Popol Vuh (Mayan)
Religious Document 253
pages
---------------------------------------------------------
1550
POPOL VUH:
THE MAYAN BOOK OF THE DAWN OF
LIFE
| Other Mayan texts: Yucatan Before and After the Conquest by Diego de Landa, tr. William Gates [1937] The best primary source on the Maya, ironically by the monk who burned most of their books. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel by Ralph L. Roys [1930]
The Book of the People: Popol Vuh
Maya Hieroglyphic Writing (excerpts) The Popul Vuh excerpt from The Mythic and Heroic Sagas of the Kichés of Central America, by Lewis Spence; London [1908] 79,023 bytes The Myths of Mexico and Peru by Lewis Spence |
PREFACE
You cannot erase time.
-ANDRES XILOJ
INTRODUCTION
THE FIRST FOUR HUMANS,
the first four earthly beings who were
truly articulate when they moved their feet and hands, their
faces and
mouths, and who could speak the very language of the gods,
could
also see everything under the sky and on the earth. All they had
to do
was look around from the spot where they were, all the way to
the
limits of space and the limits of time. But then the gods, who
had not
intended to make and model beings with the potential of becoming
their
own equals, limited human sight to what was obvious and
nearby.
Nevertheless, the lords who once ruled a kingdom from a place
called
Quiche, in the highlands of Guatemala, once had in their
possession
the means for overcoming this nearsightedness, an ilbal, a
"seeing
instrument" or a "place to see"; with this they
could know distant
or future events. The instrument was not a telescope, not a
crystal
for gazing, but a book.
The lords of Quiche
consulted their book when they sat in council,
and their name for it was Popol Vuh or "Council Book."
Because this
book contained an account of how the forefathers of their own
lordly
lineages had exiled themselves from a faraway city called
Tulan,
they sometimes described it as "the writings about
Tulan." Because a
later generation of lords had obtained the book by going on
a
pilgrimage that took them across water on a causeway, they
titled it
"The Light That Came from Across the Sea." And because
the book told
of events that happened before the first sunrise and of a time
when
the forefathers hid themselves and the stones that contained
the
spirit familiars of their gods in forests, they also titled it
"Our
Place in the Shadows." And finally, because it told of the
first
rising of the morning star and the sun and moon, and of the rise
and
radiant splendor of the Quiche lords, they titled it "The
Dawn of
Life."
Those who wrote the
version of the Popol Vuh that comes down to us
do not give us their personal names but rather call themselves
"we" in
its opening pages and "we who are the Quiche people" later
on. In
contemporary usage "the Quiche people" are an ethnic
group in
Guatemala, consisting of all those who speak the particular
Mayan
language that itself has come to be called Quiche; they
presently
number over half a million and occupy most of the former
territory
of the kingdom whose development is described in the Popol Vuh.
To the
west and northwest of them are other Mayan peoples, speaking
other
Mayan languages, who extend across the Mexican border into
the
highlands of Chiapas and down into the Gulf coastal plain
of
Tabasco. To the east and northeast still other Mayans extend
just
across the borders of El Salvador and Honduras, down into the
lowlands
of Belize, and across the peninsula of Yucatan. These are the
peoples,
with a total population of about four million today, whose
ancestors
developed what has become known to the outside world as
Maya
civilization.
The roots of Maya
civilization may lie in the prior civilization
of the Olmecs, which reached its peak on the Gulf coastal
plain
about three thousand years ago. Maya hieroglyphic writing
and
calendrical reckoning probably have antecedents that go back
at
least that far, but they did not find expression in the lasting
form
of inscriptions on stone monuments until the first century B.C.,
in
a deep river valley that cuts through the highlands of Chiapas.
From
there, the erection of inscribed monuments spread south to the
Pacific
and eastward along the Guatemalan coastal plain, then reached
back
into the highlands at the site of Kaminaljuyu, on the western
edge
of what is now Guatemala City. During the so-called classic
period,
beginning about A.D. 300, the center of literate civilization in
the
Mayan region shifted northward into the lowland rain forest
that
separates the mountain pine forest of Chiapas and Guatemala from
the
low and thorny scrub forest of northern Yucatan. Swamps were
drained
and trees were cleared to make way for intensive
cultivation.
Hieroglyphic texts in great quantity were sculpted in stone
and
stucco, painted on pottery and plaster, and inked on long strips
of
paper that were folded like screens to make books. This is
the
period that accounts for the glories of such sites as Palenque,
Tikal,
and Copan, leaving a legacy that has made Maya civilization
famous
in the fields of art and architecture. The Mayan languages
spoken at
most of these sites probably corresponded to the ones now known
as
Cholan, which are still spoken by the Mayan peoples who live at
the
extreme eastern and western ends of the old classical
heartland.
Near the end of the
classic period, the communities that had
carved out a place for themselves in the rain forest were caught
in
a deepening vortex of overpopulation, environmental degradation,
and
malnutrition. The organizational and technological capacities
of
Maya society were strained past the breaking point, and by A.D.
900
much of the region had been abandoned. That left Maya
civilization
divided between two areas that had been peripheral during
classic
times, one in northern Yucatan and the other in the
Guatemalan
highlands. The subsequent history of both these areas was shaped
by
invaders from the western end of the old classical heartland,
from
Tabasco and neighboring portions of the Gulf coastal plain, who
set up
militaristic states among the peoples they conquered. The
culture they
carried with them has come to be called Toltec; it is thought
to
have originated among speakers of Nahua languages, who are
presently
concentrated in central Mexico (where they include the
descendants
of the Aztecs) and who once extended eastward to Tabasco. In the
Mayan
area, Toltec culture was notable for giving mythic prominence to
the
god-king named Plumed Serpent, technical prominence to the use
of
spear-throwers in warfare, and sacrificial prominence to the
human
heart. Those who carried this culture to highland Guatemala
brought
many Nahua words with them, but they themselves were
probably
Gulf-coast Maya of Cholan descent. Among them were the founders
of the
kingdom whose people have come to be known as the Quiche
Maya.*
Mayan monuments and
buildings no longer featured inscriptions
after the end of the classic period, but scribes went right
on
making books for another six centuries, sometimes combining
Mayan
texts with Toltecan pictures. Then, in the sixteenth
century,
Europeans arrived in Mesoamerica. They forcibly imposed a
monopoly
on all major forms of visible expression, whether in drama,
architecture, sculpture, painting, or writing. Hundreds of
hieroglyphic books were tossed into bonfires by ardent
missionaries;
between this disaster and the slower perils of decay, only
four
books made it through to the present day. Three of them, all
thought
to come from the lowlands, found their way to Europe in early colonial
times and eventually turned up in libraries in Madrid, Paris,
and
Dresden; a fragment from a fourth book was recovered more
recently
from looters who had found it in a dry cave in Chiapas. But
the
survival of Mayan literature was not dependent on the survival
of
its outward forms. Just as Mayan peoples learned to use the
symbolism of Christian saints as a mask for ancient gods, so
they
learned to use the Roman alphabet as a mask for ancient
texts.*(2)
-
(See illustration:
Drawing by Carlos A. Villacorta.
SCRIBES WENT RIGHT ON
MAKING BOOKS: This is a page from the Maya
hieroglyphic book known as the Dresden Codex, which dates to
the
thirteenth century. The left-hand column describes the movements
of
Venus during one of five different types of cycles reckoned for
that
planet. The right-hand column describes the auguries for the
cycle and
gives both pictures and names for the attendant deities. The
top
picture, in which the figure at right is seated on two glyphs
that
name constellations, may have to do with the position of
Venus
relative to the fixed stars during the cycle. In the middle
picture is
the god who currently accounts for Venus itself, holding a
dart-thrower in his left hand and darts in his right; in the
bottom
picture is his victim, with a dart piercing his shield. The
Venus gods
of the Popol Vuh are more conservatively Mayan than those of
the
Dresden Codex; they are armed with old-fashioned blowguns
rather
than Toltecan dart-throwers.)
-
There was no little
justice in the fact that it was the missionaries
themselves, the burners of the ancient books, who worked out
the
problems of adapting the alphabet to the sounds of Mayan
languages,
and while they were at it they charted grammars and
compiled
dictionaries. Their official purpose in doing this linguistic
work was
to facilitate the writing and publishing of Christian
prayers,
sermons, and catechisms in the native languages. But very
little
time passed before some of their native pupils found political
and
religious applications for alphabetic writing that were
quite
independent of those of Rome. These independent writers have
left a
literary legacy that is both more extensive than the
surviving
hieroglyphic corpus and more open to understanding. Their most
notable
works, created as alphabetic substitutes for hieroglyphic books,
are
the Chilam Balam or "Jaguar Priest" books of Yucatan
and the Popol Vuh
of Guatemala.
The authors of the
alphabetic Popol Vuh were members of the three
lordly lineages that had once ruled the Quiche kingdom: the
Cauecs,
the Greathouses, and the Lord Quiches. They worked in the middle
of
the sixteenth century, shortly before the end of one of the
fifty-two-year cycles measured out by their own calendar. The
scene of
their writing was the town of Quiche, northwest of what is
now
Guatemala City. The east side of this town, on flat land, was
new in
their day, with buildings in files on a grid of streets and the
bell
towers of a church at the center. The west side, already in
ruins, was
on fortified promontories above deep canyons, with pyramids
and
palaces clustered around multiple plazas and courtyards. The
buildings
of the east side displayed broad expanses of blank stone
and
plaster, but the ruined walls of the west side bore tantalizing
traces
of multicolored murals. What concerned the authors of the
new
version of the Popol Vuh was to preserve the story that lay
behind the
ruins.
During the early
colonial period the town of Quiche was eclipsed, in
both size and prosperity, by the neighboring town of Chuui La
or
"Above the Nettles," better known today as
Chichicastenango.*(3) The
residents of the latter town included members of the Cauec and
Lord
Quiche lineages, and at some point a copy of the alphabetic
Popol
Vuh found its way there. Between 1701 and 1703, a friar
named
Francisco Ximenez happened to get a look at this manuscript
while he
was serving as the parish priest for Chichicastenango. He made
the
only surviving copy of the Quiche text of the Popol Vuh and
added a
Spanish translation. His work remained in the possession of
the
Dominican order until after Guatemalan independence, but
when
liberal reforms forced the closing of all monasteries in 1830,
it
was acquired by the library of the University of San Carlos
in
Guatemala City. Carl Scherzer, an Austrian physician, happened
to
see it there in 1854, and Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg,
a
French priest, had the same good fortune a few months later.*(4)
In
1857 Scherzer published Ximenez' Spanish translation under
the
patronage of the Hapsburgs in Vienna,*(5) members of the same
royal
lineage that had ruled Spain at the time of the conquest of the
Quiche
kingdom, and in 1861 Brasseur published the Quiche text and a
French
translation in Paris. The manuscript itself, which Brasseur
spirited
out of Guatemala, eventually found its way back across the
Atlantic
from Paris, coming to rest in the Newberry Library in 1911. The
town
graced by this library, with its magnificent collection of
Native
American texts, is not in Mesoamerica, but it does have an
Indian
name: Chicago, meaning "Place of Wild Onions."
The manuscript Ximenez
copied in the place called "Above the
Nettles" may have included a few illustrations and even
an
occasional hieroglyph, but his version contains nothing but
solid
columns of alphabetic prose. Mayan authors in general made
only
sparing use of graphic elements in their alphabetic works,
but
nearly every page of the ancient books combined writing
(including
signs meant to be read phonetically) and pictures. In the
Mayan
languages, as well as in Nahua, the terms for writing and
painting
were and are the same, the same artisans practiced both skills,
and
the patron deities of both skills were twin monkey gods born on
the
day bearing a name translatable (whether from Mayan or Nahua) as
One
Monkey. In the books made under the patronage of these twin gods
there
is a dialectical relationship between the writing and the
pictures:
the writing not only records words but sometimes has elements
that
picture or point to their meaning without the necessity of a
detour
through words. As for the pictures, they not only depict what
they
mean but have elements that can be read as words. When we say
that
Mesoamerican writing is strongly ideographic relative to our
own, this
observation should be balanced with the realization that
Mesoamerican painting is more conceptual than our own.
At times the writers of
the alphabetic Popol Vuh seem to be
describing pictures, especially when they begin new episodes
in
narratives. In passages like the following, the use of
sentences
beginning with phrases like "this is" and the use of
verbs in the
Quiche equivalent of the present tense cause the reader to
linger, for
a moment, over a lasting image:
-
This is the great tree
of Seven Macaw, a nance, and this is the food
of Seven Macaw. In order to eat the fruit of the nance he goes
up
the tree every day. Since Hunahpu and Xbalanque have seen where
he
feeds, they are now hiding beneath the tree of Seven Macaw, they
are
keeping quiet here, the two boys are in the leaves of the
tree.
-
It must be cautioned,
of course, that "word pictures" painted by
storytellers, in Quiche or in any other language, need not
have
physical counterparts in the world outside the mind's eye. But
the
present example has an abruptness that suggests a sudden still
picture
from a story already well under way rather than a moving
picture
unfolded in the course of the events of that story. The
narrators do
not describe how the boys arrived "in the leaves of the
tree"; the
opening scene is already complete, waiting for the blowgun shot
that
comes in the next sentence, where the main verb is in the
Quiche
equivalent of the past tense and the still picture gives way to
a
moving one.
More than any other
Mayan book, whether hieroglyphic or
alphabetic, the Popol Vuh tells us something about the
conceptual
place of books in the pre-Columbian world. The writers of
the
alphabetic version explain why the hieroglyphic version was
among
the most precious possessions of Quiche rulers:
-
They knew whether war
would occur; everything they saw was clear
to them. Whether there would be death, or whether there would
be
famine, or whether quarrels would occur, they knew it for
certain,
since there was a place to see it, there was a book.
"Council Book"
was their name for it.
-
When "everything
they saw was clear to them" the Quiche lords were
recovering the vision of the first four humans, who at first
"saw
everything under the sky perfectly." That would mean that
the Popol
Vuh made it possible, once again, to sight "the four sides,
the four
corners in the sky, on the earth," the corners and sides
that mark not
only the earth but are the reference points for the movements
of
celestial lights.*(6)
If the ancient Popol
Vuh was like the surviving hieroglyphic
books, it contained systematic accounts of cycles in
astronomical
and earthly events that served as a complex navigation system
for
those who wished to see and move beyond the present. In the case
of
a section dealing with the planet Venus, for example, there
would have
been tables of rising and setting dates, pictures of the
attendant
gods, and brief texts outlining what these gods did when
they
established the pattern for the movements of Venus. When the
ancient
reader of the Popol Vuh took the role of a diviner and
astronomer,
seeking the proper date for a ceremony or a momentous political
act,
we may guess that he looked up a specific passage, pondered
its
meaning, and rendered an opinion. But the authors of the
alphabetic
Popol Vuh tell us that there were also occasions on which the
reader
offered "a long performance and account" whose subject
was the
emergence of the whole cahuleu or "sky-earth," which
is the Quiche way
of saying "world." If a divinatory reading or
pondering was a way of
recovering the depth of vision enjoyed by the first four humans,
a
"long performance," in which the reader may well have
covered every
major subject in the entire book, was a way of recovering the
full
cosmic sweep of that vision.
If the authors of the
alphabetic Popol Vuh had transposed the
ancient Popol Vuh directly, on a glyph-by-glyph basis, they
might have
produced a text that would have made little sense to anyone but
a
fully trained diviner and performer. What they did instead was
to
quote what a reader of the ancient book would say when he gave a
"long
performance," telling the full story that lay behind the
charts,
pictures, and plot outlines of the ancient book. Lest we miss
the fact
that they are quoting, they periodically insert such phrases
as
"This is the account, here it is," or "as it is
said." At one point
they themselves take the role of a performer, speaking directly
to
us as if we were members of a live audience rather than
mere
readers. As they introduce the first episode of a long cycle
of
stories about the gods who prepared the sky-earth for human
life, they
propose that we all drink a toast to the hero.*(7)
At the beginning of
their book, the authors delicately describe
the difficult circumstances under which they work. When they
tell us
that they are writing "amid the preaching of God, in
Christendom now,"
we can catch a plaintive tone only by noticing that they make
this
statement immediately after asserting that their own gods
"accounted
for everything- and did it, too- as enlightened beings, in
enlightened
words." What the authors propose to write down is what
Quiches call
the Oher Tzih, the "Ancient Word"*(8) or "Prior
Word," which has
precedence over "the preaching of God." They have
chosen to do so
because "there is no longer" a Popol Vuh, which makes
it sound as
though they intend to re-create the original book solely on
the
basis of their memory of what they have seen in its pages or
heard
in the "long performance." But when we remember their
complaint
about being "in Christendom," there remains the possibility
that
they still have the original book but are protecting it
from
possible destruction by missionaries. Indeed, their next words
make us
wonder whether the book might still exist, but they no sooner
raise
our hopes on this front than they remove the book's reader from
our
grasp: "There is the original book and ancient writing, but
he who
reads and ponders it hides his face." Here we must remember
that the
authors of the alphabetic Popol Vuh have chosen to remain
anonymous;
in other words, they are hiding their own faces. If they
are
protecting anyone with their enigmatic statements about an
inaccessible book or a hidden reader, it could well be
themselves.*(9)
The authors begin their
narrative in a world that has nothing but an
empty sky above and a calm sea below. The action gets under way
when
the gods who reside in the primordial sea, named Maker,
Modeler,
Bearer, Begetter, Heart of the Lake, Heart of the Sea, and
Sovereign
Plumed Serpent, are joined by gods who come down from the
primordial
sky, named Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth, Newborn Thunderbolt,
Raw
Thunderbolt, and Hurricane. These two parties engage in a
dialogue,
and in the course of it they conceive the emergence of the
earth
from the sea and the growth of plants and people on its
surface.
They wish to set in motion a process they call the
"sowing" and
"dawning," by which they mean several different things
at once.
There is the sowing of seeds in the earth, whose sprouting will
be
their dawning, and there is the sowing of the sun, moon, and
stars,
whose difficult passage beneath the earth will be followed by
their
own dawning. Then there is the matter of human beings, whose
sowing in
the womb will be followed by their emergence into the light
at
birth, and whose sowing in the earth at death will be followed
by
dawning when their souls become sparks of light in the
darkness.
For the gods, the idea
of human beings is as old as that of the
earth itself, but they fail in their first three attempts (all
in Part
One) to transform this idea into a living reality. What they
want is
beings who will walk, work, and talk in an articulate and
measured
way, visiting shrines, giving offerings, and calling upon their
makers
by name, all according to the rhythms of a calendar. What they
get
instead, on the first try, is beings who have no arms to work
with and
can only squawk, chatter, and howl, and whose descendants are
the
animals of today. On the second try they make a being of mud,
but this
one is unable to walk or turn its head or even keep its shape;
being
solitary, it cannot reproduce itself, and in the end it
dissolves into
nothing.
Before making a third
try the gods decide, in the course of a
further dialogue, to seek the counsel of an elderly husband and
wife
named Xpiyacoc and Xmucane. Xpiyacoc is a divine matchmaker
and
therefore prior to all marriage, and Xmucane is a divine midwife
and
therefore prior to all birth. Like contemporary Quiche
matchmakers and
midwives, both of them are ah3ih or "daykeepers,"
diviners who know
how to interpret the auguries given by thirteen day numbers and
twenty
day names that combine to form a calendrical cycle lasting
260
days.*(10) They are older than all the other gods, who address
them as
grandparents, and the cycle they divine by is older than the
longer
cycles that govern Venus and the sun, which have not yet
been
established at this point in the story. The question the
younger
gods put to them here is whether human beings should be made out
of
wood. Following divinatory methods that are still in use
among
Quiche daykeepers, they give their approval. The wooden beings
turn
out to look and talk and multiply themselves something like
humans,
but they fail to time their actions in an orderly way and forget
to
call upon the gods in prayer. Hurricane brings a catastrophe
down on
their heads, not only flooding them with a gigantic rainstorm
but
sending monstrous animals to attack them. Even their own
dogs,
turkeys, and household utensils rise against them, taking
vengeance
for past mistreatment. Their only descendants are the monkeys
who
inhabit the forests today.
