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p. 1

THE BOOK OF THE PEOPLE:

Popol Vuh

Preamble

THIS IS

THE BEGINNING

of the old traditions of this

place called Quiché. 1 <#fn_0>

Here we shall write and we shall begin the old stories, 2 <#fn_1> the
beginning and the origin of all that was done in the town of the Quiché,
by the tribes of the Quiché nation.

And here we shall set forth the revelation, the declaration, and the
narration of all that was hidden, the revelation by Tzacol, Bitol, Alom,
Qaholom 3 <#fn_2>, who are called Hunahpú-Vuch, Hunahpú-Utiú,
Zaqui-Nimá-Tziís, Tepeu, Gucumatz,

p. 2

u Qux cho, u Qux Paló, Ali Raxá Lac, Ah Raxá Tzel, as they were
called. 3 <#fn_2> And [at the same time] the declaration, the combined
narration of the Grandmother and the Grandfather, whose names are
Xpiyacoc, and Xmucané, 4 <#fn_3> helpers and protectors, twice
grandmother, twice grandfather, so called in the Quiché chronicles. Then
we shall tell all that they did in the light of existence, in the light
of history. 5 <#fn_4>

This we shall write now under the Law of God and Christianity; we shall
bring it to light because now the /Popol Vuh/, as it is called, 6
<#fn_5> cannot be seen any more, in which was dearly seen the coming
from the other side of the sea and the narration of our obscurity, and
our life was clearly seen. 7 <#fn_6> The original book, written long
ago, existed, but its sight is hidden to the searcher and to the
thinker. Great were the descriptions and the account of how all the sky
and earth were formed, how it was formed and divided into four parts;
how it was partitioned, and how the sky was divided; and the
measuring-cord was brought, and it was stretched in the sky and over the
earth, on the four angles, on the four corners, 8 <#fn_7> as was told by
the Creator and the Maker, the Mother and the Father of Life, 9 <#fn_8>
of all created things, he who gives breath and thought, she who gives
birth to the children, he who watches over the happiness of the people,
the happiness of the human race, the wise man, he who meditates on the
goodness of all that exists in the sky, on the earth, in the lakes and
in the sea.

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Footnotes

2:1 <pv08.htm#fr_0> p. 195 /Aré u xe oher tzih varal Quiché u bi/. At
the very beginning of the ancient chronicles of the Quiché race and in
the following words, the unknown author of this manuscript gives the
name /Quiché/ to the country: /varal Quiché u bi/; to the city, /Quiché
tinamit/; and to the tribes of the nation, /r'amag Quiché vinac/. The
word /quiché/, /queché/, or /quechelah/ means "forest" in many of the
Indian dialects of Guatemala, and comes from /qui/, /quiy/, "many," and
/che/, "tree," an original Maya word. Quiché, "land of many trees,"
"covered with forests," was the name of the most powerful nation of the
interior of Guatemala in the sixteenth century. The Náhuatl word
/Quauhtlemallan/ has the same meaning, which is probably a direct
translation of the Quiché name and aptly describes the mountainous,
fertile country which lies south of Mexico. Without doubt the Aztec name
/Quauhtlemallan/, from which the modern name of Guatemala is derived,
was applied to the entire country and not only to the capital of the
Cakchiquel, Iximché (the tree now called breadnut in English), which the
Tlaxcalteca, who arrived with Alvarado, called Tecpán-Quauhtlemallan.
All this territory situated to the south of Yucatán and the Petén-Itzá
region was known since before the Spanish Conquest as Quauhtlemallan and
Tecolotlán (the Verapaz of today). Sahagún is very explicit when he says
(/Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España/ [1938 ed.] Book X,
Chap. XXIX) that the first inhabitants of New Spain landed in Panutla
(Pánuco) and traveled along the seacoast looking toward the snow-covered
mountains and volcanoes until they came to the province of Guatemala.

2:2 <pv08.htm#fr_1> /Varal x-chi ca tzibah vi, x-chi ca tiquiba-vi oher
tzih/, in the original. In order to write the ancient chronicles about
the origin and development of the Quiché nation, the author probably
made use not only of oral traditions, but also of the ancient paintings
or picture-writings. Sahagún says that the Toltec priests as they
journeyed toward the East (Yucatán) took with them "all their paintings
in which they had all the things of ancient times and of the arts and
crafts." In Chapter 5 of Part IV of this book one reads that Lord Nacxit
(Quetzalcoatl) gave to the Quiché princes, among other things, "the p.
196 paintings of Tulán [/u tzibal Tulán/], the paintings as those were
called in which they put their chronicles."

2:3 <pv08.htm#fr_3> These are the names of the divinity, arranged in
pairs of creators in accord with the dual conception of the Quiché:
Tzacol and Bitol, Creator and Maker. /Alom/, the mother god, she who
conceived the sons, from /al/ "son," /alán/, "to give birth." /Qaholom/,
the father god who begat the sons, from /qahol/, "son of the father,"
/qaholah/, "to beget." Ximénez calls them Mother and Father; they are
the Great Father and the Great Mother, so called by the Indians,
according to Las Casas; and they were in heaven.

//

/Hunahpú-Vuch/, a hunting-fox bitch, or /tacuazín/ (opossum), god of the
dawn; /vuch/ is the moment which precedes dawn, /Hunahpú-Vuch/ is the
divinity in the feminine capacity, according to Seler. /Hunahpú-Utiú/, a
hunting coyote, a variety of wolf (/canis latrans/), god of the night,
is the name in the masculine capacity.

