The Maya Chronicles Part 1

The Maya Chronicles.

by Various.

PREFACE.

The belief that the only solid foundation for the accurate study of American ethnology and linguistics must be in the productions of the native mind in their original form has led me to the venturesome undertaking of which this is the first issue. The object of the proposed series of publications is to preserve permanently a number of rude specimens of literature composed by the members of various American tribes, and exhibiting their habits of thought, modes of expressions, intellectual range and aesthetic faculties.

Whether the literary and historical value of these monuments is little or great, they merit the careful attention of all who would weigh and measure the aboriginal mind, and estimate its capacities correctly.

The neglect of this field of study is largely owing to a deficiency of material for its pursuit. Genuine specimens of native literature are rare, and almost or quite inaccessible. They remain in ma.n.u.script in the hands of a few collectors, or, if printed, they are in forms not convenient to obtain, as in the ponderous transactions of learned societies, or in privately printed works. My purpose is to gather together from these sources a dozen volumes of moderate size and reasonable price, and thus to put the material within the reach of American and European scholars.

Now that the first volume is ready, I see in it much that can be improved upon in subsequent issues. I must ask for it an indulgent criticism, for the novelty of the undertaking and its inherent difficulties have combined to make it less finished and perfected than it should have been.

If the series meets with a moderate encouragement, it will be continued at the rate of two or three volumes of varying size a year, and will, I think, prove ultimately of considerable service to the students of man in his simpler conditions of life and thought, especially of American man.

I.

INTRODUCTION.

CONTENTS.

1. THE NAME "MAYA." 2. THE MAYA LINGUISTIC FAMILY. 3. ORIGIN OF THE MAYA TRIBES. 4. POLITICAL CONDITION AT THE TIME OF THE CONQUEST. 5.

GRAMMATICAL OBSERVATIONS. 6. THE NUMERAL SYSTEM. 7. THE CALENDAR. 8.

ANCIENT HIEROGLYPHIC BOOKS. 9. MODERN MAYA Ma.n.u.sCRIPTS. 10. GRAMMARS AND DICTIONARIES OF THE LANGUAGE.

-- 1. _The Name "Maya."_

In his second voyage, Columbus heard vague rumors of a mainland westward from Jamaica and Cuba, at a distance of ten days' journey in a canoe.[9-1] Its inhabitants were said to be clothed, and the specimens of wax which were found among the Cubans must have been brought from there, as they themselves did not know how to prepare it.

During his fourth voyage (1503-4), when he was exploring the Gulf southwest from Cuba, he picked up a canoe laden with cotton clothing variously dyed. The natives in it gave him to understand that they were merchants, and came from a land called MAIA.[10-1]

This is the first mention in history of the territory now called Yucatan, and of the race of the Mayas; for although a province of similar name was found in the western extremity of the island of Cuba, the similarity was accidental, as the evidence is conclusive that no colony of the Mayas was found on the Antilles.[10-2] These islands were peopled by a wholly different stock, the remnants of whose language prove them to have been the northern outposts of the Arawacks of Guiana, and allied to the great Tupi-Guaranay stem of South America.

MAYA was the patrial name of the natives of Yucatan. It was the proper name of the northern portion of the peninsula. No single province bore it at the date of the Conquest, and probably it had been handed down as a generic term from the period, about a century before, when this whole district was united under one government.

The natives of all this region called themselves _Maya uinic_, Maya men, or _ah Mayaa_, those of Maya; their language was _Maya than_, the Maya speech; a native woman was _Maya chuplal_; and their ancient capital was _Maya pan_, the MAYA banner, for there of old was set up the standard of the nation, the elaborately worked banner of brilliant feathers, which, in peace and in war, marked the rallying point of the Confederacy.

We do not know where they drew the line from others speaking the same tongue. That it excluded the powerful tribe of the Itzas, as a recent historian thinks,[12-1] seems to be refuted by the doc.u.ments I bring forward in the present volume; that, on the other hand, it did not include the inhabitants of the southwestern coast appears to be indicated by the author of one of the oldest and most complete dictionaries of the language. Writing about 1580, when the traditions of descent were fresh, he draws a distinction between the _lengua de Maya_ and the _lengua de Campeche_.[12-2] The latter was a dialect varying very slightly from pure Maya, and I take it, this manner of indicating the distinction points to a former political separation.