At this point the gods
who have been working on the problem of
making human beings will need only one more try before they
solve
it, but the authors of the Popol Vuh postpone the telling of
this
episode, turning their attention to stories about heroic gods
whose
adventures make the sky-earth a safer place for human
habitation.
The gods in question are the twin sons of Xpiyacoc and
Xmucane,
named One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, and the twin sons of One
Hunahpu,
named Hunahpu and Xbalanque. Both sets of twins are players of
the
Mesoamerican ball game, in which the rubber ball (an
indigenous
American invention) is hit with a yoke that rides on the hips rather
than with the hands. In addition to being ballplayers, One and
Seven
Hunahpu occupy themselves by gambling with dice, whereas Hunahpu
and
Xbalanque go out hunting with blowguns.*(11)
The adventures of the
sons and grandsons of Xpiyacoc and Xmucane are
presented in two different cycles, with the episodes divided
between
the cycles more on the basis of where they take place in space
than
when they take place in time. The first cycle deals entirely
with
adventures on the face of the earth, while the second, though it
has
two separate above-ground passages, deals mainly with adventures
in
the Mayan underworld, named Xibalba. If the events of these two
cycles
were combined in a single chronological sequence, the
above-ground
episodes would probably alternate with those below, with the
heroes
descending into the underworld, emerging on the earth again, and
so
forth. These sowing and dawning movements of the heroes, along
with
those of their supporting cast, prefigure the present-day
movements of
the sun, moon, planets, and stars.
Hunahpu and Xbalanque
are the protagonists of the first of the two
hero cycles (corresponding to Part Two in the present
translation),
and their enemies are a father and his two sons, all of
them
pretenders to lordly power over the affairs of the earth. Hurricane,
or Heart of Sky, is offended by this threesome, and it is he who
sends
Hunahpu and Xbalanque against them. The first to get his due is
the
father, named Seven Macaw, who claims to be both the sun and
moon.
In chronological terms this episode overlaps with the story of
the
wooden people (at the end of Part One), since Seven Macaw serves
as
their source of celestial light and has his downfall at the
same
time they do. The twins shoot him while he is at his meal, high
up
in a fruit tree, breaking his jaw and bringing him down to
earth.
Later they pose as curers and give him the reverse of a
face-lift,
pulling out all his teeth and removing the metal disks from
around his
eyes; this puts an end to his career as a lordly being. His
earthly
descendants are scarlet macaws, with broken and toothless jaws
and
mottled white patches beneath their eyes. He himself remains as
the
seven stars of the Big Dipper, and his wife, named
Chimalmat,
corresponds to the Little Dipper. The rising of Seven Macaw
(in
mid-October) now marks the coming of the dry season, and his
fall to
earth and his disappearance (beginning in mid-July) signal
the
beginning of the hurricane season. It was his first fall,
brought on
by the blowgun shot of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, that opened the
way
for the great flood that brought down the wooden people. Just as
Seven
Macaw only pretended to be the sun and moon, so the wooden
people only
pretended to be human.*(12)
Hunahpu and Xbalanque
next take on Zipacna, the elder of Seven
Macaw's two sons, a crocodilian monster who claims to be the
maker
of mountains. But first comes an episode in which Zipacna has
an
encounter with the gods of alcoholic drinks, the Four Hundred
Boys.
Alarmed by Zipacna's great strength, these boys trick him into
digging
a deep hole and try to crush him by dropping a great log down
behind
him. He survives, but he waits in the hole until they are in
the
middle of a drunken victory celebration and then brings their
own
house down on top of them. At the celestial level they become
the
stars called Motz, the Quiche name for the Pleiades, and
their
downfall corresponds to early-evening settings of these stars.
At
the earthly level, among contemporary Quiches, the Pleiades
symbolize a handful of seeds, and their disappearance in the
west
marks the proper time for the sowing of crops.
Zipacna meets his own downfall
when Hunahpu and Xbalanque set out to
avenge the Four Hundred Boys. At a time when Zipacna has
gone
without food for several days, they set a trap for him by making
a
device that appears to be a living, moving crab. Having placed
this
artificial crab in a tight space beneath an overhang at the
bottom
of a great mountain, they show him the way there. Zipacna goes
after
the crab with great passion, and his struggles to wrestle
himself into
the right position to consummate his hunger become a symbolic
parody
of sexual intercourse. When the great moment comes the
whole
mountain falls on his chest (which is to say he ends up on
the
bottom), and when he heaves a sigh he turns to stone.*(13)
Finally there comes the
demise of the younger son of Seven Macaw,
named Earthquake, who bills himself as a destroyer of mountains.
In
his case the lure devised by Hunahpu and Xbalanque is the
irresistibly
delicious aroma given off by the roasting of birds. They cast
a
spell on the bird they give him to eat: just as it was cooked
inside a
coating of earth, so he will end up covered by earth. They leave
him
buried in the east, opposite his elder brother, whose killing of
the
Four Hundred Boys associates him with the west (where the
Pleiades may
be seen to fall beneath the earth). Seven Macaw, as the Big
Dipper, is
of course in the north. He is near the pivot of the movement of
the
night sky, whereas his two sons make the earth move- though
they
cannot raise or level whole mountains in a single day as they
once
did.*(14)
Having accounted for
three of the above-ground episodes in the lives
of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the Popol Vuh next moves back in time
to
tell the story of their father, One Hunahpu, and his twin
brother,
Seven Hunahpu (at the beginning of Part Three). This is the
point at
which the authors treat us as if we were in their very
presence,
introducing One Hunahpu with these words: "Let's drink to
him, and
let's just drink to the telling and accounting of the begetting
of
Hunahpu and Xbalanque." The story begins long before One
Hunahpu meets
the woman who will bear Hunahpu and Xbalanque; in the opening
episode,
he marries a woman named Xbaquiyalo and they have twin sons
named
One Monkey and One Artisan. One Hunahpu and his brother
sometimes play
ball with these two boys, and a messenger from Hurricane, a
falcon,*(15) sometimes comes to watch them. The boys become
practitioners of all sorts of arts and crafts, including
flute
playing, singing, writing, carving, jewelry making, and
metalworking. At some point Xbaquiyalo dies, but we are not
told
how; that leaves Xmucane, the mother of One and Seven Hunahpu,
as
the only woman in the household.
The ball court of One
and Seven Hunahpu lies on the eastern edge
of the earth's surface at a place called Great Abyss at
Carchah.*(16) Their ballplaying offends the lords of Xibalba,
who
dislike hearing noises above their subterranean domain. The head
lords
are named One Death and Seven Death, and under them are other
lords
who specialize in causing such maladies as lesions,
jaundice,
emaciation, edema, stabbing pains, and sudden death from
vomiting
blood. One and Seven Death decide to challenge One and Seven
Hunahpu
to come play ball in the court of Xibalba, which lies at the
western
edge of the underworld. They therefore send their messengers,
who
are monstrous owls, to the Great Abyss. One and Seven Hunahpu
leave
One Monkey and One Artisan behind to keep Xmucane entertained
and
follow the owls over the eastern edge of the world. The way is
full of
traps, but they do well until they come to the Crossroads,
where
each of four roads has a different color corresponding to a
different direction. They choose the Black Road, which means, at
the
terrestrial level, that their journey through the underworld
will take
them from east to west. At the celestial level, it means that
they
were last seen in the black cleft of the Milky Way when they
descended
below the eastern horizon; to this day the cleft is called the
Road of
Xibalba.
Entering the council
place of the lords of Xibalba is a tricky
business, beginning with the fact that the first two figures
seated
there are mere manikins, put there as a joke. The next gag that
awaits
visitors is a variation on the hot seat, but after that comes a
deadly
serious test. One and Seven Hunahpu must face a night in Dark
House,
which is totally black inside. They are given a torch and
two
cigars, but they are warned to keep these burning all night
without
consuming them. They fail this test, so their hosts sacrifice
them the
next day instead of playing ball with them. Both of them are
buried at
the Place of Ball Game Sacrifice, except that the severed head
of
One Hunahpu is placed in the fork of a tree that stands by the
road
there. Now, for the first time, the tree bears fruit, and it
becomes
difficult to tell the head from the fruit. This is the origin of
the
calabash tree, whose fruit is the size and shape of a human head.
Blood Woman, the maiden
daughter of a Xibalban lord named Blood
Gatherer, goes to marvel at the calabash tree. The head of
One
Hunahpu, which is a skull by now, spits in her hand and makes
her
pregnant with Hunahpu and Xbalanque. The skull explains to her
that
henceforth, a father's face will survive in his son, even after
his
own face has rotted away and left nothing but bone. After
six
months, when Blood Woman's father notices that she is pregnant,
he
demands to know who is responsible. She answers that "there
is no
man whose face I've known," which is literally true. He
orders the owl
messengers of Xibalba to cut her heart out and bring it back in
a
bowl; armed with the White Dagger, the instrument of sacrifice,
they
take her away.*(17) But she persuades them to spare her,
devising a
substitute for her heart in the form of a congealed nodule of
sap from
a croton tree. The lords heat the nodule over a fire and are
entranced
by the aroma; meanwhile the owls show Blood Woman to the surface
of
the earth. As a result of this episode it is destined that the
lords
of Xibalba will receive offerings of incense made from croton
sap
rather than human blood and hearts. At the astronomical level
Blood
Woman corresponds to the moon, which appears in the west at
nightfall when it begins to wax, just as she appeared before the
skull
of One Hunahpu at the Place of Ball Game Sacrifice when she
became
pregnant.
Once she is out of the
underworld, Blood Woman goes to Xmucane and
claims to be her daughter-in-law, but Xmucane resists the idea
that
her own son, One Hunahpu, could be responsible for Blood
Woman's
pregnancy. She puts Blood Woman to a test, sending her to get a
netful
of corn from the garden that One Monkey and One Artisan have
been
cultivating. Blood Woman finds only a single clump of corn
plants
there, but she produces a whole netful of ears by pulling out
the silk
from just one ear. When Xmucane sees the load of corn she goes
to
the garden herself, wondering whether Blood Woman has stripped
it.
On the ground at the foot of the clump of plants she notices
the
imprint of the carrying net, which she reads as a sign that
Blood
Woman is indeed pregnant with her own grandchildren.
To understand how
Xmucane is able to interpret the sign of the net
we must remember that she knows how to read the auguries of
the
Mayan calendar, and that one of the twenty day names that go
into
the making of that calendar is "Net." Retold from a
calendrical
point of view, the story so far is that Venus rose as the
morning star
on a day named Hunahpu, corresponding to the ballplaying of
Xmucane's sons, One and Seven Hunahpu, in the east; then,
after
being out of sight in Xibalba, Venus reappeared as the evening
star on
a day named Death, corresponding to the defeat of her sons by
One
and Seven Death and the placement of One Hunahpu's head in a
tree in
the west. The event that is due to come next in the story is
the
rebirth of Venus as the morning star, which should fall, as
she
already knows, on a day named Net. When she sees the imprint of
the
net in the field, she takes it as a sign that this event is
coming
near, and that the faces of the sons born to Blood Woman will
be
reincarnations of the face of One Hunahpu.*(18)
When Hunahpu and
Xbalanque are born they are treated cruelly by
their jealous half-brothers, One Monkey and One Artisan, and
even by
their grandmother. They never utter a complaint, but keep
themselves
happy by going out every day to hunt birds with their
blowguns.
Eventually they get the better of their brothers by sending them
up
a tree to get birds that failed to fall down when they were
shot. They
cause the tree to grow tall enough to maroon their brothers,
whom they
transform into monkeys. When Xmucane objects they give her
four
chances to see the faces of One Monkey and One Artisan
again,
calling them home with music. They warn her not to laugh, but
the
monkeys are so ridiculous she cannot contain herself; finally
they
swing up and away through the treetops for good. One Monkey and
One
Artisan, both of whose names refer to a single day on the
divinatory
calendar, correspond to the planet Mars, which thereafter begins
its
period of visibility on a day bearing these names, and their
temporary
return to the house of Xmucane corresponds to the retrograde
motion of
Mars. They are also the gods of arts and crafts, and they
probably
made their first journey through the sky during the era of
the
wooden people, who were the first earthly beings to make and
use
artifacts and who themselves ended up as monkeys.
With their
half-brothers out of the way, Hunahpu and Xbalanque
decide to clear a garden plot of their own, but when they return
to
the chosen spot each morning they find that the forest has
reclaimed
it. By hiding themselves at the edge of the plot one night,
they
discover that the animals of the forest are restoring the
cleared
plants by means of a chant. They try to grab each of these
animals
in turn, but they miss the puma and jaguar completely, break the
tails
off the rabbit and deer, and finally get their hands on the rat.
In
exchange for his future share of stored crops, the rat reveals
to them
that their father and uncle, One and Seven Hunahpu, left a set
of ball
game equipment tied up under the rafters of their house, and he
agrees
to help them get it down. At home the next day, Hunahpu and
Xbalanque get Xmucane out of the house by claiming her chili
stew
has made them thirsty; she goes after water but is delayed when
her
water jar springs a leak. Then, when Blood Woman goes off to see
why
Xmucane has failed to return, the rat cuts the ball game
equipment
loose and the twins take possession of it.
When Hunahpu and
Xbalanque begin playing ball at the Great Abyss
they disturb the lords of Xibalba, just like their father and
uncle
before them. Once again the lords send a summons, but this time
the
messengers go to Xmucane, telling her that the twins must
present
themselves in seven days. She sends a louse to relay the message
to
her grandsons, but the louse is swallowed by a toad, the toad by
a
snake, and the snake by a falcon.*(19) The falcon arrives over
the
ball court and the twins shoot him in the eye. They cure his
eye
with gum from their ball, which is why the laughing falcon now
has a
black patch around the eye. The falcon vomits the snake, who
vomits
the toad, who still has the louse in his mouth, and the
louse
recites the message, quoting what Xmucane told him when she
quoted
what the owls told her when they quoted what the lords of
Xibalba told
them to say.
Having been summoned to
the underworld, Hunahpu and Xbalanque go
to take leave of their grandmother, and in the process they
demonstrate a harvest ritual that Quiches follow to this day.
They
"plant" ears of corn in the center of her house, in
the attic; these
ears are neither to be eaten nor used as seed corn but are to
be
kept as a sign that corn remains alive throughout the year,
even
between the drying out of the plants at harvest time and the
sprouting
of new ones after planting. They tell their grandmother that
when a
crop dries out it will be a sign of their death, but that
the
sprouting of a new crop will be a sign that they live
again.*(20)
The twins play a game
with language when they instruct their
grandmother; only now, instead of a quotation swallowed up inside
other quotations we get a word hidden within other words. The
secret
word is "Ah," one of the twenty day names; the twins
point to it by
playing on its sounds rather than simply mentioning it. When
they tell
their grandmother that they are planting corn ears (ah) in the
house
(ha), they are making a pun on Ah in the one case and reversing
its
sound in the other. The play between Ah and ha is familiar
to
contemporary Quiche daykeepers, who use it when they explain
to
clients that the day Ah is portentous in matters affecting
households.
If the twins planted their corn ears in the house on the day
Ah,
then their expected arrival in Xibalba, seven days later, would
fall
on the day named Hunahpu. This fits the Mayan Venus
calendar
perfectly: whenever Venus rises as the morning star on a day
named
Net, corresponding to the appearance of Hunahpu and Xbalanque on
the
earth, its next descent into the underworld will always fall on
a
day named Hunahpu.
Following in the
footsteps of their father and uncle, Hunahpu and
Xbalanque descend the road to Xibalba, but when they come to
the
Crossroads they do things differently. They send a spy ahead
of
them, a mosquito, to learn the names of the lords. He bites each
one
of them in turn; the first two lords reveal themselves as mere
manikins by their lack of response, but the others, in the
process
of complaining about being bitten, address each other by name,
all the
way down the line. When the twins themselves arrive before
the
lords, they ignore the manikins (unlike their father and uncle)
and
address each of the twelve real lords correctly. Not only that,
but
they refuse to fall for the hot seat, and when they are given
a
torch and two cigars to keep lit all night, they trick the lords
by
passing off a macaw's tail as the glow of the torch and
putting
fireflies at the tips of their cigars.*(21)
The next day Hunahpu
and Xbalanque play ball with the Xibalbans,
something their father and uncle did not survive long enough to
do.
The Xibalbans insist on putting their own ball into play first,
though
the twins protest that this ball, which is covered with
crushed
bone, is nothing but a skull. When Hunahpu hits it back to
the
Xibalbans with the yoke that rides on his hips, it falls to
the
court and reveals the weapon that was hidden inside it. This
is
nothing less than the White Dagger, the same instrument of
sacrifice
that the owls were supposed to use on Blood Woman; it twists its
way
all over the court, but it fails to kill the twins.
The Xibalbans consent
to use the rubber ball belonging to the
twins in a further game; this time four bowls of flowers are bet
on
the outcome. After playing well for awhile the twins allow
themselves to lose, and they are given until the next day to
come up
with the flowers. This time they must spend the night in
Razor
House, which is full of voracious stone blades that are
constantly
looking for something to cut. In exchange for a promise that
they will
one day have the flesh of animals as their food, the blades
stop
moving. This leaves the boys free to attend to the matter of
the
flowers; they send leaf-cutting ants to steal them from the
very
gardens of the lords of Xibalba. The birds who guard this
garden,
poorwills and whippoorwills, are so oblivious that they fail to
notice
that their own tails and wings are being trimmed along with
the
flowers. The lords, who are aghast when they receive bowls
filled with
their own flowers, split the birds' mouths open, giving them
the
wide gape that birds of the night-jar family have today.
Next, the hero twins
survive stays in Cold House, which is full of
drafts and falling hail; Jaguar House, which is full of
hungry,
brawling jaguars; and a house with fire inside. After these
horrors
comes Bat House, full of moving, shrieking bats, where they
spend
the night squeezed up inside their blowgun.*(22) When the
house
grows quiet and Hunahpu peeks out from the muzzle, one of the
bats
swoops down and takes his head off. The head ends up rolling on
the
ball court of Xibalba, but Xbalanque replaces it with a carved
squash.
While he is busy with this head transplant the eastern sky
reddens
with the dawn, and a possum, addressed in the story as "old
man,"
makes four dark streaks along the horizon. Not only the red dawn
but
the possum and his streaks are signs that the time of the sun
(which
has never before been seen) is coming nearer. In the future a
new
solar year will be brought in by the old man each 365 days; the
four
streaks signify that only four of the twenty day names- Deer,
Tooth,
Thought, and Wind- will ever correspond to the first day of a
solar
year. Contemporary Quiche daykeepers continue to reckon the
solar
dimension of the Mayan calendar; in 1986, for example, they
will
expect the old man to arrive on February 28, which will be the
day
Thirteen Deer.*(23)
Once Hunahpu has been
fitted out with a squash for a head, he and
Xbalanque are ready to play ball with the Xibalbans again. When
the
lords send off Hunahpu's original head as the ball, Xbalanque
knocks
it out of the court and into a stand of oak trees. A rabbit
decoys the
lords, who mistake his hopping for the bouncing of the ball,
while
Xbalanque retrieves the head, puts it back on Hunahpu's
shoulders, and
then pretends to find the squash among the oaks. Now the squash
is put
into play, but it wears out and eventually splatters its seeds
on
the court, revealing to the lords of Xibalba that they have
been
played for fools. The game played with the squash, like the
games
played with the bone-covered ball and with Hunahpu's severed
head,
corresponds to an appearance of Venus in the west, the direction
of
evening and death. If these events were combined in
chronological
order with those that take place entirely above ground, they
would
probably alternate with the episodes in which the twins defeat
One
Monkey and One Artisan, Seven Macaw, Zipacna, and Earthquake,
with
each of these latter episodes corresponding to an appearance
of
Venus in the east, the direction of morning and life.*(24)
At this point we are
ready for the last of the episodes that
prefigure the cycles of Venus and prepare the way for the first
rising
of the sun. Knowing that the lords of Xibalba plan to burn
them,
Hunahpu and Xbalanque instruct two seers named Xulu and Pacam as
to
what they should say when the lords seek advice as to how to
dispose
of their remains. This done, the twins cheerfully accept an
invitation
to come see the great stone pit where the Xibalbans are cooking
the
ingredients for an alcoholic beverage. The lords challenge them
to a
contest in which the object is to leap clear across the pit, but
the
boys cut the deadly game short and jump right in. Thinking they
have
triumphed, the Xibalbans follow the advice of Xulu and Pacam,
grinding
the bones of the boys and spilling the powder into a river.
