[926] Wanderungen durch die mittel-Amerikanischen Freistaaten (Braunschweig, 1857—an English translation, London, 1857).
[927] Leclerc, no. 1305.
[928] H. H. Bancroft, Nat. Races, ii. 115; iii., ch. 2, and v. 170, 547, gives a convenient condensation of the book, and says that Müller misconceives in some parts of his summary, and that Baldwin in his Ancient America, p. 191, follows Müller. Helps, Spanish Conquest, iv. App., gives a brief synopsis,—the first one done in English.
[929] Max Müller dissents from this. Chips, i. 326. Müller reminds us, if we are suspicious of the disjointed manner of what has come down to us as the Popul Vuh, that “consecutive history is altogether a modern idea, of which few only of the ancient nations had any conception. If we had the exact words of the Popul Vuh, we should probably find no more history there than we find in the Quiché MS. as it now stands.”
[930] Cf. Aborig. Amer. Authors, p. 33.
[931] The names of the gods in the Kiché Myths of Central America (Philad., 1881), from the Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. He gives his reasons (p. 4) for the spelling Kiché.
[932] Cf. Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., vol. i. 109; and his paper, “On the Sources of the Aboriginal Hist. of Spanish America,” in the Am. Asso. Adv. Sci. Proc., xxvii. 328 (Aug., 1878). In the Peabody Mus. Eleventh Report, p. 391, he says of it that “it appears to be for the first chapters an evident fabrication, or at least accommodation of Indian mythology to Christian notions,—a pious fraud; but the bulk is an equally evident collection of original traditions of the Indians of Guatemala, and as such the most valuable work for the aboriginal history and ethnology of Central America.”
[933] Hist. Nat. Civ., i. 47. S’il existe des sources de l’histoire primitive du Méxique dans les monuments égyptiens et de l’histoire primitive de l’ancien monde dans les monuments Américains? (1864), which is an extract from his Landa’s Relation. Cf. Bollaert, in the Royal Soc. of Lit. Trans., 1863. Brasseur (Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 45; Pinart, no. 231) also speaks of another Quiché document, of which his MS. copy is entitled Titulo de los Señores de Totonicapan, escrito en lengua Quiché, el año de 1554, y traducido al Castellano el año de 1834, por el Padre Dionisio José Chonay, indígena, which tells the story of the Quiché race somewhat differently from the Popul Vuh.
[934] See Vol. II. p. 419.
[935] It stands in Brasseur’s Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 13, as Memorial de Tecpan-Atitlan (Solola), histoire des deux familles royales du royaume des Cakchiquels d’Iximché ou Guatémala, rédigé en langue Cakchiquèle par le prince Don Francisco Ernantez Arana-Xahila, des rois Ahpozotziles, where Brasseur speaks of it as analogous to the Popul Vuh, but with numerous and remarkable variations. The MS. remained in the keeping of Xahila till 1562, when Francisco Gebuta Queh received it and continued it (Pinart Catalogue, no. 35).