled mountains upon him, thus imprisoning him, though so desperate were his struggles for freedom that they turned him into stone to quiet him. The third giant, Cabrakan, was also made the victim of his own gluttony and pride. The brothers challenged him to shift a certain mountain, for he boasted that he could remove the greatest; but as he was preparing to show his strength, they suggested that he first partake of food, and shooting a bird, they cooked it for him, taking care to poison it in the process. The giant devoured the bird the more greedily in that it was his first taste of cooked meat; but immediately his strength began to fail, and his eyes to dim; and while the brothers twittingly urged him to make good his boasts, he sank to earth dead.
The great adventure of the heroic twins, however, was their triumph over the Lords of Death, and to this the second part of the Popul Vuh is devoted. The tale begins with the story of an earlier pair of Hero Brothers, Hunhun-Ahpu and Vukub-Ahpu, sons of Xpiyacoc and Xmucané. Hunhun-Ahpu, in turn, was father of Hunbatz and Hunchouen, two youths who seem to be little more than foils for the hero twins later to be born; although they are described as wise in all the arts, as players of the flute, singers, blow-gun shooters, painters, sculptors, jewel-workers, and smiths.