After five days Hunahpu
and Xbalanque reappear as catfish;*(25)
the day after that they take human form again, only now they
are
disguised as vagabond dancers and actors. They gain great fame
as
illusionists, their most popular acts being the ones in which
they set
fire to a house without burning it and perform a sacrifice
without
killing the victim. The lords of Xibalba get news of all this
and
invite them to show their skills at court; they accept with
pretended reluctance. The climax of their performance comes
when
Xbalanque sacrifices Hunahpu, rolling his head out the
door,
removing his heart, and then bringing him back to life. One
and
Seven Death go wild at the sight of this and demand that
they
themselves be sacrificed. The twins oblige- and, as might
already be
imagined, these final sacrifices are real ones. Hunahpu and
Xbalanque now reveal their true identities before all the
inhabitants of the underworld. They declare that henceforth,
the
offerings received by Xibalbans will be limited to incense made
of
croton sap and to animals, and that Xibalbans will limit their
attacks
on future human beings to those who have weaknesses or
guilt.
At this point the
narrative takes us back to the twins' grandmother,
telling us what she has been doing all this time. She cries when
the
season comes for corn plants to dry out, signifying the death of
her
grandsons, and rejoices when they sprout again, signifying
rebirth.
She burns incense in front of ears from the new crop and
thus
completes the establishment of the custom whereby humans
keep
consecrated ears in the house, at the center of the stored
harvest.
Then the scene shifts back to Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who are
about
to establish another custom.
Having made their
speech to the defeated Xibalbans, the twins go
to the Place of Ball Game Sacrifice with the intention of
reviving
Seven Hunahpu, whose head and body still lie buried there. The
full
restoration of his face depends on his own ability to pronounce
the
names of all the parts it once had, but he gets no further than
the
mouth, nose, and eyes, which remain as notable features of
skulls.
They leave him there, but they promise that human beings will
keep his
day (the one named Hunahpu), coming to pray where his remains
are.
To this day, Hunahpu days are set aside for the veneration of
the
dead, and graveyards are called by the same word (hom) as the
ball
courts of the Popol Vuh.
At the astronomical
level the visit of Hunahpu and Xbalanque to
their uncle's grave signals the return of a whole new round of
Venus
cycles, starting with a morning star that first appears on a day
named
Hunahpu. As for the twins themselves, they rise as the sun and
moon.
Contemporary Quiches regard the full moon as a nocturnal
equivalent of
the sun, pointing out that it has a full disk, is bright enough
to
travel by, and goes clear across the sky in the same time it
takes the
sun to do the same thing. Most likely the twin who became the
moon
is to be understood specifically as the full moon, whereas
Blood
Woman, the mother of the twins, would account for the other
phases
of the moon.*(26)
With the ascent of
Hunahpu and Xbalanque the Popol Vuh returns to
the problem the gods confronted at the beginning: the making of
beings
who will walk, work, talk, and pray in an articulate manner.
The
account of their fourth and final attempt at a solution is
a
flashback, since it takes us to a time when the sun had not
yet
appeared. As we have already seen, the gods failed when they
tried
using mud and then wood as the materials for the human body, but
now
they get news of a mountain filled with yellow corn and white
corn,
discovered by the fox, coyote, parrot, and crow (at the beginning
of
Part Four). Xmucane grinds the corn from this mountain very
finely,
and the flour, mixed with the water she rinses her hands
with,
provides the substance for human flesh, just as the ground bone
thrown
in the river by the Xibalbans becomes the substance for the
rebirth of
her grandsons. The first people to be modeled from the corn
dough
are four men named Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar Night, Mahucutah, and
True
Jaguar. They are the first four heads of Quiche patrilineages;
as in
the case of the men who occupy such positions today, they are
called
"mother-fathers,"*(27) since in ritual matters they
serve as
symbolic androgynous parents to everyone in their respective
lineages.
This time the beings
shaped by the gods are everything they hoped
for and more: not only do the first four men pray to their
makers, but
they have perfect vision and therefore perfect knowledge. The
gods are
alarmed that beings who were merely manufactured by them should
have
divine powers, so they decide, after their usual dialogue, to
put a
fog on human eyes. Next they make four wives for the four men,
and
from these couples come the leading Quiche lineages.
Celebrated
Seahouse becomes the wife of Jaguar Quitze, who founds the
Cauec
lineage; Prawn House becomes the wife of Jaguar Night, who
founds
the Greathouse lineage; and Hummingbird House becomes the wife
of
Mahucutah, who founds the Lord Quiche lineage. True Jaguar is
also
given a wife, Macaw House, but they have no male children.
Other
lineages and peoples also come into being, and they all begin
to
multiply.
All these early events
in human history take place in darkness,
somewhere in the "east," and all the different peoples
wander about
and grow weary as they go on watching and waiting for the rising
of
the morning star and the sun. Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar Night,
Mahucutah, and True Jaguar decide to change their situation
by
acquiring patron deities they can burn offerings in front of,
and it
is with this purpose in mind that they go to a great eastern
city
bearing the names Tulan Zuyua, Seven Caves, Seven Canyons. These
are
grand names that call up broad reaches of the Mesoamerican past.
Tulan
(or Tollan)*(28) means "Place of Reeds" or more
broadly "metropolis"
in Nahua, and it was prefixed to the names of many different
towns
during Toltecan times. The particular Tulan called Zuyua
was
probably near the Gulf coast in Tabasco or Campeche,
"eastern" because
it was east of the principal Tulan of the Toltecs, near Mexico
City at
the site now known as Tula. But in giving Tulan Zuyua the
further name
Seven Caves, the Popol Vuh preserves the memory of a metropolis
much
older and far grander than any Toltec town. This ultimate Tulan
was at
the site now known as Teotihuacan, northeast of Mexico City. It
was
the greatest city in Mesoamerican history, dating from the same
period
as the classic Maya. Only recently it has been discovered that
beneath
the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan lies a natural cave whose
main
shaft and side chambers add up to seven.*(29)
Countless lineages and
tribes converge on the Tulan Zuyua of the
Popol Vuh, and each of them, starting with the Quiches, is given
a
god. The Cauecs receive the god named Tohil, the Greathouses
receive
Auilix, and the Lord Quiches receive Hacauitz. Ultimately
the
patronage of the first-ranking god, Tohil, extended to all three
of
these lineages, and to two other Quiche lineages of lesser rank,
the
Tams and Ilocs. The worship of Tohil has recently been traced
back
to the classic period; in the inscriptions at Palenque, he bears
the
name Tahil, a Cholan word meaning "Obsidian Mirror,"
and he is shown
with a smoking mirror in his forehead.
The Popol Vuh tells us
that although "all the tribes were sown and
came to light in unity," their languages differentiated
while they
were at Tulan. The cause of this was that some peoples were
given
patron deities whose names differed from that of the god of
the
Quiches. The language of the Rabinals became only slightly
different, since they were given a god named One Toh rather
than
Tohil, but others, who received gods with completely
distinctive
names, ended up speaking distinctive languages, including
the
Cakchiquels, the Bird House people, and the Yaqui people.
Today,
indeed, the Rabinals, who live to the northeast of the
Quiche
proper, speak a dialect of Quiche, whereas the Cakchiquels
(still
known by this name) and the Bird House people (better known as
the
Tzutuhils) speak related but separate languages. What the Popol
Vuh
calls the Yaqui people are the speakers of Nahua languages, in
Mexico.
Those languages belong to a family that not only stands apart
from
Quiche, Cakchiquel, and Tzutuhil, but from Mayan languages in
general.
Tohil is the source of
the first fires kept by human beings,
making it possible for them to keep warm in the cold of the
predawn
world. When a great hailstorm puts all these fires out, Tohil
restores
fire to the Quiches by pivoting inside his sandal, which is to
say
that he originates the technology whereby fire is started
by
rotating a drill in the socket of a wooden platform. The other
tribes,
shivering with cold, come to the Quiches to beg for fire, but
Tohil
refuses to let them have it unless they promise to embrace
him
someday, allowing themselves to be suckled. They agree, not
realizing that when the time comes for the Quiche lords to
subjugate
them, being "suckled" by Tohil will mean having their
hearts cut out
in sacrifice. Only the Cakchiquels, who get their fire by
sneaking
past everyone else in the smoke, escape this fate.
At the suggestion of
Tohil the Quiches leave Tulan. They sacrifice
their own blood to him, passing cords through their ears and
elbows,
and they sing a song called "The Blame Is Ours,"
lamenting the fact
that they will not be in Tulan when the time comes for the first
dawn.
Packing their gods on their backs and watching continuously for
the
appearance of the morning star, they begin a long migration. At
a
place called Rock Rows, Furrowed Sands they cross a
"sea"*(30) on a
causeway; this would be somewhere in Tabasco or Campeche, perhaps
at
Potonchan or Tixchel, both lowland Maya sites where causeways
pass
through flooded areas. They also pass the Great Abyss, the
location of
the eastern ball court used by the sons and grandsons of
Xmucane, a
long way east and a little south of any likely location for Rock
Rows,
Furrowed Sands. Next they enter the highlands, turning west
and
continuing at a slight southward angle until they reach a
mountain
called Place of Advice, not very far short of the site where
they will
one day reach their greatest glory. With them at Place of
Advice,
having accompanied them ever since they left Tulan, are the
Rabinals, Cakchiquels, and Bird House people.
Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar
Night, Mahucutah, and True Jaguar, together
with their wives, observe a great fast at Place of Advice.
Tohil,
Auilix, and Hacauitz speak to them, asking to be given hiding
places
so that they will not be captured by enemies of the Quiches.
After a
search through the forest, each of these gods is hidden at the
place
that bears his name today. They are not yet placed in temples
atop
pyramids, but merely in arbors decorated with bromelias and
hanging
mosses. At the place of Hacauitz, on a mountaintop, the
Cauecs,
Greathouses, and Lord Quiches weep while they wait for the dawn;
the
Tams and Ilocs wait on nearby mountains, while peoples other
than
the Quiches wait at more distant places. When, at last, they all
see
the daybringer, the morning star, they give thanks by burning
the
incense they have kept for this occasion, ever since they left
Tulan.
At this point we reach
the moment in the account of human affairs
that corresponds to the final event in the account of the lives
of the
gods: the Sun himself rises. On just this one occasion he
appears as
an entire person, so hot that he dries out the face of the
earth.
His heat turns Tohil, Auilix, and Hacauitz to stone, along with
such
pumas, jaguars, and snakes as had existed until now. A
diminutive
god called White Sparkstriker*(31) escapes petrifaction by
going
into the shade of the trees, becoming the keeper of the stone
animals.
He remains to this day as a gamekeeper, with stone fetishes
(volcanic concretions and meteorites) that resemble
animals,
together with flesh-and-blood game animals, in his care. He may
be
encountered in forests and caves, or on dark nights and in
dreams;
he appears in contemporary masked dramas dressed entirely in
red,
the color of the dawn.
At first the Quiches
rejoice when they see the first sunrise, but
then they remember their "brothers," the tribes who
were with them
at Tulan, and they sing the song called "The Blame Is Ours"
once
again. In the words of this song they wonder where their
brothers
might be at this very moment. In effect, the coming of the
first
sunrise reunites the tribes, despite the fact that they
remain
widely separated in space; as the Popol Vuh has it, "there
were
countless peoples, but there was just one dawn for all
tribes." The
orderly movements of the lights of the sky, signs of the deeds
of
the gods, enable human beings to coordinate their actions even
when
they cannot see one another. In point of fact Mesoamerican
peoples
in general shared a common calendar, consisting of the
260-day
cycle, whose auguries were first read by Xpiyacoc and Xmucane,
and the
cycles of Mars, Venus, and the sun and moon, as measured off by
the
movements of their sons and grandsons and by Blood
Woman.*(32)
Having seen the first
sunrise from the mountain of Hacauitz, the
Quiches eventually build a citadel there. But at first, even
while the
people of other tribes are becoming thickly settled and are
seen
traveling the roads in great numbers, the Quiches remain rustic
and
rural, gathering the larvae of yellow jackets, wasps, and bees
for
food and staying largely out of sight. When they go before
the
petrified forms of Tohil, Auilix, and Hacauitz, they burn bits
of
pitchy bark and wildflowers as substitutes for refined incense
and
offer blood drawn from their own bodies. The three gods are
still able
to speak to them, but only by appearing in spirit form. Tohil
tells
them to augment their offerings with the blood of deer and birds
taken
in the hunt, but they grow dissatisfied with this arrangement
and
begin to cast eyes on the people they see walking by in the
roads.
From hiding places on mountain peaks, they begin imitating the
cries
of the coyote, fox, puma, and jaguar.
Finally Tohil tells the
Quiches to go ahead and take human beings
for sacrifice, reminding them that when they were at Tulan the
other
tribes promised to allow him to "suckle" them. They
begin to seize
people they find out walking alone or in pairs, taking them away
to
cut them open before Tohil, Auilix, and Hacauitz and then
rolling
their heads out onto the roads. At first the lords who rule
the
victimized tribes think these deaths are the work of wild
animals, but
then they suspect the worshipers of Tohil, Auilix, and Hacauitz
and
attempt to track them down. Again and again they are foiled by
rain,
mist, and mud, but they do discover that the three gods,
whose
spirit familiars take the form of adolescent boys, have a
favorite
bathing place. They send two beautiful maidens, Xtah and Xpuch,
to
wash clothes there, instructing them to tempt the boys and
then
yield to any advances. They warn the maidens to return with
proof of
the success of their mission, which must take the form of
presents
from the boys.*(33)
Contrary to plan, the
three Quiche gods fail to lust after Xtah
and Xpuch, but they do agree to provide them with presents.
They
give them three cloaks with figures on the inside, one painted
with
a jaguar by Jaguar Quitze, another painted with an eagle by
Jaguar
Night, and the third painted with swarms of yellow jackets and
wasps
by Mahucutah. When the maidens return the enemy lords are so
pleased
with the cloaks that they cannot resist trying them on. All is
well
until the wasps painted on the inside of the third cloak turn
into
real ones. Xtah and Xpuch are spurned; despite their failure
to
tempt Tohil, Auilix, and Hacauitz they become the first
prostitutes,
or what Quiches call "barkers of shins." As for the
enemy lords,
they resolve to make war and launch a massive attack on the
Quiche
citadel at Hacauitz.
The enemy warriors come
at night in order to get as far as
possible without resistance, but they fall into a deep sleep on
the
road. The Quiches not only strip them of all the metal ornaments
on
their weapons and clothes, but pluck out their eyebrows and
beards
as well. Even so the enemy warriors press on the next day,
determined to recover their losses, but the Quiches are well
prepared.
What the enemy lookouts see all around the citadel of Hacauitz
is a
wooden palisade; visible on the parapet are rows of warriors,
decked
out with the very metal objects that were stolen during the
night.
What the lookouts do not see is that these warriors are mere
wooden
puppets, and that behind the palisade, on each of its four
sides, is a
large gourd filled with yellow jackets and wasps, put there at
the
suggestion of Tohil. As for the Quiches on the inside, what
they
see, once the attack begins, is more than twenty-four
thousand
warriors converging on them, bristling with weapons and
shouting
continuously. But Tohil has made them so confident that they
treat the
attack as a great spectacle, bringing their women and children
up on
the parapet to see it. When they release the yellow jackets
and
wasps their enemies drop their weapons and attempt to flee, so
badly
stung they hardly even notice the blows they receive from
conventional
Quiche weapons. The survivors become permanent payers of tribute
to
the Quiche lords.
After their great
victory, Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar Night, Mahucutah,
and True Jaguar begin preparing, with complete contentment, for
what
they know to be their approaching death. First they sing
"The Blame Is
Ours," and then they explain to their wives and successors
that "the
time of our Lord Deer" has come around again. This is a
reference to
the day named Deer, one of the four days on which a new solar
year can
begin, and specifically to the first day of a longer period,
lasting
fifty-two years, which falls on One Deer.*(34) Such a major
temporal
transition is an occasion for rites of renewal; the Quiche
forefathers
declare that their time as lords among the living has been
completed
and that they intend to return to the place where they came
from,
far in the east. Jaguar Quitze leaves a sacred object called
the
"Bundle of Flames," a sort of cloth-wrapped ark with
mysterious
contents, as a "sign of his being." He and the others
"die" by
simply departing; they are never seen again, but their descendants
burn incense before the Bundle of Flames in remembrance of
them,
just as Xmucane burned incense before the ears of corn in
remembrance of Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
The Quiche lords of the
second generation, following the
instructions of their departed fathers, go on a pilgrimage to
the east
(at the beginning of Part Five). Unlike their fathers, they do
this
with the intention of returning in the flesh. Cocaib, the
firstborn
son of Jaguar Quitze, goes on behalf of the Cauec lineage;
Coacutec,
the second son of Jaguar Night, represents the Greathouses;
and
Coahau, the only son of Mahucutah, represents the Lord Quiches.
They
go all the way back down into the lowlands, to the other side of
the
same "sea" their fathers once crossed on the way up to
the
highlands. If they were retracing their fathers' route in
detail, they
must have descended into the lowlands by way of the Great
Abyss.
They do not go to Tulan Zuyua, which may have been in ruins by
this
time, but they do come before the ruler of a great kingdom. His
name
is Nacxit, one of the epithets Nahua speakers give to the
god-king
Plumed Serpent. He gives them the emblems that go with the two
highest
titles of Mayan nobility, Keeper of the Mat and Keeper of
the
Reception House Mat. Both these titles, the one belonging to a
head of
state and the other to an overseer of tribute collection, go to
the
Cauecs. From other sources we know that the Greathouse and Lord
Quiche
lineages also receive emblems at this time, with the title of
Lord
Minister (ranking third) going to one and that of Crier to
the
People (ranking fourth) to the other.*(35)
Cocaib, Coacutec, and
Coahau return "from across the sea" with the
regalia given them by Nacxit, including canopies, thrones,
musical
instruments, cosmetics, jewelry, the feet and feathers of
various
animals and birds, and "the writings about Tulan."
Since one of the
titles of the Popol Vuh is "The Light That Came from Across
the
Sea," we may guess that it was the Popol Vuh they brought
back, and
that the hieroglyphic version of the book contained not
only
writings about the gods whose movements prefigured those of
celestial lights, but about such human affairs as those of
Tulan.
The sovereign lordship of the returned pilgrims is recognized
not only
by the Quiches themselves, but by the Rabinals, Cakchiquels,
and
Bird House people as well. Only now do the Quiche lords begin
to
have what the Popol Vuh calls "fiery splendor." It
seems likely that
their pilgrimage was conceived as a reenactment of the
adventures of
Hunahpu and Xbalanque in Xibalba, who had only the planet Venus
to
their credit when they first descended in the east at the Great
Abyss,
but who eventually returned with the greater splendor of the sun
and
full moon.
