POPOL VUH: What is it?, meaning, history, characteristics, and more

The Popol Vuh is considered the Bible of the Maya-Quichés, coming from the oral tradition of this civilization, it is a record rich in mythology and history that is considered at the level of great gems of literature such as the Hindu Ramayana or the Iliad and the Greek Odyssey.

Continue reading this article and learn everything about this work, which is considered a statement about the nature of the world and man’s role in it.

What is Popol Vuh?

The Popol Vuh, a Mayan document, rich in ancient mythology and culture, was written in K’iche’, the language of these people. Its author or authors narrated in its pages the creation of humanity and the actions and decisions of the gods.

They also tell the origin and history of the K’iches, in addition to the chronology of their kings until the year 1550.

Basically, the Popol Vuh is the story of the creation story according to the Mayan people native to the Guatemalan highlands, known as Quiche or k’iche’.

Meaning

The Popol Vuh is known as The book of the Council, The Book of the People or the Book of the Mat.

The term Popol translates as meeting, community or board. The word Vuh means book or paper.

The text of the work

The work of the Popol Vuh can be described as the book of the Mayan community of the highlands, ancient writing or events and happenings of the Quiche people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNz76_4bbQU

The narrative has a style that has outstanding features of the thought and expression of this people. For example, the repetition of what has already been stated, the use of the epithet (adjective), the telling of legends, myths and the history of this town. (See article: The Phoenix Bird)

However, many consider that the known Spanish version is influenced by Christianity, since those who included the Latin characters were Indians who had been converted to that religion.

This text is very similar to Genesis, as the Mayan myths are related and developed about how and by whom the universe and man were created. For this reason many consider it the genesis of the American Indian culture.

According to the vision of the Quiche natives, it explains the origin of their community, the existence of Tepeu and Gucumatz, the creator and the trainer, the heart of the sky known as Huracán or the third divinity that combines the first two.

Then the entire process of populating the lands of their nation with the participation of divine and supernatural beings, giants, men and women.

Until the tribes were established and separated, with the strongest predominating over the others, until the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors in American lands.

The mythology and vision of the Mayans believed in a world shaped like a truncated pyramid, similar to the way they made their temples.

The upper part was a quadrilateral that represented the sky, the intermediate area was the surface of the earth and the lower part is Xibalbá or the world of the dead. His conception of the universe only encompasses his surroundings in Central America.

This Mayan work described the history of the origins and religious beliefs of its people with images, figures and characters that could mean many things, almost anything they wanted.

Bartholome de las Casas, a priest who sympathized with Mayan books and artistic expressions and who lamented the destruction of many of them, described the Mayan books that he was able to observe as works full of cunning and subtlety.

Their way of expressing through figures offers advantages that our writing did not have, since their images allowed them to write everything they wanted, being the only people in the New World with a similar writing system at the time of the Spanish conquest and colony. .

All these books existing around 1540, the time when it is indicated that Bartholome de Las Casas saw them, had been hidden from Christian missionaries and their religious fanaticism. But everything indicates that in the end they were found and destroyed.

Such actions ended up with invaluable pieces, rich in culture and tradition of the continent’s native peoples, it is believed that the vast majority disappeared in the fires of Christianity, because if any still exist, they have not revealed their existence.

Images of the Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh is the most important Quiche Mayan text that exists to date and is distinguished above all by its historical and mythological content and its literary characteristics and qualities.

In addition to having been translated into Spanish, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, Arabic, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese, Hungarian and Mayan-Q’eqchi; It is easy to imagine that there are hundreds of illustrations and images related to each of its chapters.

Among the best known are those made by Diego Rivera in 1931. The artist made them to draw the translation of the Popol Vuh into English, carried out by John Weatherwax.

Weatherwax requested the watercolors from the Mexican painter, but they were never published. However, the Economic Culture Fund carried out a special edition with those well-known plates.

Origin and history

The Popol Vuh was written by an author or authors belonging to the Mayan people located in the area of ​​Guatemala, between the years 1554 and 1558, based on the writings and texts of the book where its writer specifies migrations, genealogies and settlements.

It follows that by the time it was written, intolerance and attacks on the beliefs and practices of this civilization were increasingly severe and repetitive on the part of the Spanish colonists, who wanted to impose Christianity.