//

/Zaqui-Nimá-Tziís/, great white /coati mundi/ (/Nasua nasica/), gray
with age, mother of god; and her consort, /Nim-Ac/, great wild pig, or
wild boar, wanting in this passage through unintentional omission, but
given in the following chapter.

//

/Tepeu/, "king" or "sovereign," from the Náhuatl /Tepeuh/, /tepeuani/,
which Molina translates as "conqueror" or "vanquisher in battle"; the
Maya form is /ah tepehual/, and was probably taken from the Mexicans.
Gucumatz, a serpent covered with green feathers, from the Quiché word
/guc/ (/kuk/ in Maya), "green feathers," particularly those of the
quetzal, and /cumatz/, serpent; it is the Quiché version of Kukulcán,
the Maya name for Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec king, conqueror, culture
hero, and god of Yucatán during the period of the Maya New Empire. The
profound Mexican influence in the religion of the Quiché is reflected in
this Creator-couple who continue to be invoked throughout the book until
the divinity took the bodily form of Tohil, who in Part III is
specifically identified with Quetzalcoatl.

//

/U Qux Cho/, the heart, or the spirit of the lake. /U Qux Paló/, the
heart or spirit of die sea. As will be seen, the divinity was also
called the Heart of Heaven, /u Qux Cah/;

//

/Ah Raxá Lac/, the Lord of the Green Plate, or the earth; /A Raxá Tzel/,
the Lord of the Green Gourd or of the blue bowl, as Ximénez says,
meaning the sky.

The name Hunahpú has been the subject of many interpretations. Literally
it means a "hunter with a blowgun," a "shooter"; etymologically it is
the same, and is a word of the Maya tongue, /ahpú/ in Maya meaning
"hunter," and a/h ppuh ob/, the plural form, the "hunters," who go forth
to the chase, p. 197 according to the /Diccionario de Motul/. It is
evident, nevertheless, that the Quiché had to have some more plausible
reason than this particular etymology for giving the name to their
principal divinity. The hunter in primitive times was a very important
personage; the people lived by the products of the chase and the wild
fruits of the earth before the beginning of agriculture. Hunahpú would
be, consequently, the universal hunter who provided man with food; /hun/
in Maya also has the meaning of "general" and "Universal." But possibly
the Quiché who descended directly from the Maya, wished to reproduce, in
the name Hunahpú, the sound of the Maya words /Hunab Ku/, "the only
god," which they used to designate the principal god of the Maya
pantheon, and which could not be represented materially since he was
incorporeal. The painting of a hunter might have served in ancient times
to represent the sound of Hunab Ku, which contained the abstract idea of
a spiritual and divine being. The procedure is common in pre-Columbian
pictographic writing. Hunahpú is also the name of the twentieth day of
the Quiché calendar, the day most venerated by the ancients; it is
equivalent to the Maya /Ahau/, "lord" or "chief," and to the Náhuatl
/Xóchitl/, "flower" and "sun," symbol of the sun god or Tonatiuh.

2:4 <pv08.htm#fr_4> Xpiyacoc and Xmucané, the old man and the old woman
(in Maya, /xnuc/ is "old woman"), equivalents of the Mexican gods
Cipactonal and Oxomoco, the sages who, according to the Toltec legend,
invented their astrology and arranged the counting of time, that is, the
calendar. Although in the Quiché legend there was also the other
abstract pair previously mentioned, Xpiyacoc and, above all, his consort
Xmucané, this pair had a more direct contact with the things of this
world; together they were what the Mexican archaeologist Enrique Juan
Palacios calls "the active Creator-couple who are directly concerned
with the making of material things."

2:5 <pv08.htm#fr_5> /Ta x-qui tzihoh ronohel ruq x-qui ban chic chi
zaquil qolem, zaquil tzih/.

2:6 <pv08.htm#fr_6> /Popo Vuh/, or /Popol Vuh/, literally the "Book of
the Community." The word /popol/ is Maya and means "together,"
"reunion," or "common house." /Popol na/ is the "house of the community
where they assemble to discuss things of the republic," says the
/Diccionario de Motul/. /Pop/ is a Quiché verb which means "to gather,"
"to join," "to crowd," according to Ximénez; and /popol/ is a thing
belonging to the municipal council, "communal," or "national." For this
reason Ximénez interprets /Popol Vuh/ as Book of the Community or of the
Council. /Vuh/ or /uúh/ is "book," "paper," or "rag" and is derived from
the Maya /húun/ or /úun/, which means at the same time both paper and
book, and finally the tree, the bark of which was used in making paper
in ancient times, and which the Nahua call /amatl/, commonly p. 198
known in Guatemala as amatle (/Ficus cotinifolia/). Note that in many
words the /n/ from the Maya is changed to /j/ or /h/ in Quiché. /Na/,
"house" in Maya, is changed to /ha/, or /ja/; /húun/ or /úun/, "book" in
Maya, becomes /vuh/ or /úuh/ in Quiché.

2:7 <pv08.htm#fr_7> /Ilbal zac petenac chacá paló, u tzihoxic ca
muhibal, ilbal zac qazlem/. Brasseur de Bourbourg enclosed the last
seven words in quotation marks, but in the original these marks do not
appear.

2:8 <pv08.htm#fr_8> /Cah tzuc, cah xucut/, in the original. The four
cardinal points, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg. It is the same idea
of the four /Bacabs/ which in Maya mythology support the sky.

2:9 <pv08.htm#fr_9> When the /Popol Vuh/ enumerates persons of the two
sexes, it will be observed that it gallantly mentions the woman first.

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Next: I. Chapter 1 <pv09.htm>