Later, after the death
of the widows of Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar Night,
and Mahucutah, the Quiches leave Hacauitz and settle at a
succession
of other sites. The Popol Vuh mentions only one of these by
name,
Thorny Place, settled at some point after the deaths of
Cocaib,
Coacutec, and Coahau. The ruins of Thorny Place, which are
divided
into four parts just as the Popol Vuh indicates they should be,
are
some distance east and a little north of Hacauitz, in the
direction of
the Great Abyss. This location may have been chosen because it
was a
step backward on the Quiche migration route, placing the
ruling
lords closer to their forefathers than they were before. But
when
the Quiches move again, two generations later, they go west and
a
little south again, ending up even farther in that direction
than
Hacauitz. This time, with Cotuha as Keeper of the Mat and
Iztayul as
Keeper of the Reception House Mat, they found the citadel of
Bearded
Place, directly across a canyon to the south from the site of
what
will one day be their greatest citadel.*(36)
At Bearded Place there
is great harmony among the Cauecs,
Greathouses, and Lord Quiches; these three lineages, each with
its own
palace, are tied together through intermarriage. At Thorny Place
women
were married off in exchange for modest favors and gifts, but
now,
at Bearded Place, wedding arrangements are accompanied by
elaborate
feasting and drinking. The only disturbance during this period
comes
when the Ilocs not only try to get Iztayul involved in a plot
to
assassinate Cotuha, but come to the point of making a
military
attack on Bearded Place. They are defeated, and some of their
own
number are sacrificed before the gods of their intended victims.
The
Cauec, Greathouse, and Lord Quiche lineages now rise to greater
and
greater power, defeating some tribes in direct attacks and
terrorizing
still others by having them witness the sacrifice of prisoners
of war.
In the next generation
the Keeper of the Mat bears the divine name
Plumed Serpent, while the Keeper of the Reception House Mat is
Cotuha,
named after the previous Keeper of the Mat. They build a new
and
larger citadel across the canyon from Bearded Place, at
Rotten
Cane.*(37) The three leading lineages, faced with increased
numbers
and torn by quarrels over inflation in bride prices, break
apart
into smaller groups. The Cauecs divide into nine segments,
the
Greathouses into nine, and the Lord Quiches into four, with each
of
these segments headed by a titled lord and occupying its own
palace.
In addition, the inhabitants of Rotten Cane include the Zaquics,
a
lineage not previously mentioned in the Popol Vuh, divided into
two
segments but occupying only a single palace, making
twenty-three
palaces in all. Along with all these palaces, Rotten Cane
is
provided with three pyramids that bear the temples of Tohil,
Auilix,
and Hacauitz, ranged around a central plaza; elsewhere is a
fourth
pyramid for Corntassel, the god of the Zaquics.
The Popol Vuh
identifies Plumed Serpent, who holds the titles of
both Keeper of the Mat and Keeper of the Reception House Mat
during at
least part of his reign at Rotten Cane, as "a true lord of
genius." He
has the power to manifest his personal spirit familiars, putting
on
performances in which he transforms himself into a snake, an
eagle,
a jaguar, or a puddle of blood, climbing to the sky or
descending to
Xibalba. As the Popol Vuh explains it, his displays are
"just his
way of revealing himself," but they have the effect of
terrorizing the
lords of other tribes. The next Quiche lords to manifest
genius,
coming two generations later, are Quicab, who serves as Keeper
of
the Mat, and Cauizimah, who serves as Keeper of the Reception
House
Mat. Under their rule the dominion of the Quiches reaches its
greatest
extent. Where Plumed Serpent gained power through spectacular
displays
of shamanic skill, Quicab now gains it by military force.
Not
content with merely overpowering the citadels of
surrounding
peoples, he sends out loyal vassals, called "guardians of
the land" or
"lookout lineages," to serve as forces of occupation.
The stationing
of these guardians is conceived as analogous to the construction
of
a palisade; they turn the entire Quiche kingdom into one
great
fortress.
During this period the
settlement at the center of the Quiche
kingdom embraced a cluster of four citadels, with Rotten Cane at
the
focal point. Together with the ordinary houses that occupied the
lower
ground around them, these four sites made up a larger town that
took
the name Quiche. It was perhaps the most densely built-up area
that
had existed in highland Guatemala since early in the classic
period,
and it took on the stature of the place where Cocaib, Coacutec,
and
Coahau had gone to receive the titles and emblems of truly
glorious
lordship. Five generations after their pilgrimage a new
conferring
of titles took place, only now it was not Quiches but the heads
of the
leading "lookout" lineages who were ennobled, and it
happened not
under the authority of Nacxit, lord of a domain in the
mythic
"east," but under Quicab, who ruled from
Quiche.*(38)
The town of Quiche not
only took on the status of the place
visited by the pilgrims who saw Nacxit, but of the Tulan visited
by
their forefathers as well. When the founders of the ruling
Quiche
lineages and their closest allies left Tulan Zuyua before the
first
sunrise, they had come away with tribal gods whose names were
"meant
to be in agreement," and they were "in unity"
when they passed the
Great Abyss and convened at Place of Advice. Now, in this
latter
day, "the word came from just one place" again, and
the allies
convened in a town and "came away in unity" again, but
this time
they came away "having heard, there at Quiche, what all of
them should
do." It was probably during this period that the Quiche
lords went
so far as to have a branching tunnel constructed directly beneath
Rotten Cane, a tunnel that brought the Seven Caves of Tulan
Zuyua,
or of the ultimate Tulan that was Teotihuacan, to the time and
place
of their own greatest glory.
It is in the course of
explaining the greatness of lords like Plumed
Serpent and Quicab that the writers of the alphabetic Popol Vuh
tell
us how its hieroglyphic predecessor was put to use, serving as a
way
of seeing into distant places and times. Greatness also came to
the
lords through their participation in religious retreats. For
long
periods they would stay in the temples, praying, burning
incense,
bleeding themselves, sleeping apart from their wives, and abstaining
not only from meat but from corn products, eating nothing but
the
fruits of various trees. The shortest fast lasted 180 days,
corresponding to half the 360-day cycle (separate from the solar
year)
that was used in keeping chronologies of historical events,
and
another lasted 260 days, or one complete run of the cycle whose
days
were counted by Xpiyacoc and Xmucane when they divined for the
gods.
The longest fast, 340 days, corresponded to a segment of the
Mayan
Venus calendar, beginning with the departure of Venus as the
morning
star and continuing through its stay in the underworld and
its
period of reappearance as the evening star, leaving just eight
days to
go before its rebirth as the morning star. This fast
probably
commemorated the heroic adventures of Hunahpu and Xbalanque
in
Xibalba, the long darkness endured by the first generation of
lords as
they watched for the appearance of the morning star, and the
lowland
pilgrimage undertaken by Cocaib, Coacutec, and Coahau.
The Quiche lords sought
identification with the very gods, not
only in their pilgrimages, shamanic feats, limitless vision,
and
long fasts, but in the requirements they set for their
subjects.
Just as the gods needed human beings to nurture them with
offerings,
so human lords required subjects to bring them tribute. As the
Popol
Vuh points out, the "nurture" required by the Quiche
lords consisted
not only of the food and drink that were prepared for them, but
of
turquoise, jade, and the iridescent blue-green feathers of the
quetzal
bird. Apparently such precious objects as these were considered
the
ultimate fruits of the earth and sky, which were themselves
described as the "blue-green plate" and
"blue-green bowl."
Near the end, the Popol
Vuh lists all the noble titles held by the
various segments of the Cauec, Greathouse, and Lord Quiche
lineages
(in rank order), and it gives the names of those who held
the
highest titles (in the order of their succession). In the case
of
the two leading segments of the Cauec lineage, those whose
heads
held the titles of Keeper of the Mat and Keeper of the Reception
House
Mat, the text lists four generations after Quicab and Cauizimah,
who
were in the seventh generation, without comment. Then, in
the
twelfth generation, the names Three Deer and Nine Dog are
followed
by two sentences whose combination of gravity and brevity gives
the
reader a chill. The first is, "And they were ruling when
Tonatiuh
arrived," Tonatiuh or "Sun" being the name given
by the Aztecs to
Pedro de Alvarado, the man whose forces destroyed Rotten Cane in
1524.
And the second sentence about Three Deer and Nine Dog is simply,
"They
were hanged by the Castilian people."*(39)
In the thirteenth
generation of Cauecs the Popol Vuh lists Tecum and
Tepepul, who were "tributary to the Castilian people."
Then, at the
end of the list of Cauec generations, come the first lords who
adopted
Spanish names, Juan de Rojas and Juan Cortes, the living holders
of
the titles of Keeper of the Mat and Keeper of the Reception
House
Mat when the alphabetic Popol Vuh was written. Today Quiches
ideally
list either nine or thirteen generations when they invoke
their
ancestors in prayer; from this we can see that the thirteen
generations of lords named as preceding Juan de Rojas and
Juan
Cortes need not be taken as constituting an exhaustive genealogy
but
may simply be a list of the names these two men used in their
own
prayers.
By giving us the names
of Quiche lords who were alive while they
were writing, the authors of the alphabetic Popol Vuh also give
us the
means for dating their work. They could not have finished it any
later
than 1558, since by that year the name of Juan de Rojas is
missing
from documents he would have signed had he still been among
the
living. And since they mention Pedro de Robles of the
Greathouse
lineage as the current Lord Minister, they could not have
finished any
earlier than 1554, at which time his predecessor was still
in
office. This places the writing of the Popol Vuh during the
very
same decade as the writing of the majority of the native
titulos
that exist for colonial Guatemala, documents that were composed
by
indigenous authors for the express purpose of reasserting the
rights
formerly enjoyed by specific lordly lineages living in
specific
places. The version of the Popol Vuh that comes down to us does
not
include a copy of the original title page or of whatever
explicitly
legal statements might have been appended to the original
alphabetic
manuscript, but it makes the lineage and place names plain
enough, and
it contains two different lists of towns that had once been
tributary to Quiche.*(40)
It may be that the
indigenous lords of highland Guatemala chose
the 1550s to make their claims because they thought they saw
an
opening in Spanish policy, but they may also have been preparing
for
the major temporal transition that Jaguar Quitze, Jaguar
Night,
Mahucutah, and True Jaguar had once called "the time of our
Lord
Deer." A new fifty-two-year cycle, with the first day of
its first
year falling on One Deer, was due to begin on June 2, 1558 (on
the
Julian calendar). Juan Cortes, whose duties as Keeper of the
Reception
House Mat would have included tribute collection had he
served
before the coming of Alvarado, worked constantly to restore
tribute
rights to the lordly lineages of the town of Quiche. In 1557 he
went
all the way to Spain to press his case, and it may well be that
he
took a copy of the alphabetic Popol Vuh with him. He continued
to make
claims when he returned to Guatemala in 1558, prompting a
missionary
to warn Philip II that "this land is new and not confirmed
in the
faith," and that Cortes, "son of idolatrous parents,
would need to
do very little to restore their ceremonies and attract their
former
subjects to himself."*(41) Quiche rights to collect tribute
never were
restored, but over the next thirty years Juan Cortes did take
a
considerable role in appointing and installing the leaders
of
various towns that had once been under Quiche rule.*(42)
By the time the authors
of the Popol Vuh have finished giving the
rank order of noble titles and the names of the individuals who
held
the highest titles, they are only a few sentences away from
finishing their work. At this point they single out one of
the
lesser titles for further discussion, a move that seems
anticlimactic until we realize that they are giving us a clue to
their
own identity. Without naming any individuals, they point out
that each
of the three leading lineages included one lord bearing the
title of
Great Toastmaster,*(43) also translatable as Great Convener
of
Banquets. Here we may recall that when the authors introduced
the
story of One Hunahpu, they themselves proposed a toast to
the
reader. If we look for a convener of banquets and maker of
toasts
among the contemporary Quiche, we find the professional
matchmaker,
who serves as an eloquent master of ceremonies at the feasts
where
marriage arrangements are completed. If our mysterious authors
were
themselves the three Great Toastmasters, and if their
duties
included the convening of wedding banquets, that would help
explain
why they took a special interest in marriage customs when
they
recounted the life and times of successive Quiche citadels.
Indeed,
they specifically noted the point at which feasting and drinking
first
became a part of the negotiations for a bride.
The authors give us one
final clue to their identity when they
tell us that the three Great Toastmasters are "Mothers of
the Word"
and "Fathers of the Word." The combination of
"Mother" and "Father"
suggests the contemporary daykeepers called mother-fathers,
who
serve as the ritual heads of patrilineages; it is from their
ranks
that matchmakers are drawn. The focus on "the Word,"
coming as it does
near the very end of a work whose opening line promised to give
us the
"Ancient Word," suggests that the Word parented by the
Great
Toastmasters and the Word written down in the alphabetic Popol
Vuh are
one and the same. If so, we know the name of at least one of
the
writers: when Juan de Rojas and Juan Cortes signed a document
known as
the "Title of the Lords of Totonicapan" in 1554, a man
named Cristobal
Velasco*(44) signed himself as Great Toastmaster of the
Cauecs.
At the end of their
work the authors repeat the enigma they
presented near the beginning, allowing us to wonder whether
the
hieroglyphic Popol Vuh might still exist somewhere, only now
they
say it has been "lost" instead of telling us that the
reader is hiding
his face. They close on a note of reassurance, asking us, in
effect,
to accept what they have written without demanding a closer look
at
their sources, since "everything has been completed here
concerning
Quiche," meaning the place named Quiche. Then, lest we
forget their
difficult circumstances, they add the phrase, "which is now
named
Santa Cruz," or "Holy Cross." Here again they
take us back to the
beginning, where they told us, "We shall write about this
now amid the
preaching of God, in Christendom now."
Today, even when Quiche
daykeepers go to a remote mountaintop
shrine, sending up great clouds of incense for multitudes of
deities
and ancestors, they sometimes begin and end by running through
an "Our
Father" and a "Hail Mary" and crossing
themselves. It is as if the
alien eye and ear of the conqueror were present even under
conditions of solitude and required the recitation of two
spells,
one to ward them off for awhile and the other to readmit
their
existence. Between these protective spells daykeepers are left
to
enter, in peace, a world whose obligations they know to be
older
than those of Christianity, obligations to the mountains and
plains
where they continue to live and to all those who have ever lived
there
before them. So it is with the authors of the Popol Vuh, who
mention
Christendom on the first page, Holy Cross on the last page, and
open
up the whole sky-earth, vast and deep, within.
Perhaps the most
remarkable thing about the Popol Vuh, considered in
its entirety, is the vast temporal sweep of its narrative. It
begins
in darkness, with a world inhabited only by gods, and continues
all
the way past the dawn into the time of the humans who wrote it.
The
surviving Maya hieroglyphic books abound with gods, but they
seem to
stop short of dealing directly with the acts of mortals. The
Dresden
book does have one page that shifts the action to the human
sphere,
but the following pages were torn off at some time in the past.
If
we wish to find hieroglyphic texts that have the same
proportion
between divine and human affairs as the alphabetic Popol Vuh,
we
must leave the time and place in which it was written and go
a
thousand years back and hundreds of miles away to the classic
Maya
site of Palenque, in the Gulf-coast lowlands.*(45)
At Palenque, in the sanctuary of each temple
in what is now known as
the Cross Group, is a stone tablet bearing a hieroglyphic
narrative.
In each case the text is divided into two panels, one of
which
begins with the deeds of gods who include the classic
equivalents of
Hunahpu and Xbalanque, and the other of which ends with the
deeds of
human lords whose own scribes were the authors of the
inscriptions. In
the middle of this narrative, where the reader passes from one
panel
to the other, are characters who are neither fully divine nor
quite
human. So also with the Popol Vuh: about halfway through, the
reader
comes to a transition between what might be called
"myth" and
"history" (at the end of Part Three). The characters
in the
narrative are still divine at this point, but they are described
as
performing rituals for the veneration of ripened corn and
deceased
relatives, rituals that are meant to be followed by future
humans
rather than by ancient gods. After this episode, in which the
gods act
like people, comes another in which people act like gods (at
the
beginning of Part Four). The people in question are the first
four
humans, the ones who saw and understood everything in the
sky-earth.
Once their perfect vision has been taken away the narrative
begins
to sound more like history as it moves along, though human
characters continue to aspire to deeds of divine
proportions.*(46)
We tend to think of
myth and history as being in conflict with one
another, but the authors of the inscriptions at Palenque and
the
alphabetic text of the Popol Vuh treated the mythic and
historical
parts of their narratives as belonging to a single, balanced
whole. By
their sense of proportion, the Egyptian Book of the Dead would
need
a second half devoted to human deeds in the land of the living,
and
the Hebrew Testament would need a first half devoted to events
that
took place before the fall of Adam and Eve. In the case of
ancient
Chinese literature the Book of Changes, which is like the Popol
Vuh in
being subject to divinatory interpretation, would have to
be
combined with the Book of History in a single volume.
To this day the Quiche
Maya think of dualities in general as
complementary rather than opposed, interpenetrating rather
than
mutually exclusive. Instead of being in logical opposition to
one
another, the realms of divine and human actions are joined by a
mutual
attraction. If we had an English word that fully expressed the
Mayan
sense of narrative time, it would have to embrace the duality of
the
divine and the human in the same way the Quiche term cahuleu
or
"sky-earth" preserves the duality of what we call the
"world." In fact
we already have a word that comes close to doing the job:
mythistory, taken into English from Greek by way of Latin. For
the
ancient Greeks, who set about driving a wedge between the divine
and
the human, this term became a negative one, designating
narratives
that should have been properly historical but contained
mythic
impurities. For Mayans, the presence of a divine dimension
in
narratives of human affairs is not an imperfection but a
necessity,
and it is balanced by a necessary human dimension in narratives
of
divine affairs. At one end of the Popol Vuh the gods are
preoccupied
with the difficult task of making humans, and at the other
humans
are preoccupied with the equally difficult task of finding
the
traces of divine movements in their own deeds.
The difference between
a fully mythistorical sense of narrative time
and the European quest for pure history is not reducible to a
simple
contrast between cyclical and linear time. Mayans are always
alert
to the reassertion of the patterns of the past in present
events,
but they do not expect the past to repeat itself exactly. Each
time
the gods of the Popol Vuh attempt to make human beings they get
a
different result, and except for the solitary person made of
mud, each
attempt has a lasting result rather than completely
disappearing
into the folds of cyclical time. Later, when members of the
second
generation of Quiche lords go on a pilgrimage that takes them
into the
lowlands, their journey is not described as a literal repetition
of
the journey of Hunahpu and Xbalanque to Xibalba, nor even as
a
retracing of the journey of the human founders of the ruling
Quiche
lineages, but is allowed its own character as a unique event, an
event
that nevertheless carries echoes of the past. The effect of
these
events, like others, is cumulative, and it is a specifically
human
capacity to take each of them into account separately while at
the
same time recognizing that they double back on one another.*(47)
In theory, if we who
presently claim to be human were to forget
our efforts to find the traces of divine movements in our own
actions,
our fate should be something like that of the wooden people in
the
Popol Vuh. For them, the forgotten force of divinity reasserted
itself
by inhabiting their own tools and utensils, which rose up
against them
and drove them from their homes. Today they are swinging through
the
trees.
On the holy day Eight
Monkey
in the year Eleven
Thought,
June 22, 1984,
Menotomy,
Massachusetts
PRONOUNCING_QUICHE_WORDS
-
PRONOUNCING QUICHE WORDS
-
VOWELS
a Like a in English
"father," or Spanish a.
e Like ai in English
"wait," or Spanish e.
i Like ee in English
"seed," or Spanish i.
o Like o in English
"bone," or Spanish o.
u Like oo in English
"hoot," or Spanish u.
aa, ee, ii, The doubling of a vowel normally indicates
that it
oo, uu is followed by a glottal stop, which
is like tt in
the
Scottish pronunciation of "bottle"; when uu
begins a
word or follows another vowel it is
pronounced like English "woo."
-
CONSONANTS
b Like English b, but pronounced
together with a
glottal
stop.
c, qu Pronounced without the puff of air
that follows c in
English
"cat."
ch Like English ch.
h Pronounced deeper in the throat
than English h, like
Spanish
j or German ch.
k Pronounced with the tongue
farther back in the mouth
than for
c or qu, like the Hebrew letter qoph.
l Pronounced with the tongue moved
forward from the
position
of English l so as to touch the teeth, as
in the
ll of Welsh "Lloyd."
m Like English m.
n Like English n.
p Pronounced without the puff of
air that follows p in
English
"pit."
r Pronounced with a flap if
between two vowels, like
Spanish
r, otherwise trilled like Spanish rr.
t Pronounced without the puff of
air that follows t in
English
"ten."
tt Like t, but pronounced together
with a glottal stop.
tz Like ts in English
"mats."
x Like English sh.
y Like English y.
z Like English s.
