ICAZBALCETA.
[After a photograph kindly furnished by himself at the editor’s request.—Ed.]
As regards Yucatan, Brasseur[912] speaks of the scantiness of the historical material, and Brinton[913] does not know a single case where a Maya author has written in the Spanish tongue, as the Aztecs did, under Spanish influence. We owe more to Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton than to any one else for the elucidation of the native records, and he had had the advantage of the collection of Yucatan MSS. formed by Dr. C. H. Berendt,[914] which, after that gentleman’s death, passed into Brinton’s hands.
PROFESSOR DANIEL G. BRINTON.
After the destruction of the ancient records by Landa, considerable efforts were made throughout Yucatan, in a sort of reactionary spirit, to recall the lingering recollections of what these manuscripts contained. The grouping of such recovered material became known as Chilan Balam.[915] It is from local collections of this kind that Brinton selected the narratives which he has published as The Maya Chronicles, being the first volume of his Library of Aboriginal American Literature. The original texts[916] are accompanied by an English translation. One of the books, the Chilan Balam of Mani, had been earlier printed by Stephens, in his Yucatan.[917] The only early Spanish chronicle is Bishop Landa’s Relation des choses de Yucatan,[918] which follows not an original, but a copy of the bishop’s text, written, as Brasseur thinks, thirty years after Landa’s death, or about 1610, and which Brasseur first brought to the world’s attention when he published his edition, with both Spanish and French texts, at Paris, in 1864. The MS. seems to have been incomplete, and was perhaps inaccurately copied at the time. At this date (1864) Brasseur had become an enthusiast for his theory of the personification of the forces of nature in the old recitals, and there was some distrust how far his zeal had affected his text; and moreover he had not published the entire text, but had omitted about one sixth. Brasseur’s method of editing became apparent when, in 1884, at Madrid, Juan de Dios de la Rada y Delgado published literally the whole Spanish text, as an appendix to the Spanish translation of Rosny’s essay on the hieratic writing. The Spanish editor pointed out some but not all the differences between his text and Brasseur’s,—a scrutiny which Brinton has perfected in his Critical Remarks on the Editions of Landa’s Writings (Philad., 1887).[919] Landa gives extracts from a work by Bernardo Lizana, relating to Yucatan, of which it is difficult to get other information.[920] The earliest published historical narrative was Cogolludo’s Historia de Yucathan (Madrid, 1688).[921] Stephens, in his study of the subject, speaks of it as “voluminous, confused, and ill-digested,” and says “it might almost be called a history of the Franciscan friars, to which order Cogolludo belonged.”[922]
The native sources of the aboriginal history of Guatemala, and of what is sometimes called the Quiché-Cakchiquel Empire, are not abundant,[923] but the most important are the Popul Vuh, a traditional book of the Quichés, and the Memorial de Tecpan-Atitlan.
The Popul Vuh was discovered in the library of the university at Guatemala, probably not far from 1700,[924] by Francisco Ximenez, a missionary in a mountain village of the country. Ximenez did not find the original Quiché book, but a copy of it, made after it was lost, and later than the Conquest, which we may infer was reproduced from memory to replace the lost text, and in this way it may have received some admixture of Christian thought.[925] It was this sort of a text that Ximenez turned into Spanish; and this version, with the copy of the Quiché, which Ximenez also made, is what has come down to us. Karl Scherzer, a German traveller[926] in the country, found Ximenez’ work, which had seemingly passed into the university library on the suppression of the monasteries, and which, as he supposes, had not been printed because of some disagreeable things in it about the Spanish treatment of the natives. Scherzer edited the MS., which was published as Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de Esta Provincia de Guatemala[927] (Vienna, 1857).
Brasseur, who had seen the Ximenez MSS. in 1855, considered the Spanish version untrustworthy, and so with the aid of some natives he gave it a French rendering, and republished it a few years later as Popol Vuh. Le Livre sacré et les Mythes de l’antiquité américaine, avec les livres héroïques et historiques des Quichés. Ouvrage original des indigènes de Guatémala, texte Quiché et trad. française en regard, accompagnée de notes philologiques et d’un commentaire sur la mythologie et les migrations des peuples anciens de l’Amérique, etc., composé sur des documents originaux et inédits (Paris, 1861).
Brasseur’s introduction bears the special title: Dissertation sur les mythes de l’antiquité Américaine sur la probabilité des Communications existant anciennement d’un Continent à l’autre, et sur les migrations des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique,—in which he took occasion to elucidate his theory of cataclysms and Atlantis. He speaks of his annotations as the results of his observations among the Quichés and of his prolonged studies. He calls the Popul Vuh rather a national than a sacred book,[928] and thinks it the original in some part of the “Livre divin des Toltèques,” the Teo-Amoxtli.[929] Brinton avers that neither Ximenez nor Brasseur has adequately translated the Quiché text,[930] and sees no reason to think that the matter has been in any way influenced by the Spanish contact, emanating indeed long before that event; and he has based some studies upon it.[931] In this opinion Bandelier is at variance, at least as regards the first portion, for he believes it to have been written after the Conquest and under Christian influences.[932] Brasseur in some of his other writings has further discussed the matter.[933]