The eminent antiquary, Don Juan Pio Perez contemplated writing a Maya grammar, and collected a number of notes for that purpose,[74-2] as did also the late Dr. Berendt, but neither brought his work to any degree of completeness. I have copies of the notes left by both these diligent students, as also both editions of Beltran, and an accurate MS. copy of Buenaventura, from all of which I have derived assistance in completing the present study.
The first Maya dictionary printed was issued in the City of Mexico in 1571. It was published as that of Father Luis de Villalpando, but as he had then been dead nearly twenty years, it was probably merely based upon his vocabulary. It was in large 4to, of the same size as the second edition of Molina’s Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana. At least one copy of it is known to be in existence.
For more than three centuries no other dictionary was put to press, although for some unexplained reason that of Villalpando was unknown in Yucatan. At length, in 1877, the publication was completed at Mérida, of the Diccionario de la Lengua Maya, by Don Juan Pio Perez.[75-1] It contains about 20,000 words, and is Maya-Spanish only. It is the result of a conscientious and lifelong study of the language, and a work of great merit. The deficiencies it presents are, that it does not give the principal parts of the verbs, that it omits or does not explain correctly many old terms in the language, and that it gives very few examples of idioms or phrases showing the uses of words and the construction of sentences.
I can say little in praise of the Vocabulaire Maya-Francais-Espagnole, compiled by the Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg), and printed in the second volume of the Report of the Mission Scientifique au Mexique et à l’Amerique Centrale. It contains about ten thousand words, but many of these are drawn from doubtful sources, and are incorrectly given; while the derivations and analogies proposed are of a character unknown to the science of language.
Besides the above and various vocabularies of minor interest, I have made use of three manuscript dictionaries of the first importance, which were obtained by the late Dr. Berendt. They belonged to three Franciscan convents which formerly existed in Yucatan, and as they are all anonymous, I shall follow Dr. Berendt’s example, and refer to them by the names of the convents to which they belonged. These were the convent of San Francisco in Merida, that at the town of Ticul and that at Motul.
The most recent of these is that of the convent of Ticul. It bears the date 1690, and is in two parts, Spanish-Maya and Maya-Spanish.
The Diccionario del Convento de San Francisco de Merida bears no date, but in the opinion of the most competent scholars who have examined it, among them Señor Pio Perez, it is older than that of Ticul, probably by half a century. It is also in two parts, which have evidently been prepared, by different hands.
The Diccionario del Convento de Motul is by far the most valuable of the three, and has not been known to Yucatecan scholars. A copy of it was picked up on a book stall in the City of Mexico by the Abbé Brasseur, and sold by him to Mr. John Carter Brown, of Providence, R. I. In 1864 this was very carefully copied by Dr. Berendt, who also made extensive additions to it from other sources, indicating such by the use of inks of different colors. This copy, in three large quarto volumes, in all counting over 2500 pages, is that which I now have, and have found of indispensable assistance in solving some of the puzzles presented by the ancient texts in the present volume.
The particular value of the Diccionario de Motul is not merely the richness of its vocabulary and its numerous examples of construction, but that it presents the language as it was when the Spaniards first arrived. The precise date of its compilation is indeed not given, but the author speaks of a comet which he saw in 1577, and gives other evidence that he was writing in the first generation after the Conquest.
[9-1] “Tambien diz [el Almirante] que supó que ... aquella isla Española ó la otra isla Jamaye estaba cerca de tierra firme, diez jornadas de Canoa que podia ser sesenta á setenta leguas, y que era la gente vestida alli.” Navarrete, Viages, Tom. I, pag. 127.