3 Like k, but pronounced together
with a glottal
stop.
4 Like c or qu, but pronounced
together with a glottal
stop.
4h Like ch, but pronounced together
with a glottal
stop.
4, Like tz, but pronounced together
with a glottal
stop.
-
Stress is always on the
final syllable of a word.
PART_ONE
PART ONE
-
THIS IS THE
BEGINNING*(48) OF THE ANCIENT WORD, here in this place
called Quiche.*(49) Here we shall inscribe, we shall implant
the
Ancient Word, the potential and source for everything done in
the
citadel of Quiche, in the nation of Quiche people.
And here*(50) we shall
take up the demonstration, revelation, and
account of how things were put in shadow and brought to
light*(51)
-
by the Maker,
Modeler, named Bearer, Begetter,
Hunahpu Possum,
Hunahpu Coyote,
Great White
Peccary, Tapir,
Sovereign Plumed
Serpent,
Heart of the
Lake, Heart of the Sea,
Maker of the
Blue-Green Plate,
Maker of the
Blue-Green Bowl,
-
as they are called, also named, also described as
-
the midwife,
matchmaker*(52)
named Xpiyacoc,
Xmucane,
defender,
protector,*(53)
twice a
midwife, twice a matchmaker,
-
as is said in the words of Quiche. They accounted for
everything-
and did it, too- as enlightened beings, in enlightened
words.*(54)
We shall write about this now amid the preaching of God, in
Christendom now.*(55) We shall bring it out because there is no
longer
a place to see it,*(56) a Council Book,
-
a place to see
"The Light That Came from
Across the
Sea,"
the account of
"Our Place in the Shadows,"
a place to see
"The Dawn of Life,"
-
as it is called. There is the original book and ancient writing,
but
he who reads and ponders it hides his face.*(57) It takes a
long
performance*(58) and account to complete the emergence of all
the
sky-earth:
-
the fourfold
siding, fourfold cornering,
measuring,
fourfold staking,
halving the
cord, stretching the cord
in the sky,
on the earth,
the four
sides, the four corners,*(59)
-
as it is said,
-
by the Maker,
Modeler,
mother-father of
life, of humankind,
giver of breath,
giver of heart,
bearer,
upbringer*(60) in the light that lasts*(61)
of those born in
the light, begotten in the light;
worrier, knower
of everything, whatever there is:
sky-earth,
lake-sea.
-
THIS IS THE ACCOUNT,
here it is:
Now it still ripples,
now it still murmurs, ripples, it still sighs,
still hums, and it is empty*(62) under the sky.
Here follow the first
words, the first eloquence:*(63)
There is not yet one
person, one animal, bird, fish, crab, tree,
rock, hollow, canyon, meadow, forest. Only the sky alone is
there; the
face of the earth is not clear. Only the sea alone is pooled
under all
the sky; there is nothing whatever gathered together. It is at
rest;
not a single thing stirs.*(64) It is held back,*(65) kept at
rest
under the sky.
Whatever there is that
might be is simply not there: only the pooled
water, only the calm sea, only it alone is pooled.
Whatever might be is
simply not there: only murmurs, ripples, in the
dark, in the night. Only the Maker, Modeler alone, Sovereign
Plumed
Serpent, the Bearers, Begetters are in the water, a
glittering
light.*(66) They are there, they are enclosed in quetzal
feathers,
in blue-green.
Thus the name,
"Plumed Serpent." They are great knowers, great
thinkers in their very being.*(67)
And of course there is
the sky, and there is also the Heart of
Sky. This is the name of the god,*(68) as it is spoken.
And then came his word,
he came here to the Sovereign Plumed
Serpent, here in the blackness, in the early dawn.*(69) He
spoke
with the Sovereign Plumed Serpent, and they talked, then they
thought,
then they worried. They agreed with each other, they joined
their
words, their thoughts.*(70) Then it was clear, then they
reached
accord in the light, and then humanity was clear, when they
conceived the growth, the generation*(71) of trees, of bushes,
and the
growth of life, of humankind, in the blackness, in the early
dawn, all
because of the Heart of Sky, named Hurricane. Thunderbolt
Hurricane
comes first, the second is Newborn Thunderbolt, and the third is
Raw
Thunderbolt.*(72)
So there were three of
them, as Heart of Sky, who came to the
Sovereign Plumed Serpent, when the dawn of life was
conceived:
"How should it be
sown, how should it dawn?*(73) Who is to be the
provider, nurturer?"*(74)
"Let it be this
way, think about it: this water should be removed,
emptied out for the formation of the earth's own plate and
platform,
then comes the sowing, the dawning of the sky-earth. But there
will be
no high days and no bright praise*(75) for our work, our design,
until
the rise of the human work, the human design," they said.
And then the earth
arose because of them, it was simply their word
that brought it forth. For the forming of the earth they said
"Earth."
It arose suddenly, just like a cloud, like a mist, now
forming,
unfolding. Then the mountains were separated from the
water,*(76)
all at once the great mountains came forth. By their genius
alone,
by their cutting edge alone*(77) they carried out the conception
of
the mountain-plain, whose face grew instant groves of cypress
and
pine.
And the Plumed Serpent
was pleased with this:
"It was good that
you came, Heart of Sky, Hurricane, and Newborn
Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt. Our work, our design will turn
out
well," they said.
And the earth was
formed first, the mountain-plain. The channels
of water were separated; their branches wound their ways among
the
mountains. The waters were divided when the great mountains
appeared.
Such was the formation
of the earth when it was brought forth by the
Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth, as they are called, since they
were
the first to think of it.*(78) The sky was set apart, and the
earth
was set apart in the midst of the waters.
Such was their plan
when they thought, when they worried about the
completion of their work.
-
NOW THEY PLANNED THE
ANIMALS OF THE MOUNTAINS, all the guardians
of the forests,*(79) creatures of the mountains: the deer,
birds,
pumas, jaguars, serpents, rattlesnakes, yellowbites,*(80)
guardians of
the bushes.
A Bearer, Begetter
speaks:
"Why this
pointless humming?*(81) Why should there merely be
rustling beneath the trees and bushes?"
"Indeed- they had
better have guardians," the others replied. As
soon as they thought it and said it, deer and birds came
forth.
And then they gave out
homes to the deer and birds:
"You, the deer:
sleep along the rivers, in the canyons. Be here in
the meadows, in the thickets, in the forests, multiply
yourselves. You
will stand and walk on all fours," they were told.
So then they
established the nests of the birds, small and great:
"You, precious
birds:*(82) your nests, your houses are in the trees,
in the bushes. Multiply there, scatter there, in the branches
of
trees, the branches of bushes," the deer and birds were
told.
When this deed had been
done, all of them had received a place to
sleep*(83) and a place to stay. So it is that the nests of the
animals
are on the earth, given by the Bearer, Begetter. Now the
arrangement
of the deer and birds was complete.
-
AND THEN THE DEER AND
BIRDS WERE TOLD by the Maker, Modeler, Bearer,
Begetter:
"Talk, speak out.
Don't moan, don't cry out.*(84) Please talk,
each to each, within each kind, within each group," they
were told-
the deer, birds, puma, jaguar, serpent.
"Name now our
names, praise us. We are your mother, we are your
father. Speak now:
-
'Hurricane,
Newborn
Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt,
Heart of Sky,
Heart of Earth,
Maker,
Modeler,
Bearer, Begetter,'
-
speak, pray to us, keep our days," they were told. But it
didn't
turn out that they spoke like people: they just squawked, they
just
chattered, they just howled.*(85) It wasn't apparent what
language
they spoke;*(86) each one gave a different cry. When the
Maker,
Modeler heard this:
"It hasn't turned
out well, they haven't spoken," they said among
themselves. "It hasn't turned out that our names have been
named.
Since we are their mason and sculptor, this will not do,"
the
Bearers and Begetters said among themselves. So they told
them:
"You will simply
have to be transformed. Since it hasn't turned
out well and you haven't spoken, we have changed our word:
"What you feed on,
what you eat, the places where you sleep, the
places where you stay, whatever is yours will remain in the
canyons,
the forests. Although it turned out that our days were not kept,
nor
did you pray to us, there may yet be strength in the keeper of
days,
the giver of praise whom we have yet to make. Just accept
your
service, just let your flesh be eaten.
"So be it, this
must be your service," they were told when they were
instructed- the animals, small and great, on the face of the
earth.
And then they wanted to
test their timing again, they wanted to
experiment again, and they wanted to prepare for the keeping of
days
again. They had not heard their speech among the animals; it did
not
come to fruition and it was not complete.
And so their flesh was
brought low: they served, they were eaten,
they were killed- the animals on the face of the earth.
-
AGAIN THERE COMES AN
EXPERIMENT WITH THE HUMAN WORK, the human
design, by the Maker, Modeler, Bearer, Begetter:
"It must simply be
tried again. The time for the planting and
dawning is nearing. For this we must make a provider and
nurturer. How
else can we be invoked and remembered on the face of the earth?
We
have already made our first try at our work and design, but
it
turned out that they didn't keep our days, nor did they glorify
us.
"So now let's try
to make a giver of praise, giver of respect,
provider, nurturer," they said.
So then comes the
building and working with earth and mud. They made
a body, but it didn't look good to them. It was just
separating,
just crumbling, just loosening, just softening, just
disintegrating,
and just dissolving. Its head wouldn't turn, either. Its face
was just
lopsided, its face was just twisted. It couldn't look around.
It
talked at first, but senselessly.*(87) It was quickly dissolving
in
the water.
"It won't
last," the mason and sculptor said then. "It seems to be
dwindling away, so let it just dwindle. It can't walk and it
can't
multiply, so let it be merely a thought," they said.
So then they
dismantled, again they brought down their work and
design. Again they talked:
"What is there for
us to make that would turn out well, that would
succeed in keeping our days and praying to us?" they said.
Then they
planned again:
"We'll just tell
Xpiyacoc, Xmucane, Hunahpu Possum, Hunahpu
Coyote, to try a counting of days, a counting of
lots,"*(88) the mason
and sculptor said to themselves. Then they invoked Xpiyacoc,
Xmucane.
-
THEN COMES THE NAMING
OF THOSE WHO ARE THE MIDMOST SEERS: the
"Grandmother of Day, Grandmother of Light," as the
Maker, Modeler
called them. These are names of Xpiyacoc and Xmucane.
When Hurricane had
spoken with the Sovereign Plumed Serpent, they
invoked the daykeepers, diviners, the midmost seers:
"There is yet to
find, yet to discover how we are to model a person,
construct a person again, a provider, nurturer, so that we
are
called upon and we are recognized: our recompense is in
words.
-
Midwife,
matchmaker,
our grandmother,
our grandfather,
Xpiyacoc,
Xmucane,
let there be
planting, let there be the dawning
of our
invocation, our sustenance, our recognition
by the human work, the human design,
the human figure,
the human mass.*(89)
-
So be it, fulfill your names:
-
Hunahpu
Possum, Hunahpu Coyote,
Bearer twice
over, Begetter twice over,
Great Peccary,
Great Tapir,
lapidary,
jeweler,
sawyer,
carpenter,
Maker of the Blue-Green Plate,
Maker of the
Blue-Green Bowl,
incense maker,
master craftsman,*(90)
Grandmother of
Day, Grandmother of Light.
-
You have been called upon because of our work, our design. Run
your
hands over the kernels of corn, over the seeds of the coral
tree,*(91)
just get it done, just let it come out whether we should carve
and
gouge a mouth, a face in wood," they told the
daykeepers.
And then comes the
borrowing,*(92) the counting of days; the hand is
moved over the corn kernels, over the coral seeds, the days,
the
lots.*(93)
Then they spoke to
them, one of them a grandmother, the other a
grandfather.
This is the
grandfather, this is the master of the coral seeds:
Xpiyacoc is his name.
And this is the
grandmother, the daykeeper, diviner who stands
behind others:*(94) Xmucane is her name.
And they said, as they
set out the days:
-
"Just let it
be found, just let it be discovered,
say it, our ear is
listening,
may you talk, may
you speak,
just find the wood
for the carving and sculpting
by the builder,
sculptor.
Is this to be the
provider, the nurturer
when it comes to
the planting, the dawning?
You corn kernels,
you coral seeds,
you days, you
lots:
may you succeed,
may you be accurate,"*(95)
-
they said to the corn kernels, coral seeds, days, lots.
"Have shame,
you up there, Heart of Sky: attempt no deception*(96) before the
mouth
and face of Sovereign Plumed Serpent," they said. Then they
spoke
straight to the point:
"It is well that
there be your manikins, woodcarvings,*(97) talking,
speaking, there on the face of the earth."
"So be it,"
they replied. The moment they spoke it was done: the
manikins, woodcarvings, human in looks and human in speech.
This was the peopling
of the face of the earth:
They came into being,
they multiplied, they had daughters, they
had sons, these manikins, woodcarvings. But there was nothing in
their
hearts and nothing in their minds, no memory of their mason
and
builder. They just went and walked wherever they wanted.*(98)
Now they
did not remember the Heart of Sky.
And so they fell, just
an experiment and just a cutout for
humankind. They were talking at first but their faces were dry.
They
were not yet developed in the legs and arms. They had no blood,
no
lymph. They had no sweat, no fat. Their complexions were dry,
their
faces were crusty. They flailed their legs and arms, their
bodies were
deformed.
And so they
accomplished nothing before the Maker, Modeler who
gave them birth, gave them heart. They became the first
numerous
people here on the face of the earth.
-
AGAIN THERE COMES A
HUMILIATION, destruction, and demolition. The
manikins, woodcarvings were killed when the Heart of Sky devised
a
flood for them. A great flood was made; it came down on the
heads of
the manikins, woodcarvings.
The man's body was
carved from the wood of the coral tree*(99) by
the Maker, Modeler. And as for the woman, the Maker, Modeler
needed
the pith of reeds*(100) for the woman's body. They were not
competent,
nor did they speak before the builder and sculptor who made them
and
brought them forth, and so they were killed, done in by a
flood:
There came a rain of
resin*(101) from the sky.
There came the one
named Gouger of Faces: he gouged out their
eyeballs.
There came Sudden
Bloodletter: he snapped off their heads.
There came Crunching
Jaguar: he ate their flesh.
There came Tearing
Jaguar: he tore them open.
They were pounded down
to the bones and tendons, smashed and
pulverized even to the bones. Their faces were smashed because
they
were incompetent before their mother and their father, the Heart
of
Sky, named Hurricane. The earth was blackened because of this;
the
black rainstorm*(102) began, rain all day and rain all night.
Into
their houses came*(103) the animals, small and great. Their
faces were
crushed by things of wood and stone. Everything spoke: their
water
jars, their tortilla griddles, their plates, their cooking pots,
their
dogs, their grinding stones, each and every thing crushed their
faces.
Their dogs and turkeys*(104) told them:
"You caused us
pain, you ate us, but now it is you whom we shall
eat." And this is the grinding stone:
"We were undone
because of you.
-
Every day,
every day,
in the
dark, in the dawn, forever,
r-r-rip,
r-r-rip,
r-r-rub,
r-r-rub,*(105)
right in
our faces, because of you.
-
This was the service we gave you at first, when you were still
people,
but today you will learn of our power. We shall pound and we
shall
grind your flesh," their grinding stones told them.
And this is what their
dogs said, when they spoke in their turn:
"Why is it you
can't seem to give us our food? We just watch and you
just keep us down, and you throw us around. You keep a stick
ready
when you eat, just so you can hit us. We don't talk, so we've
received
nothing from you. How could you not have known? You did know
that we
were wasting away there, behind you.
"So, this very day
you will taste the teeth in our mouths. We
shall eat you," their dogs told them, and their faces were
crushed.
And then their tortilla
griddles and cooking pots spoke to them in
turn:
"Pain! That's all
you've done for us. Our mouths are sooty, our
faces are sooty. By setting us on the fire all the time, you
burn
us. Since we felt no pain, you try it. We shall burn you,"
all their
cooking pots said, crushing their faces.
The stones, their
hearthstones were shooting out,*(106) coming right
out of the fire, going for their heads, causing them pain. Now
they
run for it, helter-skelter.
They want to climb up
on the houses, but they fall as the houses
collapse.
They want to climb the
trees; they're thrown off by the trees.
They want to get inside
caves, but the caves slam shut in their
faces.
Such was the scattering
of the human work, the human design. The
people were ground down, overthrown. The mouths and faces of all
of
them were destroyed and crushed. And it used to be said that
the
monkeys in the forests today are a sign of this. They were left
as a
sign because wood alone was used for their flesh*(107) by
the
builder and sculptor.
So this is why monkeys
look like people: they are a sign of a
previous human work, human design- mere manikins, mere
woodcarvings.
-
THIS WAS WHEN THERE WAS
JUST A TRACE OF EARLY DAWN on the face of
the earth, there was no sun. But there was one who
magnified
himself; Seven Macaw is his name. The sky-earth was already
there, but
the face of the sun-moon was clouded over. Even so, it is said
that
his light provided a sign for the people who were flooded. He
was like
a person of genius in his being.
"I am great. My
place is now higher than that of the human work, the
human design. I am their sun and I am their light, and I am also
their
months.*(108)
"So be it: my
light is great. I am the walkway and I am the foothold
of the people,*(109) because my eyes are of metal. My teeth
just
glitter with jewels, and turquoise as well; they stand
out*(110)
blue with stones like the face of the sky.
"And this nose of
mine shines white into the distance like the moon.
Since my nest is metal, it lights up the face of the earth. When
I
come forth before my nest, I am like the sun and moon for those
who
are born in the light, begotten in the light. It must be so,
because
my face reaches into the distance," says Seven Macaw.
It is not true that he
is the sun, this Seven Macaw, yet he
magnifies himself, his wings, his metal. But the scope of his
face
lies right around his own perch;*(111) his face does not
reach
everywhere beneath the sky. The faces of the sun, moon, and
stars
are not yet visible, it has not yet dawned.
And so Seven Macaw
puffs himself up as the days and the months,
though the light of the sun and moon has not yet clarified. He
only
wished for surpassing greatness. This was when the flood was
worked
upon the manikins, woodcarvings.
And now we shall
explain how Seven Macaw died, when the people
were vanquished, done in by the mason and sculptor.
PART_TWO
PART TWO
-
(See illustration:
Drawings by the author.
THE FIRST NAMED HUNAHPU
AND THE SECOND NAMED XBALANQUE: These are
the portrait glyphs for the classic Maya equivalents of Hunahpu
(left)
and Xbalanque (right) at Palenque.)
-
HERE IS THE BEGINNING
OF THE DEFEAT AND DESTRUCTION OF THE DAY OF
SEVEN MACAW by the two boys, the first named Hunahpu and the
second
named Xbalanque. Being gods, the two of them saw evil in his
attempt
at self-magnification before the Heart of Sky. So the boys
talked:
"It's no good
without life, without people here on the face of the
earth."
"Well then, let's
try a shot. We could shoot him while he's at his
meal. We could make him ill, then put an end to his riches,
his
jade, his metal, his jewels, his gems, the source of his
brilliance.
Everyone might do as he does, but it should not come to be
that
fiery splendor is merely a matter of metal. So be it," said
the
boys, each one with a blowgun on his shoulder, the two of
them
together.
And this Seven Macaw
has two sons: the first of these is Zipacna,
and the second is the Earthquake. And Chimalmat is the name of
their
mother, the wife of Seven Macaw.
And this is Zipacna,
this is the one to build up the great
mountains: Fire Mouth, Hunahpu, Cave by the Water, Xcanul,
Macamob,
Huliznab, as the names of the mountains that were there at the
dawn
are spoken. They were brought forth by Zipacna in a single
night.
And now this is the
Earthquake. The mountains are moved by him;
the mountains, small and great, are softened by him.*(112) The
sons of
Seven Macaw did this just as a means of self-magnification.