The name Maya is also found in the form _Mayab_, and this is a.s.serted by various Yucatecan scholars of the present generation, as Pio Perez, Crescencio Carrillo, and Eligio Ancona, to be the correct ancient form, while the other is but a Spanish corruption.[13-1]

But this will not bear examination. All the authorities, native as well as foreign, of the sixteenth century, write _Maya_. It is impossible to suppose that such laborious and earnest students as the author of the Dictionary of Motul, as the grammarian and lexicographer Gabriel de San Buenaventura, and as the educated natives whose writings I print in this volume, could all have fallen into such a capital blunder.[13-2]

The explanation I have to offer is just the reverse. The use of the terminal _b_ in "Mayab" is probably a dialectic error, other examples of which can be quoted. Thus the writer of the Dictionary of Motul informs us that the form _maab_ is sometimes used for the ordinary negative _ma_, no; but, he adds, it is a word of the lower cla.s.ses, _es palabra de gente comun_. So I have little doubt but that _Mayab_ is a vulgar form of the word, which may have gradually gained ground.

As at present used, the accent usually falls on the first syllable, _Ma'ya_, and the best old authorities affirm this as a rule; but it is a rule subject to exceptions, as at the end of a sentence and in certain dialects Dr. Berendt states that it is not infrequently heard as _Ma'ya'_ or even _Maya'_.[14-1]

The meaning and derivation of the word have given rise to the usual number of nonsensical and far-fetched etymologies. The Greek, the Sanscrit, the ancient Coptic and the Hebrew have all been called in to interpret it. I shall refer to but a few of these profitless suggestions.

The Abbe Bra.s.seur (de Bourbourg) quotes as the opinion of Don Ramon de Ordonez, the author of a strange work on American archaeology, called _History of the Heaven and the Earth_, that _Maya_ is but an abbreviation of the phrase _ma ay ha_, which, the Abbe adds, means word for word, _non adest aqua_, and was applied to the peninsula on account of the scarcity of water there.[15-1]

Unfortunately that phrase has no such, nor any, meaning in Maya; were it _ma yan haa_, it would have the sense he gives it; and further, as the Abbe himself remarked in a later work, it is not applicable to Yucatan, where, though rivers are scarce, wells and water abound. He therefore preferred to derive it from _ma_ and _ha_, which he thought he could translate either "Mother of the Water," or "Arm of the Land!"[15-2]

The latest suggestion I have noticed is that of Eligio Ancona, who, claiming that _Mayab_ is the correct form, and that this means "not numerous," thinks that it was applied to the first native settlers of the land, on account of the paucity of their numbers![15-3]

All this seems like learned trifling. The name may belong to that ancient dialect from which are derived many of the names of the days and months in the native calendar, and which, as an esoteric language, was in use among the Maya priests, as was also one among the Aztecs of Mexico. Instances of this, in fact, are very common among the American aborigines, and no doubt many words were thus preserved which could not be a.n.a.lyzed to their radicals through the popular tongue.

Or, if it is essential to find a meaning, why not accept the obvious signification of the name? _Ma_ is the negative "no," "not;" _ya_ means rough, fatiguing, difficult, painful, dangerous. The compound _maya_ is given in the Dictionary of Motul with the translations "not arduous nor severe; something easy and not difficult to do;" _cosa no grave ni recia; cosa facil y no dificultosa de hacer_. It was used adjectively as in the phrase, _maya u chapahal_, his sickness is not dangerous. So they might have spoken of the level and fertile land of Yucatan, abounding in fruit and game, that land to which we are told they delighted to give, as a favorite appellation, the term _u luumil ceh, u luumil cutz_, the land of the deer, the land of the wild turkey; of this land, I say, they might well have spoken as of one not fatiguing, not rough nor exhausting.

-- 2. _The Maya Linguistic Family._

Whatever the primitive meaning and first application of the name Maya, it is now used to signify specifically the aborigines of Yucatan. In a more extended sense, in the expression "the Maya family," it is understood to embrace all tribes, wherever found, who speak related dialects presumably derived from the same ancient stock as the Maya proper.

Other names for this extended family have been suggested, as Maya-Kiche, Mam-Huastec, and the like, compounded of the names of two or more of the tribes of the group. But this does not appear to have much advantage over the simple expression I have given, though "Maya-Kiche" may be conveniently employed to prevent confusion.

These affiliated tribes are, according to the investigations of Dr. Carl Hermann Berendt, the following:--

1. The Maya proper, including the Lacandons.

2. The Chontals of Tabasco, on and near the coast west of the mouth of the Usumacinta.

3. The Tzendals, south of the Chontals.

4. The Zotzils, south of the Tzendals.

5. The Chaneabals, south of the Zotzils.

6. The Chols, on the upper Usumacinta.

7. The Chortis, near Copan.

8. The Kekchis, and

9. The Pocomchis, in Vera Paz.

10. The Pocomams. }

11. The Mams. }

12. The Kiches. }

13. The Ixils. } In or bordering on Guatemala.