Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh is the creation story of the Quiché Maya of present day Guatemala. It also serves as a narrative of the adventures of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque.

The Quiché language did not have an alphabetic writing system; only glyphs, until Spanish missionaries introduced one. The intent was to have the native people translate Christian sermons and prayers to the various Mayan languages. The Mayans soon realized they could also use this system for their own means.

Before long, members of the Cauecs, the Greathouses, and the Lord Quchés lineages, who had once ruled the Quiché kingdom authored the alphabetic text of the Popol Vuh. Their text was then copied and translated into Spanish by friar Francisco Ximénez between 1701 - 1703. His is the only surviving copy of the alphabetic text. The irony is that Christian missionaries were the ones who destroyed all but four known books of the ancient Mayan hieroglyphic texts.

The Mayan authors of the alphabetic Popol Vuh make reference to writing "in Christendom" and therefore choose to keep their identities secret. In one passage it seems the authors are recording the story from memory of its long performance or what they had seen of the ancient text. Only a specially trained diviner daykeeper, called ajq'ij could have read and made sense of the hieroglyphic work. The authors of the alphabetic text state that "the one who reads and assesses" the original and ancient writing has a hidden identity. This leads one to believe that perhaps another secret copy of the Popol Vuh existed between 1554-1558, when their text is believed to have been written.

The four books known to survive today are the Madrid, Paris, and Dresden codices, as well as a version found by looters in a dry cave in Chiapas in 1966. Dennis Tedlock's 1996 revision of, Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of the Gods and Kings gives wonderful insight to the linguistic and cultural considerations necessary to understand the Popol Vuh.