"Here am I: I am
the sun," said Seven Macaw.
"Here am I: I am
the maker of the earth," said Zipacna.
"As for me, I
bring down the sky, I make an avalanche of all the
earth," said Earthquake. The sons of Seven Macaw are alike,
and like
him: they got their greatness from their father.
And the two boys saw
evil in this, since our first mother and father
could not yet be made. Therefore deaths and disappearances
were
planned by the two boys.
-
AND HERE IS THE
SHOOTING OF SEVEN MACAW BY THE TWO BOYS. We shall
explain the defeat of each one of those who engaged in
self-magnification.
This is the great tree
of Seven Macaw, a nance, and this is the food
of Seven Macaw. In order to eat the fruit of the nance he goes
up
the tree every day. Since Hunahpu and Xbalanque have seen where
he
feeds, they are now hiding beneath the tree of Seven Macaw, they
are
keeping quiet here, the two boys are in the leaves of the
tree.
-
(See illustration:
Photo 1980 by Justin Kerr.
THEY ARE NOW HIDING
BENEATH THE TREE OF SEVEN MACAW: In this classic
Maya vase painting from the lowlands, Seven Macaw is shown
perched
in the top of a fruit tree. The tree itself is portrayed as
animate,
with a face and ears at its base. Hidden behind the tree is
Xbalanque,
whose pawlike hand protrudes above the tree's left ear.
Crouching at
the right is Hunahpu, in the act of shooting Seven Macaw with
his
blowgun. The presence of a scorpion beneath the tree
remains
unexplained.)
-
And when Seven Macaw
arrived, perching over his meal, the nance,
it was then that he was shot by Hunahpu. The blowgun shot went
right
to his jaw, breaking his mouth. Then he went up over the tree
and fell
flat on the ground.*(113) Suddenly Hunahpu appeared, running. He
set
out to grab him, but actually it was the arm of Hunahpu that
was
seized by Seven Macaw. He yanked it straight back, he bent it
back
at the shoulder. Then Seven Macaw tore it right out of Hunahpu.
Even
so, the boys did well: the first round was not their defeat by
Seven
Macaw.
And when Seven Macaw
had taken the arm of Hunahpu, he went home.
Holding his jaw very carefully, he arrived:
"What have you got
there?" said Chimalmat, the wife of Seven Macaw.
"What is it but
those two tricksters!*(114) They've shot me, they've
dislocated my jaw.*(115) All my teeth are just loose,*(116) now
they
ache. But once what I've got is over the fire- hanging there,
dangling
over the fire- then they can just come and get it. They're
real
tricksters!" said Seven Macaw, then he hung up the arm of
Hunahpu.
Meanwhile Hunahpu and
Xbalanque were thinking. And then they invoked
a grandfather, a truly white-haired grandfather, and a
grandmother,
a truly humble grandmother- just bent-over, elderly people. Great
White Peccary is the name of the grandfather, and Great White
Tapir is
the name of the grandmother. The boys said to the grandmother
and
grandfather:
"Please travel
with us when we go to get our arm from Seven Macaw;
we'll just follow right behind you. You'll tell him:
'Do forgive us*(117)
our grandchildren, who travel with us. Their
mother and father are dead, and so they follow along there,
behind us.
Perhaps we should give them away, since all we do is pull worms
out of
teeth.' So we'll seem like children to Seven Macaw, even
though
we're giving you the instructions," the two boys told them.
"Very well,"
they replied.
After that they
approached the place where Seven Macaw was in
front of his home. When the grandmother and grandfather passed
by, the
two boys were romping along behind them. When they passed below
the
lord's house, Seven Macaw was yelling his mouth off because of
his
teeth. And when Seven Macaw saw the grandfather and
grandmother
traveling with them:
"Where are you
headed, our grandfather?" said the lord.
"We're just making
our living, your lordship," they replied.
"Why are you
working for a living? Aren't those your children
traveling with you?"
"No, they're not,
your lordship. They're our grandchildren, our
descendants, but it is nevertheless we who take pity on them.
The
bit of food they get is the portion we give them, your
lordship,"
replied the grandmother and grandfather. Since the lord is
getting
done in by the pain in his teeth, it is only with great
effort*(118)
that he speaks again:
"I implore you,
please take pity on me! What sweets can you make,
what poisons can you cure?"*(119) said the lord.
"We just pull the
worms out of teeth,*(120) and we just cure
eyes.*(121) We just set bones, your lordship," they
replied.
"Very well, please
cure my teeth. They really ache, every day.
It's insufferable! I get no sleep because of them- and my eyes.
They
just shot me, those two tricksters! Ever since it started I
haven't
eaten because of it. Therefore take pity on me! Perhaps it's
because
my teeth are loose now."
"Very well, your
lordship. It's a worm, gnawing at the bone.*(122)
It's merely a matter of putting in a replacement and taking
the
teeth out, sir."
"But perhaps it's
not good for my teeth to come out- since I am,
after all, a lord. My finery is in my teeth- and my
eyes."
"But then we'll
put in a replacement. Ground bone will be put back
in." And this is the "ground bone": it's only
white corn.
"Very well. Yank
them out! Give me some help here!" he replied.
And when the teeth of
Seven Macaw came out, it was only white corn
that went in as a replacement for his teeth- just a
coating*(123)
shining white, that corn in his mouth. His face fell at once, he
no
longer looked like a lord. The last of his teeth came out,
the
jewels that had stood out blue from his mouth.
And then the eyes of
Seven Macaw were cured. When his eyes were
trimmed back*(124) the last of his metal came out. Still he felt
no
pain; he just looked on while the last of his greatness left
him. It
was just as Hunahpu and Xbalanque had intended.
And when Seven Macaw
died, Hunahpu got back his arm. And
Chimalmat, the wife of Seven Macaw, also died.
Such was the loss of
the riches of Seven Macaw: only the doctors got
the jewels and gems that had made him arrogant, here on the face
of
the earth. The genius of the grandmother, the genius of the
grandfather did its work when they took back their arm: it
was
implanted and the break got well again. Just as they had wished
the
death of Seven Macaw, so they brought it about. They had seen
evil
in his self-magnification.
After this the two boys
went on again. What they did was simply
the word of the Heart of Sky.*(125)
-
AND HERE ARE THE DEEDS
OF ZIPACNA, the first son of Seven Macaw.
"I am the maker of
mountains," says Zipacna.
And this is Zipacna,
bathing on the shore. Then the Four Hundred
Boys passed by dragging a log, a post for their hut. The
Four
Hundred Boys were walking along, having cut a great tree for
the
lintel of their hut.*(126)
And then Zipacna went
there, he arrived where the Four Hundred
Boys were:
"What are you
doing, boys?"
"It's just this
log. We can't lift it up to carry it."
"I'll carry it.
Where does it go? What do you intend to use it for?"
"It's just a lintel
for our hut."
"Very well,"
he replied.
And then he pulled it,
or rather carried it, right on up to the
entrance of the hut of the Four Hundred Boys.
"You could just
stay with us, boy. Do you have a mother and father?"
"Not so," he
replied.
"We'd like some
help*(127) tomorrow in cutting another one of our
logs, a post for our hut."
"Good," he
replied.
After that the Four
Hundred Boys shared their thoughts:
"About this boy:
what should we do with him?"
"We should kill
him, because what he does is no good. He lifted that
log all by himself. Let's dig a big hole for him, and then we'll
throw
him down*(128) in the hole. We'll say to him:
'Why are you spilling
dirt in the hole?'*(129) And when he's
wedged*(130) down in the hole we'll wham a big log*(131) down
behind
him. Then he should die in the hole," said the Four Hundred
Boys.
And when they had dug a
hole, one that went deep, they called for
Zipacna:
"We're asking you
to please go on digging out the dirt. We can't
go on," he was told.
"Very well,"
he replied.
After that he went down
in the hole.
"Call out when
enough dirt has been dug, when you're getting down
deep," he was told.
"Yes," he
replied, then he began digging the hole. But the only hole
he dug was for his own salvation. He realized that he was to
be
killed, so he dug a separate hole to one side,*(132) he dug a
second
hole for safety.
"How far is
it?" the Four Hundred Boys called down to him.
"I'm digging fast.
When I call up to you, the digging will be
finished," said Zipacna, from down in the hole. But he's
not digging
at the bottom of the hole, in his own grave; rather, the hole
he's
digging is for his own salvation.
After that, when
Zipacna called out, he had gone to safety in his
own hole. Then he called out:
"Come here, take
the dirt, the fill from the hole. It's been dug.
I've really gone down deep! Can't you hear my call? As for
your
call, it just echoes down here, it sounds to me as if you were
on
another level, or two levels away,"*(133) said Zipacna from
his
hole. He's hidden in there, he calls out from down in the
hole.
Meanwhile, a big log is
being dragged along by the boys.
And then they threw the
log down in the hole.
"Isn't he there?
He doesn't speak."
"Let's keep on
listening. He should cry out when he dies," they said
among themselves. They're just whispering, and they've
hidden
themselves, each one of them, after throwing down the log.
And then he did speak,
now he gave a single cry. He called out
when the log fell to the bottom.
"Right on! He's
been finished!"
"Very good! We've
done him in, he's dead."
"What if he had
gone on with his deeds, his works? He would've
made himself first among us and taken our place- we, the
Four
Hundred Boys!" they said. Now they enjoyed themselves:
"On to the making
of our sweet drink! Three days will pass, and
after three days let's drink to dedicate*(134) our hut- we, the
Four
Hundred Boys!" they said. "And tomorrow we'll see, and
on the day
after tomorrow we'll see whether or not ants come from the
ground when
he's stinking and rotting. After that our hearts will be
content
when we drink our sweet drink," they said. But Zipacna was
listening
from the hole when the boys specified "the day after
tomorrow."
And on the second day,
when the ants collected, they were running,
swarming. Having taken their pickings*(135) under the log, they
were
everywhere, carrying hair in their mouths and carrying the nails
of
Zipacna. When the boys saw this:
"He's finished,
that trickster! Look here how the ants have stripped
him, how they've swarmed. Everywhere they carry hair in their
mouths. It's his nails you can see. We've done it!" they
said among
themselves.
But this Zipacna is
still alive. He just cuts the hair off his
head and chews off his nails to give them to the ants.
And so the Four Hundred
Boys thought he had died.
After that, their sweet
drink was ready on the third day, and then
all the boys got drunk, and once they were drunk, all four
hundred
of those boys, they weren't feeling a thing.
After that the hut was
brought down on top of them by Zipacna. All
of them were completely flattened. Not even one or two were
saved from
among all the Four Hundred Boys. They were killed by Zipacna,
the
son of Seven Macaw.
Such was the death of
those Four Hundred Boys. And it used to be
said that they entered a constellation, named Hundrath after
them,
though perhaps this is just a play on words.*(136)
And this is where we
shall explain the defeat of Zipacna by the
two boys, Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
-
NOW THIS IS THE DEFEAT
AND DEATH OF ZIPACNA, when he was beaten by
the two boys, Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
What now weighed
heavily on the hearts of the two boys was that
the Four Hundred Boys had been killed by Zipacna.
It's mere fish and
crabs that Zipacna looks for in the waters, but
he's eating every day, going around looking for his food by day
and
lifting up mountains by night.
Next comes the
counterfeiting*(137) of a great crab by Hunahpu and
Xbalanque.
And they used bromelia
flowers, picked from the bromelias of the
forests. These became the forearms*(138) of the crab, and where
they
opened*(139) were the claws.*(140) They used a flagstone for
the
back of the crab, which clattered.*(141)
After that they put the
shell beneath an overhang,*(142) at the foot
of a great mountain. Meauan is the name of the mountain where
the
defeat took place.
After that, when the
boys came along, they found Zipacna by the
water:
"Where are you
going, boy?" Zipacna was asked.
"I'm not going
anywhere. I'm just looking for my food, boys,"
Zipacna replied.
"What's your
food?"
"Just fish and
crabs, but there aren't any that I can find. It's
been two days since I stopped getting meals. By now I can't
stand
the hunger,"*(143) Zipacna told Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
"There is that
crab that's down in the canyon. A really big crab!
Perhaps you might manage to eat her. We were just getting
bitten. We
wanted to catch her, but we got scared by her. If she hasn't
gone away
you could catch her," said Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
"Take pity on me,
please come point her out, boys,"*(144) said
Zipacna.
"We don't want to,
but you go ahead. You can't miss her. Just follow
the river, and you go straight on over there below a great
mountain.
She's clattering there at the bottom of the canyon. Just head
on
over there," said Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
"But won't you
please*(145) take pity on me? What if she can't be
found, boys? If you come along I'll show you a place where there
are
plenty of birds.*(146) Please come shoot them, I know where they
are,"
Zipacna replied. They consented. He went ahead of the boys.
"What if you can't
catch the crab? Just as we had to turn back, so
will you. Not only didn't we eat her, but all at once she was
biting
us. We were entering*(147) face down, but when she got scared
we
were entering on our back.*(148) We just barely missed reaching
her
then, so you'd better enter on your back," he was
told.
"Very well,"
Zipacna replied, and then they went on. Now Zipacna had
company as he went. They arrived at the bottom of the
canyon.
The crab is on her
side, her shell is gleaming red there.*(149) In
under the canyon wall is their contrivance.
"Very good!"
Zipacna is happy now. He wishes she were already in his
mouth, so she could really cure his hunger. He wanted to eat
her, he
just wanted it face down, he wanted to enter, but since the crab
got
on top of him with her back down, he came back out.
"You didn't reach
her?" he was asked.
"No indeed- she
was just getting on top with her back down. I just
barely missed her on the first try, so perhaps I'd better enter
on
my back,"*(150) he replied.
After that he entered
again, on his back. He entered all the way-
only his kneecaps were showing now!*(151) He gave a last sigh
and
was calm.*(152) The great mountain rested on his chest. He
couldn't
turn over now, and so Zipacna turned to stone.
Such, in its turn, was
the defeat of Zipacna by the two boys,
Hunahpu and Xbalanque. He was "the maker of
mountains," as his
previous pronouncements had it, the first son of Seven Macaw. He
was
defeated beneath the great mountain called Meauan, defeated
by
genius alone. He was the second to magnify himself, and now we
shall
speak what is spoken of another.
-
AND THE THIRD TO
MAGNIFY HIMSELF IS THE SECOND SON OF SEVEN MACAW,
NAMED EARTHQUAKE.
"I am the breaker
of mountains," he said. But even so, Hunahpu and
Xbalanque defeated the Earthquake. Then Hurricane spoke,
Newborn
Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt; he spoke to Hunahpu and
Xbalanque:
"The second son of
Seven Macaw is another one, another who should be
defeated. This is my word, because what they do on the face of
the
earth is no good. They are surpassing the sun in size, in weight,
and it should not be that way. Lure this Earthquake into
settling
down*(153) over there in the east," Hurricane told the two
boys.
"Very well, your
lordship. There is more to be done. What we see
is no good. Isn't it a question of your position and your
eminence,
sir, Heart of Sky?" the two boys said when they responded
to the
word of Hurricane.
Meanwhile he presses
on, this Earthquake, breaker of mountains. Just
by lightly tapping his foot on the ground he instantly
demolishes
the mountains, great and small. When he met up with the two
boys:
"Where are you
going, boy?" they asked Earthquake.
"I'm not going
anywhere. I just scatter the mountains, and I'm the
one who breaks them, in the course of the days, in the course of
the
light,"*(154) he said when he answered. Then the Earthquake
asked
Hunahpu and Xbalanque:
"Where did you
come from? I don't know your faces. What are your
names?" said Earthquake.
"We have no names.
We just hunt and trap in the mountains. We're
just orphans, we have nothing to call our own, boy. We're
just
making our way among the mountains, small and great, boy.
And
there's one great mountain we saw that's just growing right along.
It's rising really high! It's just swelling up, rising above all
the
other mountains. And there weren't even one or two birds to
be
found, boy. So how could it be that you destroy all mountains,
boy?"
Hunahpu and Xbalanque said to Earthquake.
"It can't be true
you saw the mountain you're talking about. Where
is it? You'll see me knock it down yet. Where did you see
it?"
"Well, it's over
there in the east," said Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
"Good. Lead the
way,"*(155) the two boys were told.
"Not so. You take
the middle. Stay here between us- one of us at
your left, the other at your right hand- because of our blowguns.
If
there are birds, we'll shoot," they said. They enjoy
practicing
their shooting.
And this is the way
they shoot: the shot of their blowguns isn't
made of earth- they just blow at the birds when they
shoot,*(156) to
the amazement of the Earthquake.
And then the boys made
fire with a drill*(157) and roasted the birds
over the fire. And they coated one of the birds with plaster,
they put
gypsum on it.
-
(See illustration:
Drawing by Carlos A. Villacorta: Photo
by
Hillel Burger (C) 1984 by the President and Fellows of
Harvard
College.
AND THEN THE BOYS MADE
FIRE WITH A DRILL: In this illustration
from the lowland Maya hieroglyphic book now known as the Madrid
Codex,
two figures turn a fire drill while sparks fly up from the
wooden
platform where the point of the drill is inserted. They are
seated
on or beside a road, marked by footprints.)
-
"So this is the
one we'll give him when he's hungry, and when he
savors the aroma of our birds. That will be victory, since
we've
covered his bird with baked earth. In earth we must cook it, and
in
earth must be his grave- if the great knower, the one to be made
and
modeled,*(158) is to have a sowing and dawning," said the
boys.
"Because of this,
the human heart*(159) will desire a bite of
meat, a meal of flesh,*(160) just as the heart of the
Earthquake
will desire it," Hunahpu and Xbalanque said to one another.
Then
they roasted the birds and cooked them until they were brown,
dripping
with fat that oozed from the backs of the birds, with an
overwhelmingly fragrant aroma.
And this Earthquake
wants to be fed, his mouth just waters, he gulps
and slurps with spittle and saliva because of the fragrance of
the
birds. So then he asked:
"What are you
eating? I smell a truly delicious aroma! Please give
me a little bit," he said. And when they gave a bird to
Earthquake, he
was as good as defeated.
After he had finished off
the bird, they went on until they
arrived in the east, where the great mountain was.
Meanwhile, Earthquake
had lost the strength in his legs and arms. He
couldn't go on because of the earth that coated the bird he'd
eaten.
So now there was nothing he could do to the mountain. He
never
recovered; he was destroyed. So then he was bound by the two
boys; his
hands were bound behind him. When his hands had been secured by
the
boys, his ankles were bound to his wrists.*(161)
After that they threw
him down, they buried him in the earth.
Such is the defeat of
Earthquake. It's Hunahpu and Xbalanque yet
again. Their deeds on the face of the earth are countless.
And now we shall
explain the birth of Hunahpu and Xbalanque,
having first explained the defeat of Seven Macaw, along with
Zipacna
and Earthquake, here on the face of the earth.
PART_THREE
PART THREE
-
AND NOW WE SHALL NAME
THE NAME OF THE FATHER OF HUNAHPU AND
XBALANQUE. Let's drink to him, and let's just drink to the
telling*(162) and accounting of the begetting of Hunahpu
and
Xbalanque. We shall tell just half of it, just a part of the
account
of their father. Here follows the account.
These are the names:
One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, as they are
called.*(163)
And these are their
parents: Xpiyacoc, Xmucane. In the blackness, in
the night, One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu were born to Xpiyacoc
and
Xmucane.
And this One Hunahpu
had two children, and the two were sons, the
firstborn named One Monkey and the second named One
Artisan.
And this is the name of
their mother: she is called Xbaquiyalo,
the wife of One Hunahpu. As for Seven Hunahpu, he has no wife.
He's
just a partner*(164) and just secondary; he just remains a
boy.
They are great thinkers
and great is their knowledge. They are the
midmost seers, here on the face of the earth. There is only good
in
their being and their birthright. They taught skills to One
Monkey and
One Artisan, the sons of One Hunahpu. One Monkey and One
Artisan
became flautists, singers, and writers; carvers, jewelers,
metalworkers*(165) as well.
-
(See illustration:
Photo 1980 by Justin Kerr.
