Note 101 — Chapter V

The Popul Vuh, described by Brasseur de Bourbourg in his Histoire du Mexique under the title Manuscrit Quiché de Chichicastenango ([a], i. pp. lxxx ff.), is a Quiché document, part myth and part legendary history, supposed to have been put in writing in the seventeenth century, when it was copied and translated into Spanish by Francisco Ximenes, of the Order of Predicadores. The manuscript was found by C. Scherzer in 1855 in the library of the university of San Carlos, Guatemala. The Spanish text of Ximenes was published at Vienna in 1856, and again, with French translation and notes, by Brasseur de Bourbourg, Paris, 1861; a second Spanish version, by Barberena, appeared in San Salvador, 1905. None of these translations is regarded as accurate, or indeed as other than filled with error and misinterpretation; but pending the appearance of a scholarly rendering from the native text they are our only sources for a document of profound interest. The edition of Brasseur de Bourbourg is that here employed, translations being from parts i, ii, and iii, while interpretations of names are drawn chiefly from Brasseur's footnotes. Las Casas [b], ch. cxxiv, contains some account of the gods and heroes mentioned in the Popul Vuh.