The practice of religion was harshly repressed in the Quiche communities and in other areas, so it is presumed that the unknown author of the Popol Vuh decided to compile and collect the myths of his people, before they were lost.

The Quiche referred to this work as an Ilb’al or an instrument of sight and it was called The Book of the Mat, as people sat on woven mats to listen to the story in the council house.

This work tells how the creation of the world was according to the Quiches, also the adventures and exploits of the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque in the underworld, their victory over the Lords of Death, the creation of the human race and the story of migration and the settlement of the tribe until they were conquered by the Spanish.

Many Mayan works disappeared, a large part of them were burned in the 16th century, by the Spanish bishop Diego de Landa, especially from the Yucatan Mayans in the city of Mani around 1562.

However, since its jurisdiction did not cover the southern region of the Quiche, this incredible work known as the Popol Vuh was kept safe.

De Landa alone in Mani burned more than forty books, leaving a record of such an act and stating that a large number of books had been found, which only contained superstitions and lies of the devil, which is why they were all burned, generating unrest, affliction in the Mayans, who regretted it in an astonishing way.

According to stories, the Mayans who had trusted the Spanish bishop voluntarily taught him their books, an honor that was not granted to just anyone, even if they were Christian missionaries.

However, giving very little value to this, he burned more than forty Mayan works, thousands of statues and paintings in one night.

Later, between the years 1701 and 1703, the friar Francisco Ximénez, who served as parish priest of Santo Tomas Chuilá, a town currently called Chichicastenango, in Guatemala, had the work in his hands and made the first and only surviving copy of this text in Quiche. adding a Spanish translation.

It is said that Francisco Ximénes made two versions, the first was literal and he seems not to have liked it at all. The second was more elaborate and polished, including “The chronicle of the provenance of Chipa and Guatemala.”

The Dominican order kept this work protected until after the independence of Guatemala, but when the liberal reforms began that forced the closure of all the monasteries around 1830, it was acquired by the library of the University of San Carlos (Guatemala).

Both Carl Scherzer, a doctor of Austrian origin, and Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a French priest, had the privilege of seeing him there in 1854.

Around 1857, Carl Scherzer, with the sponsorship of the Habsburgs in Vienna (a member of the lineage that ruled in Spain at the time of the conquest of the Quiché kingdom, published the Spanish translation of Ximénez.

On the other hand, in 1861 Brasseur published the text in Quiche in Paris (France), accompanied by a translation into French.

The manuscript that Brasseur took from Guatemala eventually returned across the Atlantic from European lands, to form part of the collection of the Newberry Library in the city of Chicago, around 1911. (See article: Centella Ndoki)

Of the Yucatan Mayans there are currently:

The Dresden, Madrid and Paris codices are named after the cities in which they were received. Chilam Balam

Of the Quiche Mayan culture, only the Popol Vuh survives as a reflection of the beliefs and practices of this civilization.

Argument of the Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh is basically the Mayan version of the creation of the world, using their mythology. It also includes the story of the adventures and triumphs of the gods Hunahpú and Xbalanqué, in times before the creation of humans.

They recount the origins of the lineages that governed the Quiche kingdom, the migration to the Guatemalan highlands, the conquest of that territory, the founding of the main city and everything related to the kings who governed it until the conquest of the Spanish.

Characteristics

This valuable work is considered a gem of literature. Some of its main features are:

It is divided into a preamble and four parts. The presence of cosmogonic myths or those that try to explain how the world was created. The creation of man is described, considering this fact the reason for creation. A polytheistic conception, that is, the belief in many gods. It is written in simple, solemn and descriptive language. It is an objective story where different relevant facts are presented, without being criticized by the writer. Heroism persists as a characteristic of his main characters. It narrates events of historical significance, important for a people. Its genre is epic and its subgenre is epic. It is one of the most important representations of Latin American Literature, particularly the cultural literature of the indigenous Mayan civilization. Having incalculable value for all the information and knowledge of the Mayan world that the author captured in it. It has three main themes: creation, mythology and genealogy.

Characters

In this interesting Mayan book, there are a variety of characters that intervene in the different parts of the Popol Vuh, who could be considered mythological beings for the Mayan culture, and who are detailed below:

Tepeu

Quiche name that means Sovereign, he is a God of the sky, described as strong, wise and…