ONE MONKEY AND ONE
ARTISAN BECAME FLAUTISTS, SINGERS, AND WRITERS:
In this classic Maya funerary vase painting from northern
Guatemala,
the twin monkey gods are shown seated in a cross-legged
position,
pointing to screen-folded books while speaking or singing. The
books
they hold in their hands have jaguar-skin covers; other books
are
piled up at their feet. [Vase in the New Orleans Museum of
Art.])
-
And as for One and
Seven Hunahpu, all they did was throw dice and
play ball, every day. They would play each other in pairs, the
four of
them together. When they gathered in the ball court for
entertainment a falcon would come to watch them, the messenger
of
Hurricane, Newborn Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt. And for this
falcon
it wasn't far to the earth here, nor was it far to Xibalba; he
could
get back to the sky, to Hurricane, in an instant.
The four
ballplayers*(166) remained here on the face of the earth
after the mother of One Monkey and One Artisan had died. Since
it
was on the road to Xibalba that they played, they were heard by
One
Death and Seven Death, the lords of Xibalba:
"What's happening
on the face of the earth? They're just stomping
and shouting. They should be summoned to come play ball here.
We'll
defeat them, since we simply get no deference from them. They
show
no respect, nor do they have any shame. They're really
determined to
run right over us!"*(167) said all of Xibalba, when they
all shared
their thoughts, the ones named One and Seven Death. They are
great
lawgivers.
-
AND THESE ARE THE LORDS
OVER EVERYTHING, each lord with a commission
and a domain assigned by One and Seven Death:
There are the lords
named House Corner and Blood Gatherer. And
this is their commission: to draw blood from people.*(168)
Next are the lordships
of Pus Master and Jaundice Master. And this
is their domain: to make people swell up, to make pus come out
of
their legs, to make their faces yellow, to cause jaundice,*(169)
as it
is called. Such is the domain of Pus Master and Jaundice
Master.
Next are the lords Bone
Scepter and Skull Scepter, the staff bearers
of Xibalba; their staffs are just bones. And this is their
staff-bearing: to reduce people to bones, right down to the
bones
and skulls, until they die from emaciation and edema.*(170) This
is
the commission of the ones named Bone Scepter and Skull
Scepter.
Next are the lords
named Trash Master and Stab Master. This is their
commission: just to catch up with people*(171) whenever they
have
filth or grime in the doorway of the house,*(172) the patio of
the
house.*(173) Then they're struck, they're just punctured until
they
crawl on the ground, then die. And this is the domain of
Trash
Master and Stab Master, as they are called.
Next are the lords
named Wing and Packstrap. This is their domain:
that people should die in the road, just "sudden
death,"*(174) as it
is called. Blood comes to the mouth, then there is death from
vomiting
blood. So to each of them his burden, the load on his
shoulders:
just to strike people on the neck and chest. Then there is death
in
the road, and then they just go on causing suffering, whether
one is
coming or going. And this is the domain of Wing and
Packstrap.
Such are those who
shared their thoughts*(175) when they were piqued
and driven*(176) by One and Seven Hunahpu. What Xibalba desired
was
the gaming equipment of One and Seven Hunahpu: their kilts,
their
yokes, their arm guards, their panaches and headbands, the
costumes of
One and Seven Hunahpu.
And this is where we
shall continue telling of their trip to
Xibalba. One Monkey and One Artisan, the sons of One Hunahpu,
stayed
behind. Their mother died- and, what is more, they were to be
defeated
by Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
-
(See illustration:
Drawing reproduced by permission of
Michael D.
Coe and the Grolier Club.
AND THESE ARE THE LORDS
OVER EVERYTHING: This late classic Maya
funerary vase painting from northern Guatemala shows seven lords
of
Xibalba, with the head lord, corresponding to One Death of the
Popol
Vuh, smoking a cigar and sitting on a jaguar skin at right. The
two
lords immediately to his left may be Bone Scepter (in the
bottom
row) and Skull Scepter (in the top row), one with a staff that
looks
like a spinal column in front of him and the other with a
rounded
bundle that could contain a skull. All seven lords wear ball
game
yokes on their hips. The Popol Vuh mentions fourteen lords,
counting
two manikins that are meant to be mistaken for lords. Perhaps
each
pair of names mentioned in the Popol Vuh originally belonged to
a
single lord, or perhaps each of the lords shown here is
understood
to have another seated at his side.)
-
AND NOW FOR THE MESSENGERS OF ONE AND SEVEN
DEATH: "You're going,
you Military Keepers of the Mat, to summon One and Seven
Hunahpu.
You'll tell them, when you arrive:
'"They must
come," the lords say to you. "Would that they might come
to play ball with us here. Then we could have some excitement
with
them. We are truly amazed at them. Therefore they should
come," say
the lords, "and they should bring their playthings, their
yokes and
arm guards should come, along with their rubber ball," say
the lords,'
you will say when you arrive," the messengers were
told.
And these messengers of
theirs are owls:*(177) Shooting Owl,
One-legged Owl, Macaw Owl, Skull Owl, as the messengers of
Xibalba are
called.
There is Shooting Owl,
like a point, just piercing.
And there is One-legged
Owl, with just one leg; he has wings.
And there is Macaw Owl,
with a red back; he has wings.
And there is also Skull
Owl, with only a head alone; he has no legs,
but he does have wings.
There are four
messengers, Military Keepers of the Mat in rank.
And when they came out
of Xibalba they arrived quickly, alighting
above the ball court where One and Seven Hunahpu were playing,
at
the ball court called Great Abyss at Carchah. The owls, arriving
in
a flurry over the ball court, now repeated their words, reciting
the
exact words*(178) of One Death, Seven Death, Pus Master,
Jaundice
Master, Bone Scepter, Skull Scepter, House Corner, Blood
Gatherer,
Trash Master, Stab Master, Wing, Packstrap, as all the lords
are
named. Their words were repeated by the owls.
"Don't the lords
One and Seven Death speak truly?"*(179)
"Truly
indeed," the owls replied. "We'll accompany you.
'They're to bring along
all their gaming equipment,' say the lords."
"Very well, but
wait for us while we notify our mother," they
replied.
And when they went to
their house, they spoke to their mother; their
father had died:
"We're going, our dear
mother, even though we've just arrived.*(180)
The messengers of the lord have come to get us:
'"They should
come," he says,' they say, giving us orders. We'll
leave our rubber ball behind here," they said, then they
went to tie
it up under the roof of the house. "Until we return- then
we'll put it
in play again."
They told One Monkey
and One Artisan:
"As for you, just
play and just sing,*(181) write and carve to
warm our house and to warm the heart of your grandmother."
When they
had been given their instructions, their grandmother Xmucane
sobbed,
she had to weep.
"We're going,
we're not dying. Don't be sad," said One and Seven
Hunahpu, then they left.
-
AFTER THAT ONE AND
SEVEN HUNAHPU LEFT, guided down the road by the
messengers.
And then they descended
the road to Xibalba, going down a steep
cliff, and they descended until they came out where the rapids
cut
through,*(182) the roaring canyon narrows named Neck Canyon.
They
passed through there, then they passed on into the River of
Churning
Spikes. They passed through countless spikes but they were
not
stabbed.
And then they came to
water again, to blood: Blood River. They
crossed but did not drink. They came to a river, but a river
filled
with pus. Still they were not defeated, but passed through
again.
And then they came to
the Crossroads, but here they were defeated,
at the Crossroads:
Red Road was one and
Black Road another.
White Road was one and
Yellow Road another.
There were four roads,
and Black Road spoke:
"I am the one you
are taking. I am the lord's road," said the
road. And they were defeated there: this was the Road of
Xibalba.
And then they came to
the council place of the lords of Xibalba, and
they were defeated again there. The ones seated first there are
just
manikins, just woodcarvings dressed up by Xibalba. And they
greeted
the first ones:
"Morning,*(183)
One Death," they said to the manikin. "Morning,
Seven Death," they said to the woodcarving in turn.
So they did not win
out, and the lords of Xibalba shouted out with
laughter over this. All the lords just shouted with laughter
because
they had triumphed; in their hearts they had beaten One and
Seven
Hunahpu. They laughed on until One and Seven Death spoke:
"It's good that
you've come. Tomorrow you must put your yokes and
arm guards into action," they were told.
"Sit here on our
bench," they were told, but the only bench they
were offered was a burning-hot rock.
So now they were burned
on the bench; they really jumped around on
the bench now, but they got no relief.*(184) They really got
up
fast, having burned their butts. At this the Xibalbans
laughed
again, they began to shriek with laughter, the laughter rose up
like a
serpent in their very cores,*(185) all the lords of Xibalba
laughed
themselves down to their blood and bones.*(186)
"Just go in the
house. Your torch and cigars will be brought to your
sleeping quarters," the boys were told.
After that they came to
the Dark House, a house with darkness
alone inside. Meanwhile the Xibalbans shared their
thoughts:
"Let's just
sacrifice them tomorrow. It can only turn out to be
quick; they'll die quickly because of our playing equipment,
our
gaming things," the Xibalbans are saying among
themselves.
This ball of theirs is
just a spherical knife.*(187) White Dagger is
the name of the ball, the ball of Xibalba. Their ball is just
ground
down to make it smooth; the ball of Xibalba is just surfaced
with
crushed bone to make it firm.
-
AND ONE AND SEVEN
HUNAHPU WENT INSIDE DARK HOUSE.
And then their torch
was brought,*(188) only one torch, already lit,
sent by One and Seven Death, along with a cigar for each of
them, also
already lit, sent by the lords. When these were brought to One
and
Seven Hunahpu they were cowering,*(189) here in the dark. When
the
bearer of their torch and cigars arrived, the torch was bright
as it
entered; their torch and both of their cigars were burning. The
bearer
spoke:
"'They must be
sure to return them in the morning- not finished, but
just as they look now. They must return them intact,' the lords
say to
you," they were told, and they were defeated. They finished
the
torch and they finished the cigars that had been brought to
them.
And Xibalba is packed
with tests, heaps and piles of tests.
This is the first one:
the Dark House, with darkness alone inside.
And the second is named
Rattling House, heavy with cold inside,
whistling with drafts, clattering with hail.*(190) A deep
chill
comes inside here.
And the third is named
Jaguar House, with jaguars alone inside,
jostling one another, crowding together, with gnashing
teeth.
They're scratching around; these jaguars are shut inside the
house.
Bat House is the name
of the fourth test, with bats alone inside the
house, squeaking, shrieking, darting through the house. The bats
are
shut inside; they can't get out.
And the fifth is named
Razor House, with blades alone inside. The
blades are moving back and forth,*(191) ripping, slashing
through
the house.
These are the first
tests of Xibalba, but One and Seven Hunahpu
never entered into them, except for the one named earlier,
the
specified test house.
And when One and Seven
Hunahpu went back before One and Seven Death,
they were asked:
"Where are my
cigars? What of my torch? They were brought to you
last night!"
"We finished them,
your lordship."
"Very well. This
very day, your day is finished, you will die, you
will disappear, and we shall break you off. Here you will hide
your
faces: you are to be sacrificed!" said One and Seven
Death.
And then they were
sacrificed and buried. They were buried at the
Place of Ball Game Sacrifice, as it is called. The head of One
Hunahpu
was cut off; only his body was buried with his younger
brother.
"Put his head in
the fork of the tree that stands by the
road,"*(192) said One and Seven Death.
And when his head was
put in the fork of the tree, the tree bore
fruit. It would not have had any fruit, had not the head of
One
Hunahpu been put in the fork of the tree.
This is the calabash
tree, as we call it today, or "the head of
One Hunahpu," as it is said.
And then One and Seven
Death were amazed at the fruit of the tree.
The fruit grows out everywhere, and it isn't clear where the
head of
One Hunahpu is; now it looks just the way the calabashes look.
All the
Xibalbans see this, when they come to look.
The state of the tree
loomed large in their thoughts, because it
came about at the same time the head of One Hunahpu was put in
the
fork. The Xibalbans said among themselves:
"No one is to pick
the fruit, nor is anyone to go beneath the tree,"
they said. They restricted themselves; all of Xibalba held
back.
It isn't clear which is
the head of One Hunahpu; now it's exactly
the same as the fruit of the tree. Calabash tree came to be
its
name, and much was said about it. A maiden heard about it, and
here we
shall tell of her arrival.
-
AND HERE IS THE ACCOUNT
OF A MAIDEN, the daughter of a lord named
Blood Gatherer.
And this is when a
maiden heard of it, the daughter of a lord. Blood
Gatherer is the name of her father, and Blood Woman is the name
of the
maiden.
And when he heard the
account of the fruit of the tree, her father
retold it. And she was amazed at the account:
"I'm not
acquainted with that tree they talk about. '"Its fruit is
truly sweet!" they say,' I hear,"*(193) she said.
Next, she went all
alone and arrived where the tree stood. It
stood at the Place of Ball Game Sacrifice:
"What? Well!
What's the fruit of this tree? Shouldn't this tree bear
something sweet? They shouldn't die, they shouldn't be
wasted.
Should I pick one?" said the maiden.
And then the bone
spoke; it was here in the fork of the tree:
"Why do you want a
mere bone, a round thing in the branches of a
tree?" said the head of One Hunahpu when it spoke to the
maiden.
"You don't want it," she was told.
"I do want
it," said the maiden.
"Very well.
Stretch out your right hand here,*(194) so I can see
it," said the bone.
"Yes," said
the maiden. She stretched out her right hand, up there
in front of the bone.
And then the bone spit
out its saliva, which landed squarely in
the hand of the maiden.
And then she looked in
her hand, she inspected it right away, but
the bone's saliva wasn't in her hand.
"It is just a sign
I have given you, my saliva, my spittle.*(195)
This, my head, has nothing on it- just bone, nothing of meat.
It's
just the same with the head of a great lord: it's just the
flesh
that makes his face look good. And when he dies, people get
frightened
by his bones. After that, his son is like his saliva, his
spittle,
in his being, whether it be the son of a lord or the son of
a
craftsman, an orator. The father does not disappear, but goes on
being
fulfilled. Neither dimmed nor destroyed is the face of a lord, a
warrior, craftsman, orator. Rather, he will leave his daughters
and
sons. So it is that I have done likewise through you. Now go
up
there on the face of the earth; you will not die. Keep the
word.*(196)
So be it," said the head of One and Seven Hunahpu- they
were of one
mind*(197) when they did it.
This was the word
Hurricane, Newborn Thunderbolt, Raw Thunderbolt
had given them. In the same way, by the time the maiden returned
to
her home, she had been given many instructions. Right away
something
was generated in her belly, from the saliva alone, and this was
the
generation of Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
And when the maiden got
home and six months had passed, she was
found out by her father. Blood Gatherer is the name of her
father.
-
AND AFTER THE MAIDEN
WAS NOTICED BY HER FATHER, when he saw that she
was now with child, all the lords then shared their thoughts-
One
and Seven Death, along with Blood Gatherer:
"This daughter of
mine is with child, lords. It's just a
bastard,"*(198) Blood Gatherer said when he joined the
lords.
"Very well. Get
her to open her mouth.*(199) If she doesn't tell,
then sacrifice her. Go far away and sacrifice her."
"Very well, your
lordships," he replied. After that, he questioned
his daughter:
"Who is
responsible for the child in your belly, my daughter?" he
said.
"There is no
child, my father, sir; there is no man whose face
I've known,"*(200) she replied.
"Very well. It
really is a bastard you carry! Take her away for
sacrifice, you Military Keepers of the Mat. Bring back her heart
in
a bowl, so the lords can take it in their hands*(201) this
very
day," the owls were told, the four of them.
Then they left,
carrying the bowl. When they left they took the
maiden by the hand, bringing along the White Dagger, the
instrument of
sacrifice.
"It would not turn
out well if you sacrificed me, messengers,
because it is not a bastard that's in my belly. What's in my
belly
generated all by itself when I went to marvel at the head of
One
Hunahpu, which is there at the Place of Ball Game Sacrifice. So
please
stop:*(202) don't do your sacrifice, messengers," said the
maiden.
Then they talked:
"What are we going
to use in place of her heart? We were told by her
father:
'Bring back her heart.
The lords will take it in their hands, they
will satisfy themselves, they will make themselves familiar with
its
composition.*(203) Hurry, bring it back in a bowl, put her heart
in
the bowl.' Isn't that what we've been told? What shall we
deliver in
the bowl? What we want above all is that you should not
die," said the
messengers.
"Very well. My
heart must not be theirs, nor will your homes be
here.*(204) Nor will you simply force people to die, but
hereafter,
what will be truly yours will be the true bearers of bastards.
And
hereafter, as for One and Seven Death, only blood,*(205)
only
nodules of sap, will be theirs. So be it that these things
are
presented before them, and not that hearts are burned before
them.
So be it: use the fruit of a tree,"*(206) said the maiden.
And it
was red tree sap she went out to gather in the bowl.
After it congealed, the
substitute for her heart became round.
When the sap of the croton tree was tapped, tree sap like blood,
it
became the substitute for her blood. When she rolled the
blood
around inside there, the sap of the croton tree, it formed a
surface
like blood,*(207) glistening red now, round inside the bowl.
When
the tree was cut open by the maiden, the so-called cochineal
croton,
the sap is what she called blood, and so there is talk of
"nodules
of blood."*(208)
"So you have been blessed with the face
of the earth. It shall be
yours," she told the owls.
"Very well,
maiden. We'll show you the way up there. You just walk
on ahead; we have yet to deliver this apparent duplicate of your
heart
before the lords," said the messengers.
And when they came
before the lords, they were all watching closely:
"Hasn't it turned
out well?" said One Death.
"It has turned out
well, your lordships, and this is her heart. It's
in the bowl."
"Very well. So
I'll look," said One Death, and when he lifted it
up with his fingers,*(209) its surface was soaked with gore,
its
surface glistened red with blood.
"Good. Stir up the
fire, put it over the fire," said One Death.
After that they dried it
over the fire, and the Xibalbans savored
the aroma. They all ended up standing here, they leaned over
it
intently.*(210) They found the smoke of the blood to be truly
sweet!
And while they stayed
at their cooking, the owls went to show the
maiden the way out. They sent her up through a hole onto the
earth,
and then the guides returned below.
In this way the lords
of Xibalba were defeated by a maiden; all of
them were blinded.
And here, where the
mother of One Monkey and One Artisan*(211)
lived, was where the woman named Blood Woman arrived.
-
AND WHEN THE BLOOD
WOMAN CAME TO THE MOTHER OF ONE MONKEY AND ONE
ARTISAN, her children were still in her belly, but it wasn't
very long
before the birth of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, as they are
called.
And when the woman came
to the grandmother, the woman said to the
grandmother:
"I've come,
mother, madam.*(212) I'm your daughter-in-law and I'm
your child,*(213) mother, madam," she said when she came
here to the
grandmother.
"Where do you come
from? As for my lastborn children,*(214) didn't
they die in Xibalba? And these two remain as their sign and
their
word: One Monkey and One Artisan are their names. So if you've
come to
see my children, get out of here!" the maiden was told by
the
grandmother.
"Even so, I really
am your daughter-in-law. I am already his, I
belong to One Hunahpu. What I carry is his. One Hunahpu and
Seven
Hunahpu are alive, they are not dead. They have merely made a
way
for the light to show itself,*(215) madam mother-in-law, as you
will
see when you look at the faces of what I carry," the
grandmother was
told.
And One Monkey and One
Artisan have been keeping their grandmother
entertained: all they do is play and sing, all they work at is
writing
and carving, every day, and this cheers the heart of their
grandmother.
And then the
grandmother said:
"I don't want you,
no thanks, my daughter-in-law. It's just a
bastard in your belly, you trickster! These children of mine who
are
named by you are dead," said the grandmother.
"Truly, what I say
to you is so!"*(216)
"Very well, my
daughter-in-law, I hear you. So get going, get
their food so they can eat. Go pick a big netful of corn, then
come
back- since you are already my daughter-in-law,*(217) as I
understand it," the maiden was told.
"Very well,"
she replied.
