Book III. commented upon
Reading edition
We are here engaged with the problem which the origin of man presented to the Kiché mind, and we shall find that its solution bears a remarkable likeness to that of similar American myths. We seldom hear of one first-created being. In the creation-myths of the New World four brothers are usually the progenitors of the human race. Man in these myths is nearly always earth-born. He and his fellows emerge from some cavern or subterranean place, fully grown and fully armed. Thus the Blackfoot Indians emerged from Nina-stahu, a peak in the Rockies. In the centre of Nunne Chaha, the High Hill, was a cavern, the house of the Master of Breath, whence came the Choctaws. The Peruvians come from Pacari Tambu, the House of the Dawn, near Cuzco, and an ancient legend of the Aztecâ states that they came from Chicomoztoc, the Seven Caverns, to the north of Mexico.
We find the first Mayan men speedily engaged in migration. Such must always be the life of the unsettled and unagricultural savage. He multiplies. Gods are given to each tribe. These he bears to a new country. In fact we have a complete migration myth in the Third Book of the “Popol Vuh,” and there are not wanting signs to show that this migration took place from the cold north to the warm south. The principal item of proof in favour of such a theory is, of course, the statement that the sun was “not at first born,” and that at a later stage of the journey, when his beams appeared upon the horizon, it was as a weaker and dimmer luminary that he seemed to the wanderers than in after years. The allusion to “shining sand,” by the aid of which they crossed rivers, may mean that they forded them when covered with ice. The whole myth is so strikingly akin to the Aztecân migration-myth given in the Mexican MS. in the Boturini Collection (No. 14, sec. viii.) that we cannot refrain from appending a short passage from the latter:
We find a similar myth in the Wallam Olum, or painted records of the Lenape Indians. “After the flood,” says this record, “the Lenape with the manly turtle beings dwelt close together at the cave house and dwelling of Talli …. They saw that the snake land was bright and wealthy. Having all agreed, they went over the water of the frozen sea to possess the land. It was wonderful when they all went over the smooth deep water of the frozen sea at the gap of snake sea in the great ocean”5.
We thus see that the Third Book of the “Popol Vuh” is a migration saga of a type not uncommon in America. Asiatic tribes may have come down from the Chi-Pixab of the “Popol Vuh” to British Columbia, and thence by easy stages to Central America. And the Third Book of the “Popol Vuh” may be the distant echo of a mighty wave of colonisation, whose sound swept the entire surface of the New World.
Early Spanish Authors and the “Popol Vuh”
It cannot be said that the early Spanish authors upon the affairs of Yucatan either corroborate or discredit the contents of the “Popol Vuh” in any way. To begin with, Landa, Cogolludo, and Las Casas confine themselves more to Yucatan proper than to Guatemala, and their remarks upon native belief, in so far as they illustrate the “Popol Vuh” at all, are really references to Mayan myths. Palacios is meagre in his references to any native beliefs, and the works of all four are so coloured by the phantasies of mediæval theology that, although interesting, they possess little real value. So far, in fact, as they throw light upon the “Popol Vuh” they might be safely ignored, and they are only given as works of reference in the bibliography for the sake of completeness. They are, however, most valuable for the study of Mayan mythology proper, and for complete understanding of the “Popol Vuh” and of Kiché mythology in general, knowledge of Mayan myth is necessary.
Evidence of Metrical Composition
There is not wanting evidence to show that, like most barbarous compositions which depended for their popularity upon the ease with which they could be memorised, the “Popol Vuh” was originally composed in metre. Passages here and there show a decided metrical tendency, as:
“Ama x-u ch’ux ri Vuch
Ve, x-cha ri mama.
Ta chi xaquinic
Quate ta chi gekumarchic
Cahmul xaquin ri mama
Ca xaquin-Vuch” ca cha vinak vacamic.
which is translated:
“Is the dawn about to be?
Yes, answered the old man.
Then he spread apart his legs.
Again the darkness appeared.
Four times the old man spread his legs.
Now the opossum spreads his legs”—
The first line almost scans in iambics (English style), and the fifth is perfect, except for the truncation in the fourth foot. The others appear to us to consist of that alternation of sustained feet—musically represented by a semibreve—with pyrrhics, which is characteristic of nearly all savage dance-poetry. Father Coto, a missionary, observes that the natives were fond of telling long stories and of repeating chants, keeping time to them in those dances of which all the American aboriginal peoples appear to have been so fond—and still are, as Baron Nordenskjöld has recently discovered in the Aymara country. These chants were called nugum tzih, or “garlands of words,” and although the native compiler of the “Popol Vuh” appears to have been unable to recollect the precise rhythm of the whole, many passages attest its original odic character.
Note.—The pronunciation of x in Kiché equals sh. Ch is pronounced hard, as in the Scottish “loch,” and c hard, like k.