Chatting About The Popol Vuh

In order for this post to make sense let me contextualize it. Yesterday I posted a rough summary of the very beginning of a Mayan (This is the one time I make a blanket assumption in this post because contrary to popular understanding the Mayan people are not 1 civilization but a term used to describe multiple Indigenous groups) epic myth about Hunahpu and Xbalanque the deities/heroes that would eventually become the Sun and Moon in our understanding of K'Iche' (which inadvertently leaks over into our understanding of Mayan mythology) mythology and cosmology. Where we learned about this myth and where it was stored in as permanent a state as writing can be considered (if you consider writing to be a permanent state, you're wrong but that's a conversation for another day) is a document named the Popol Vuh, which is a corpus (large and structured set of texts) containing mythical and historical narratives allowing foreigners to gain insight into how the K'Iche' viewed their own cultural history. It contains more than just the Sun and Moon Twins myth but that's my favorite part of it which is why I talk about that rather than focusing on other parts of it. 

Popol Vuh means any of the following: "Book of the people" "Book of the community" and "Book of counsel". It was transcribed into its current form by a man known as Father Ximenez in 1701 in the town known as Chichicastenango (alternatively known as Santo Tomas Chichicastenango) which is contemporarily in the El Quiche department of Guatemala. Ximenez transcribed what was likely an oral retelling (that's my opinion and lots of historians believe that there was actually a text that Ximenez used to transcribe this, but I don't believe that because of a lack of such a manuscript ever being found) of these myths into Spanish and K'iche'. There was a bit of drama around it when it was in the process of becoming known commonly by historians which also made it a fun source to track down and read. I say "drama" but the chain of events that led to it eventually becoming a commonly known source isn't unique to the Popol Vuh, and is common for all sorts of codices from Latin America.

It can be found online in English by clicking the link at the bottom of this post (assuming I did this correctly). I'll probably talk more substantially about some other texts like this in the future. If you want to know about some ancient Indigenous documents (this shouldn't really qualify because it's current form isn't really ancient or particularly Indigenous in its origin) let me know! As a historian focused on Central America, this is a fun topic for me and I'd love to talk about it more on The Prose. We should talk more about history everywhere.