Synopses & Reviews
This is
the first complete version in English of the Book of the People of the
Quiche Maya, the most powerful nation of the Guatemalan highlands in
pre-Conquest times and a branch of the ancient Maya, whose remarkable
civilization in pre-Columbian America is in many ways comparable to the
ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. Generally regarded as
America's oldest book, the Popol Vuh, in fact, corresponds to
our Christian Bible, and it is, moreover, the most important of the five
pieces of the great library treasures of the Maya that survived the
Spanish Conquest.
The Popol Vuh was first transcribed in the Quiche language — in Latin characters, in the middle of the sixteenth century, by
some unknown but highly literate Quiche Maya Indian — probably from the
oral traditions of his people. This now lost manuscript was copied at
the end of the seventeenth century by Father Francisco Ximénez, then
parish priest of the village of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango in the
highlands of Guatemala, today the most celebrated and best-known Indian
town in all of Central America.
The mythology, traditions, cosmogony, and history of the Quiché Maya,
including the chronology of their kings down to 1550, are related in
simple yet literary style by the Indian chronicler. And Adrian Recinos
has made a valuable contribution to the understanding and enjoyment of
the document through his thorough going introduction and his
identification of places and people in the footnotes.
Review
"[Popol Vuh's] account of [the Quiche Maya's] cosmogony, mythology, traditions, and history will prove intensely interesting to students of anthropology, folklore, theology, and history." American Sociological Review
Review
"Here is a narrative of bold mythological adventures combined with the facts of recorded history; a picture of a world mentally and emotionally remote from our own." New York Herald Tribune
About the Author
Adrián Recinos — who
made a new Spanish translation from the original Xim'nez manuscript in
Quiche after he had discovered differences, omissions, and changes in
the text published by Brasseur de Bourbourg in 1861 — is a distinguished
diplomat as well as linguist, archaeologist, and ethnologist. For
sixteen years (1928-1944), minister and ambassador to the United States
from his native Guatemala, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of
Laws from George Washington University in 1942. Now retired, he lives in
Guatemala City, where he pursues his linguistic and archaeological
avocations.