After that, she went to
the garden;*(218) One Monkey and One Artisan
had a garden. The maiden followed the path they had cleared
and
arrived there in the garden, but there was only one clump,*(219)
there
was no other plant, no second or third. That one clump had borne
its
ears. So then the maiden's heart stopped:
"It looks like I'm
a sinner, a debtor! Where will I get the netful
of food she asked for?" she said. And then the guardians of
food
were called upon by her:
-
"Come thou,
rise up, come thou, stand up:*(220)
Generous Woman,
Harvest Woman,
Cacao Woman,
Cornmeal Woman,
thou guardian of
the food of One Monkey, One Artisan,"
-
said the maiden.
And then she took hold
of the silk, the bunch of silk at the top
of the ear. She pulled it straight out, she didn't pick the ear,
and
the ear reproduced itself to make food for the net. It filled
the
big net.
And then the maiden
came back, but animals carried her net. When she
got back she went to put the pack frame in the corner of the
house, so
it would look to the grandmother as if she had arrived with a
load.
And then, when the
grandmother saw the food, a big netful:
"Where did that
food of yours come from? You've leveled the place!
I'm going to see if you've brought back our whole garden!"
said the
grandmother.
And then she went off,
she went to look at the garden, but the one
clump was still there, and the place where the net had been put
at the
foot of it was still obvious.
And the grandmother
came back in a hurry, and she got back home, and
she said to the maiden:
"The sign is still
there. You really are my daughter-in-law! I'll
have to keep watching what you do. These grandchildren of mine
are
already showing genius," the maiden was told.
Now this is where we
shall speak of the birth of Hunahpu and
Xbalanque.
-
AND THIS IS THEIR
BIRTH; WE SHALL TELL OF IT HERE.
Then it came to the day
of their birth, and the maiden named Blood
Woman gave birth. The grandmother was not present when they were
born;
they were born suddenly. Two of them were born, named Hunahpu
and
Xbalanque. They were born in the mountains, and then they came
into
the house. Since they weren't sleeping:
"Throw them out of
here! They're really loudmouths!" said the
grandmother.
After that, when they
put them on an anthill, they slept soundly
there. And when they removed them from there, they put them
in
brambles next.
And this is what One
Monkey and One Artisan wanted: that they should
die on the anthill and die in the brambles. One Monkey and One
Artisan
wanted this because they were rowdyish and flushed with
jealousy.*(221) They didn't allow their younger brothers in
the
house at first, as if they didn't even know them, but even so
they
flourished in the mountains.
And One Monkey and One
Artisan were great flautists and singers, and
as they grew up they went through great suffering and pain. It
had
cost them suffering to become great knowers. Through it all
they
became flautists, singers, and writers, carvers. They did
everything
well. They simply knew it when they were born, they simply had
genius.
And they were the successors*(222) of their fathers who had gone
to
Xibalba, their dead fathers.
Since One Monkey and
One Artisan were great knowers, in their hearts
they already realized everything when their younger brothers
came into
being, but they didn't reveal their insight because of their
jealousy.
The anger in their hearts came down on their own heads;*(223) no
great
harm was done. They were decoyed*(224) by Hunahpu and Xbalanque,
who
merely went out shooting every day. These two got no love from
the
grandmother, or from One Monkey and One Artisan. They weren't
given
their meals; the meals had been prepared and One Monkey and
One
Artisan had already eaten them before they got there.
But Hunahpu and
Xbalanque aren't turning red with anger; rather,
they just let it go, even though they know their proper place,
which
they see as clear as day. So they bring birds when they arrive
each
day, and One Monkey and One Artisan eat them. Nothing whatsoever
is
given to Hunahpu and Xbalanque, either one of them. All One
Monkey and
One Artisan do is play and sing.
And then Hunahpu and
Xbalanque arrived again, but now they came in
here without bringing their birds, so the grandmother turned
red:
"What's your
reason for not bringing birds?" Hunahpu and Xbalanque
were asked.
"There are some,
our dear grandmother, but our birds just got hung
up in a tree,"*(225) they said, "and there's no way to
get up the tree
after them, our dear grandmother, and so we'd like our
elder
brothers to please go with us, to please go get the birds
down,"
they said.
"Very well. We'll
go with you at dawn," the elder brothers replied.
Now they had won, and
they gathered their thoughts, the two of them,
about the fall of One Monkey and One Artisan:
"We'll just turn
their very being around*(226) with our words. So be
it, since they have caused us great suffering. They wished that
we
might die and disappear- we, their younger brothers. Just as
they
wished us to be slaves here,*(227) so we shall defeat them
there. We
shall simply make a sign of it," they said to one
another.
And then they went
there beneath a tree, the kind named
yellowwood, together with the elder brothers. When they got
there they
started shooting. There were countless birds up in the
tree,
chittering, and the elder brothers were amazed when they saw
the
birds. And not one of these birds fell down beneath the
tree:
"Those birds of
ours don't fall down; just go throw them down," they
told their elder brothers.
"Very well,"
they replied.
And then they climbed
up the tree, and the tree began to grow, its
trunk got thicker.
After that, they wanted
to get down, but now One Monkey and One
Artisan couldn't make it down from the tree. So they said, from
up
in the tree:
"How can we grab
hold?*(228) You, our younger brothers, take pity on
us! Now this tree looks frightening to us, dear younger
brothers,"
they said from up in the tree. Then Hunahpu and Xbalanque told
them:
"Undo your pants,
tie them around your hips, with the long end
trailing like a tail behind you, and then you'll be better able
to
move," they were told by their younger brothers.
"All right,"
they said.
And then they left the
ends of their loincloths trailing, and all at
once these became tails. Now they looked like mere monkeys.
After that they went
along in the trees of the mountains, small
and great. They went through the forests, now howling, now
keeping
quiet in the branches of trees.
Such was the defeat of
One Monkey and One Artisan by Hunahpu and
Xbalanque. They did it by means of their genius alone.
And when they got home
they said, when they came to their
grandmother and mother:
"Our dear
grandmother, something has happened to our elder brothers.
They've become simply shameless,*(229) they're like animals
now," they
said.
"If you've done
something to your elder brothers, you've knocked
me down and stood me on my head. Please don't do anything to
your
elder brothers, my dear grandchildren," the grandmother
said to
Hunahpu and Xbalanque. And they told their grandmother:
"Don't be sad, our
dear grandmother. You will see the faces of our
elder brothers again. They'll come, but this will be a test for
you,
our dear grandmother. Will you please not laugh*(230) while we
test
their destiny?" they said.
And then they began
playing. They played "Hunahpu Monkey."
-
AND THEN THEY SANG,
THEY PLAYED, THEY DRUMMED. When they took up
their flutes and drums, their grandmother sat down with them,
then
they played, they sounded out the tune, the song that got its
name
then. "Hunahpu Monkey" is the name of the tune.
And then One Monkey and
One Artisan came back, dancing when they
arrived.
And then, when the
grandmother looked, it was their ugly faces the
grandmother saw. Then she laughed, the grandmother could not
hold back
her laughter, so they just left right away, out of her sight
again,
they went up and away in the forest.
"Why are you doing
that, our dear grandmother? We'll only try four
times; only three times are left. We'll call them with the
flute, with
song. Please hold back your laughter. We'll try again,"
said Hunahpu
and Xbalanque.
Next they played again,
then they came back, dancing again, they
arrived again, in the middle of the patio of the house.*(231)
As
before, what they did was delightful; as before, they tempted
their
grandmother to laugh. Their grandmother laughed at them soon
enough.
The monkeys looked truly ridiculous, with the skinny little
things
below their bellies*(232) and their tails wiggling in front of
their
breasts.*(233) When they came back the grandmother had to laugh
at
them, and they went back into the mountains.
"Please, why are
you doing that, our dear grandmother? Even so,
we'll try it a third time now," said Hunahpu and
Xbalanque.
Again they played,
again they came dancing, but their grandmother
held back her laughter. Then they climbed up here, cutting
right
across the building, with thin red lips,*(234) with faces
blank,*(235)
puckering their lips,*(236) wiping their mouths and
faces,*(237)
suddenly scratching themselves.*(238) And when the grandmother
saw
them again, the grandmother burst out laughing again, and again
they
went out of sight because of the grandmother's laughter.
"Even so, our dear
grandmother, we'll get their attention."
So for the fourth time
they called on the flute, but they didn't
come back again. The fourth time they went straight into the
forest.
So they told their grandmother:
"Well, we've
tried, our dear grandmother. They came at first, and
we've tried calling them again. So don't be sad. We're here-
we,
your grandchildren. Just love our mother, dear grandmother.
Our
elder brothers will be remembered. So be it: they have lived
here
and they have been named; they are to be called One Monkey and
One
Artisan," said Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
So they were prayed to
by the flautists and singers among the
ancient people, and the writers and carvers prayed to them. In
ancient
times they turned into animals, they became monkeys, because
they just
magnified themselves, they abused their younger brothers. Just
as they
wished them to be slaves, so they themselves were brought low.
One
Monkey and One Artisan were lost then, they became animals, and
this
is now their place forever.
Even so, they were
flautists and singers; they did great things
while they lived with their grandmother and mother.
-
(See illustration:
Drawing by the author.
SUDDENLY SCRATCHING
THEMSELVES: This spider monkey was painted on
a classic Maya funerary vase from northern Guatemala. Note
the
dangling genitals, or what the Popol Vuh calls "the skinny
little
things below their bellies." [The vase is in the collection
of Edwin
Pearlman.])
-
AND NOW THEY BEGAN TO
ACT OUT THEIR SELF-REVELATION before their
grandmother and mother. First they made a garden:
"We'll just do
some gardening, our dear grandmother and mother,"
they said. "Don't worry. We're here, we're your
grandchildren, we're
the successors of our elder brothers," said Hunahpu and
Xbalanque.
And then they took up
their axe, their mattock, their hoe;*(239)
each of them went off with a blowgun on his shoulder. They left
the
house having instructed their grandmother to give them their
food:
"At midday bring
our food, dear grandmother," they said.
"Very well, my
dear grandchildren," said their grandmother.
After that, they went
to their gardening. They simply stuck their
mattock in the ground, and the mattock simply cultivated the
ground.
And it wasn't only the
mattock that cultivated, but also the axe. In
the same way, they stuck it in the trunk of a tree; in the same
way,
it cut into the tree by itself, felling, scattering, felling all
the
trees and bushes, now leveling, mowing down the
trees.*(240)
Just the one axe did
it, and the mattock, breaking up thick
masses, countless stalks and brambles.*(241) Just one mattock
was
doing it, breaking up countless things, just clearing off
whole
mountains, small and great.
And then they gave
instructions to that creature named the
mourning dove. They sat up on a big stump, and Hunahpu and
Xbalanque
said:
"Just watch for
our grandmother, bringing our food. Cry out right
away when she comes, and then we'll grab the mattock and
axe."
"Very well,"
said the mourning dove.
This is because all
they're doing is shooting; they're not really
doing any gardening.
And as soon as the dove
cries out they come running, one of them
grabbing the mattock and the other grabbing the hoe, and they're
tying
up their hair.
One of them
deliberately rubs dirt on his hands; he dirties his face
as well, so he's just like a real gardener.
And as for the other
one, he deliberately dumps wood chips on his
head,*(242) so he's like a real woodcutter.
Once their grandmother
has seen them they eat, but they aren't
really doing their gardening; she brings their food for nothing.
And
when they get home:
"We're really
ready for bed, our dear grandmother," they say when
they arrive. Deliberately they massage, they stretch their legs,
their
arms*(243) in front of their grandmother.
And when they went on
the second day and arrived at the garden, it
had all grown up high again. Every tree and bush, every stalk
and
bramble had put itself back together again when they
arrived.
"Who's been
picking us clean?" they said.
And these are the ones
who are doing it, all the animals, small
and great: puma, jaguar, deer, rabbit, fox, coyote,*(244)
peccary,
coati, small birds, great birds. They are the ones who did it;
they
did it in just one night.
After that, they
started the garden all over again. Just as
before, the ground worked itself, along with the
woodcutting.
And then they shared
their thoughts, there on the cleared and broken
ground:
"We'll simply have
to keep watch over our garden. Then, whatever may
be happening here, we'll find out about it," they said when
they
shared their thoughts. And when they arrived at the house:
"How could we get
picked clean, our dear grandmother? Our garden was
tall thickets and groves all over again when we got there
awhile
ago, our dear grandmother," they said to their grandmother
and mother.
"So we'll go keep watch, because what's happening to us is
no good,"
they said.
After that, they wound
everything up, and then they went back to the
clearing.
And there they took
cover, and when they were well hidden there, all
the animals gathered together, each one sat on its haunches, all
the
animals, small and great.
And this was the middle
of the night when they came. They all
spoke when they came. This is what they said:
-
"Arise, conjoin, you trees!
Arise,
conjoin, you bushes!"*(245)
-
they said. Then they made a great stir beneath the trees and
bushes,
then they came nearer, and then they showed their faces.
The first of these were
the puma and jaguar. The boys tried to
grab them, but they did not give themselves up. When the deer and
rabbit came near they only got them by the tail, which just
broke off:
the deer left its tail in their hands. When they grabbed the
tail of
the deer, along with the tail of the rabbit, the tails were
shortened.
But the fox, coyote, and peccary, coati did not give themselves
up.
All the animals went by in front of Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
-
SO NOW THERE WAS FIRE
IN THEIR HEARTS, because they didn't catch
them. And one more came, the last one now, jumping as he came,
then
they cut him off. In their net they caught the rat.
And then they grabbed
him and squeezed him behind the head. They
tried to choke him; they burned his tail over a fire. Ever since
the
rat's tail got caught, there's been no hair on his tail, and
his
eyes have been the way they are since the boys tried to choke
him,
Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
"I will not die by
your hand! Gardening is not your job, but there
is something that is," said the rat.
"Where is what is
ours? Go ahead and name it," the boys told the
rat.
"Will you let me
go then? My word is in my belly,*(246) and after
I name it for you, you'll give me my morsel of food," said
the rat.
"We'll give you
your food, so name it," he was told.
"Very well. It's
something that belonged to your fathers, named
One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, who died in Xibalba. What remains
is
their gaming equipment. They left it up under the roof of
the
house:*(247) their kilts, their arm guards, their rubber ball.
But
your grandmother doesn't take these down in front of you,
because this
is how your fathers died."
"You know the
truth, don't you!" the boys told the rat.
There was great joy in
their hearts when they got word of the rubber
ball. When the rat had named it they gave the rat his food, and
this
is his food: corn kernels, squash seeds, chili, beans, pataxte,
cacao.
These are his.
"If anything of
yours is stored or gets wasted, then gnaw away," the
rat was told by Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
"Very well, boys.
But what will your grandmother say if she sees
me?"*(248) he said.
"Don't be
fainthearted. We're here. We know what our grandmother
needs to be told. We'll set you up under the corner of the
roof
right away. When that's taken care of you'll go straight to
where
the things were left, and we'll look up there under the roof,
but it's
our stew we'll be looking at," they told the rat when they
gave him
his instructions.
Hunahpu and Xbalanque
made their plans overnight and arrived right
at noon, and it wasn't obvious that they had a rat with them
when they
arrived. One of them went right inside the house when he reached
it,
while the other went to the corner of the house, quickly setting
up
the rat. And then they asked their grandmother for their
meal:
"Just grind
something for our stew, we want chili sauce, our dear
grandmother," they said.
After that, she ground
chili for their stew. A bowl of broth was set
out in front of them, but they were just fooling*(249)
their
grandmother and mother. They had emptied the water jar:
"We're really
parched! Bring us a drink," they told their
grandmother.
"Yes," she
said, then she went, and they kept on eating. They
weren't really hungry; they just put on false appearances.
And then they saw the
rat reflected in their chili sauce: here was
the rat loosening the ball*(250) that had been left in the peak
of the
roof. When they saw him in the chili sauce they sent a
mosquito,
that creature the mosquito, similar to a gnat. He went to the
water,
then he punctured the side of the grandmother's jar. The water
just
gushed out from the side of her jar. She tried, but she could
not stop
up the side of her jar.
"What has our
grandmother done? We're choking for lack of water, our
parched throats will do us in," they told their mother,
then they sent
her there.
After that, the rat cut
the ball loose. It dropped from beneath
the roof, along with the yokes, arm guards, kilts. These were
taken
away*(251) then; they went to hide them on the road, the road to
the
ball court.
After that, they went
to join their grandmother at the water, and
their grandmother and mother were unable to stop up the side of
the
jar, either one of them.
After that, the boys
arrived, each with his blowgun. When they
arrived at the water:
"What have you
done? We got weary at heart, so we came," they said.
"Look at the side
of my jar! It cannot be stopped," said their
grandmother, and they quickly stopped it up.
And they came back
together, the two of them ahead of their
grandmother.
In this way, the matter
of the rubber ball was arranged.
-
HAPPY NOW, THEY WENT TO
PLAY BALL AT THE COURT. So they played
ball at a distance, all by themselves. They swept out the court
of
their fathers.
And then it came into
the hearing of the lords of Xibalba:
"Who's begun a
game again up there, over our heads? Don't they
have any shame, stomping around this way? Didn't One and Seven
Hunahpu
die trying to magnify themselves in front of us? So, you
must
deliver another summons," they said as before, One and
Seven Death,
all the lords.
"They are hereby
summoned," they told their messengers. "You are
to say, on reaching them:
'"They must
come," say the lords. "We would play ball with them
here. In seven days we'll have a game," say the lords,' you
will say
when you arrive," the messengers were told.
And then they came
along a wide roadway, the road to the house of
the boys, which actually ended at their house, so that the
messengers came directly to their grandmother. As for the boys,
they
were away playing ball when the messengers of Xibalba got
there.
"'Truly, they are
to come,' say the lords," said the messengers of
Xibalba. So then and there the day was specified by the
messengers
of Xibalba:
"'In seven days
our game will take place,'" Xmucane was told there.
"Very well.
They'll go when the day comes, messengers," said the
grandmother, and the messengers left. They went back.
So now the grandmother's
heart was broken:
"How can I send
for my grandchildren? Isn't it really Xibalba,
just as it was when the messengers came long ago, when their
fathers
went to die?" said the grandmother, sobbing, at home by
herself.
After that, a louse
fell on her elbow,*(252) and then she picked
it up and put it in her hand, and the louse moved around with
fits and
starts.
"My grandchild,
perhaps you might like to take my message, to go
where my grandchildren are, at the ball court," the louse
was told,
then he went as a message bearer:
"'A messenger has
come to your grandmother,' you will say. '"You are
to come:
'In seven days they are
to come,' say the messengers of Xibalba,"
says your grandmother,' you will say," the louse was
told.
Then he went off, and
he went in fits and starts, and sitting in the
road was a boy named Tamazul, the toad.
"Where are you
going?" said the toad to the louse.
"My word is
contained*(253) in my belly. I'm going to the two boys,"
said the louse to Tamazul.
"Very well. But I
notice you're not very fast," the louse was told
by the toad. "Wouldn't you like me to swallow you? You'll
see, I'll
run bent over*(254) this way, we'll arrive in a
hurry."
"Very well,"
said the louse to the toad.
After that, when he had
been united with the toad,*(255) the toad
hopped. He went along now, but he didn't run.
After that, the toad
met a big snake named Zaquicaz:
"Where are you
going, Tamazul boy?" the toad was asked next by
Zaquicaz.
"I'm a messenger.
My word is in my belly," the toad next said to the
snake.
"But I notice
you're not fast. Listen to me, I'll get there in a
hurry," said the snake to the toad.
"Get going,"
he was told, so then the toad was next swallowed by
Zaquicaz. When snakes get their food today they swallow
toads.
So the snake was
running as he went, then the snake was met from
overhead by a laughing falcon, a large bird. The snake was
swallowed
up by the falcon, and then he arrived above the court. When hawks
get their food, they eat snakes in the mountains.
And when the falcon
arrived he alighted on the rim of the ball
court.*(256) Hunahpu and Xbalanque were happy then, they
were
playing ball when the falcon arrived.
So then the falcon
cried out: