The Maya Chronicles Part 6

My translations are not in flowing and elegant language. Had they been so, they would not have represented the originals. For the sake of accuracy I have not hesitated to sacrifice the requirements of English composition.

-- 10. _Grammars and Dictionaries of the Language._

The learned Yucatecan, Canon Crescencio Carillo y Ancona, states in his last work that there have been written thirteen grammars and seventeen dictionaries of the Maya.[72-1]

The first grammar printed was that of Father Luis de Villalpando. This early missionary died in 1551 or 1552, and his work was not issued until some years later. Father Juan Coronel also gave a short Maya grammar to the press, together with a _Doctrina_. It is believed that copies of both of these are preserved. Beltran, however, acknowledges that in preparing his own grammar he has never seen either of these earlier works.[73-1]

In 1684, the _Arte de la Lengua Maya_, composed by Father Gabriel de San Buenaventura, a French Franciscan stationed in Yucatan, was printed in Mexico.[73-2] Only a few copies of this work are known. It has, however, been reprinted, though not with a desirable fidelity, by the Abbe Bra.s.seur (de Bourbourg), in the second volume of the reports of the _Mission Scientifique au Mexique et a l'Amerique Centrale_, Paris, 1870.

The leading authority on Maya grammar is Father Pedro Beltran, who was a native of Yucatan, and instructor in the Maya language in the convent of Merida about 1740. He was thoroughly conversant with the native tongue, and his _Arte_ was reprinted in Merida, in 1859, as the best work of the kind which had been produced.[74-1]

The eminent antiquary, Don Juan Pio Perez contemplated writing a Maya grammar, and collected a number of notes for that purpose,[74-2] as did also the late Dr. Berendt, but neither brought his work to any degree of completeness. I have copies of the notes left by both these diligent students, as also both editions of Beltran, and an accurate MS. copy of Buenaventura, from all of which I have derived a.s.sistance in completing the present study.

The first Maya dictionary printed was issued in the City of Mexico in 1571. It was published as that of Father Luis de Villalpando, but as he had then been dead nearly twenty years, it was probably merely based upon his vocabulary. It was in large 4to, of the same size as the second edition of Molina's _Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana_. At least one copy of it is known to be in existence.

For more than three centuries no other dictionary was put to press, although for some unexplained reason that of Villalpando was unknown in Yucatan. At length, in 1877, the publication was completed at Merida, of the _Diccionario de la Lengua Maya_, by Don Juan Pio Perez.[75-1] It contains about 20,000 words, and is Maya-Spanish only. It is the result of a conscientious and lifelong study of the language, and a work of great merit. The deficiencies it presents are, that it does not give the princ.i.p.al parts of the verbs, that it omits or does not explain correctly many old terms in the language, and that it gives very few examples of idioms or phrases showing the uses of words and the construction of sentences.

I can say little in praise of the _Vocabulaire Maya-Francais-Espagnole_, compiled by the Abbe Bra.s.seur (de Bourbourg), and printed in the second volume of the Report of the _Mission Scientifique au Mexique et a l'Amerique Centrale_. It contains about ten thousand words, but many of these are drawn from doubtful sources, and are incorrectly given; while the derivations and a.n.a.logies proposed are of a character unknown to the science of language.

Besides the above and various vocabularies of minor interest, I have made use of three ma.n.u.script dictionaries of the first importance, which were obtained by the late Dr. Berendt. They belonged to three Franciscan convents which formerly existed in Yucatan, and as they are all anonymous, I shall follow Dr. Berendt's example, and refer to them by the names of the convents to which they belonged. These were the convent of San Francisco in Merida, that at the town of Ticul and that at Motul.

The most recent of these is that of the convent of Ticul. It bears the date 1690, and is in two parts, Spanish-Maya and Maya-Spanish.

The _Diccionario del Convento de San Francisco de Merida_ bears no date, but in the opinion of the most competent scholars who have examined it, among them Senor Pio Perez, it is older than that of Ticul, probably by half a century. It is also in two parts, which have evidently been prepared, by different hands.

_The Diccionario del Convento de Motul_ is by far the most valuable of the three, and has not been known to Yucatecan scholars. A copy of it was picked up on a book stall in the City of Mexico by the Abbe Bra.s.seur, and sold by him to Mr. John Carter Brown, of Providence, R. I.

In 1864 this was very carefully copied by Dr. Berendt, who also made extensive additions to it from other sources, indicating such by the use of inks of different colors. This copy, in three large quarto volumes, in all counting over 2500 pages, is that which I now have, and have found of indispensable a.s.sistance in solving some of the puzzles presented by the ancient texts in the present volume.

The particular value of the _Diccionario de Motul_ is not merely the richness of its vocabulary and its numerous examples of construction, but that it presents the language as it was when the Spaniards first arrived. The precise date of its compilation is indeed not given, but the author speaks of a comet which he saw in 1577, and gives other evidence that he was writing in the first generation after the Conquest.

FOOTNOTES:

[9-1] "Tambien diz [el Almirante] que supo que ... aquella isla Espanola o la otra isla Jamaye estaba cerca de tierra firme, diez jornadas de Canoa que podia ser sesenta a setenta leguas, y que era la gente vestida alli." Navarrete, _Viages_, Tom. I, pag. 127.

[10-1] "In questo loco pigliorono una Nave loro carica di mercantia et merce la quale dicevono veniva da una cierta provintia chiamata MAIAM vel Iuncatam con molte veste di bambasio de le quale ne erono il forcio di sede di diversi colori." _Informatione di Bartolomeo Colombo._ It is thus printed in Harisse, _Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima_, p. 473; but in the original MS. in the Magliabechian library the words "vel Iuncatam" are superscribed over the word "MAIAM," and do not belong to the text. (Note of Dr. C. H. Berendt.) They are, doubtless, a later gloss, as the name "Yucatan" cannot be traced to any such early date.

The mention of _silk_ is, of course, a mistake. Peter Martyr also mentions the name in his account of the fourth voyage: "Ex Guaa.s.sa insula et Taia Maiaque et cerabazano, regionibus Veraguae occidentalibus scriptum reliquit Colonus, hujus inventi princeps," etc. _Decad._ III, Lib. IV.

[10-2] I have collected this evidence, drawing largely from the ma.n.u.script works on the Arawack language left by the Moravian missionary, the Rev. Theodore Schultz, and published it in a monograph, ent.i.tled: _The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations_. (_Transactions of the American Philosophical Society_, 1871.) There was a province in Cuba named _Maiye_; see Nicolas Fort y Roldan, _Cuba Indigena_, pp. 112, 167 (Madrid, 1881). According to Fort, this meant "origin and beginning," in the ancient language of Cuba; but there is little doubt but that it presents the Arawack negative prefix _ma_ (which happens to be the same in the Maya) and may be a form of _majujun_, not wet, dry.

[12-1] Eligio Ancona, _Historia de Yucatan_, Tom. I, p. 31 (Merida, 1878).

[12-2] _Diccionario Maya-Espanol del Convento de Motul._ MS. _Sub voce, ichech._ The ma.n.u.script dictionaries which I use will be described in the last section of this Introduction. The example given is:--

"ICHECH; tu eres, en lengua de Campeche; _ichex_, vosotros seis; _in en_, yo soy; _in on_, nosotros somos. De aqui sale en lengua de Maya, _tech cech ichech e_, tu que eres por ahi quien quiera," etc.

[13-1] See Eligio Ancona, _Hist. de Yucatan_, Tom. I, p. 37.

[13-2] "MAYA (accento en la primera); nombre proprio de esta tierra de Yucatan." _Diccionario de Motul_, MS. "Una provincia que llamavan de la _Maya_, de la qual la lengua de Yucatan se llama _Mayathan_." Diego de Landa, _Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan_, p. 14. "Esta tierra de Yucatan, a quien los naturales llaman _Ma'ya_," Cogolludo, _Historia de Yucatan_, Lib. IV, Cap. III. "El antiguo Reyno de Maya Mayapan que hoy se llama Yucatan." Villagutierre, _Historia de el Itza y de el Lacandon_, p. 25. The numerous MSS. of the Books of Chilan Balam are also decisive on this point.

[14-1] _Nombres Geograficos en Lengua Maya_, folio, MS. in my collection.

[15-1] Note to Landa, _Rel. de las Cosas de Yucatan_, p. 14.

[15-2] _Vocabulaire Maya-Francais-Espagnole_, _sub voce_, MAYA.

[15-3] _Hist. de Yucatan_, p. 37.

[19-1] A discussion of the items of the census of 1862 may be found in the work of the Licentiate Apolinar Garcia y Garcia, _Historia de la Guerra de Castas de Yucatan_, Tomo I, Prologo, pp. lxvii, et seq.

(Merida 1865.) The completion of this meritorious work was unfortunately prevented by the war. The author was born near Chan ?enote, Yucatan, in 1837, and was appointed _Juez de Letras_ at Izamal in 1864.

[20-1] See, for example, _El Toro de Sinkeuel, Leyenda Hipica_ (Merida, 1856), a political satire, said to be directed against General Ampudia, by Manuel Garcia.

[20-2] D. G. Brinton, _The Myths of the New World; a Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America_, Chap. VI (2d Ed.

New York, 1876).

[23-1] _Maya-uel_ may be from _maya_ and _ohel_, to know either intellectually or carnally; or the last syllable may be _uol_, will, desire, mind. This inventive woman would thus have been named "the Maya wit" (in the old meaning of the word).

[23-2] Sahagun, _Historia de la Nueva Espana_, Lib. X, Cap. XXIX, p. 12.

[24-1] Fray Diego Duran, _Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espana y Islas de Tierra Firme_, Cap. XIX (Ed. Mexico, 1867).

[24-2] See _Lettre de Fray Nicolas de Witt_ (should be Witte), 1554, in Ternaux Compans, _Recueil des Pieces[TN-2] sur le Mexique_, p. 254, 286; also the report of the "Audiencia" held in Mexico in 1531, in Herrera, _Historia de las Indias Occidentales_, Dec. IV, Lib. IX, Cap. V.

[27-1] I mention this particularly in order to correct a grave error in Landa's _Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan_, p. 130. He says, "Suelen de costumbre sembrar para cada casado con su muger medida de cccc pies que llaman _hun-uinic_, medida con vara de XX pies, XX en ancho y XX en largo." The agrarian measure _uinic_ or _hun uinic_ (one man) contained 20 _kaan_, each 24 yards (_varas_) square. One _kaan_ was estimated to yield two loads of corn, and hence the calculation was forty loads of the staff of life for each family. Landa's statement that a patch 20 feet square was a.s.signed to a family is absurd on the face of it.

[28-1] "La lengua castellana es mas dificultosa que la Maya para la gente adulta, que no la ha mamado con la leche, como lo ha ensenado la experiencia en los estranjeros de distintas naciones, y en los negros bozales que se han radicado en esta provincia, que mas facilmente han aprendido la Maya que la castellana." Apolinar Garcia y Garcia, _Historia de la Guerra de Castas en Yucatan_. Prologo, p. lxxv. (folio, Merida, 1865).

[31-1] Friedrich Muller, _Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft_, II Band, s.

309. (Wien, 1882).

[31-2] Lucien Adam, _Etudes sur six Langues Americaines_, p. 155.

(Paris, 1878).

[35-1] Gabriel de San Buenaventura, _Arte de la Lengua Maya_, fol. 28 (Mexico, 1684).

[40-1] _Memoire sur la numeration dans la langue et dans l'Ecriture sacree des anciens Mayas_, in the Compte-Rendu of the Congres International des Americanistes, Vol. II, p. 439 (Paris, 1875).

[41-1] _Leti u Ebanhelio Hezu Crizto hebix Huan_, London, 1869. This translation was made by the Rev. A. Henderson and the Rev. Richard Fletcher, missionaries to the British settlements at Belize.

[41-2] _Leti u Cilich Evangelio Jesu Christo hebix San Lucas._ Londres, 1865. The first draught of this translation, in the handwriting of Father Ruz, with numerous corrections by himself, is in the library of the Canon Crescencio Carrillo at Merida. A copy of it was obtained by the Rev. John Kingdon of Belize, and printed in London without any acknowledgment of its origin. It does not appear to me to be accurate.

For instance, chap. X, v. 1, "The Lord appointed other seventy also,"

where the Maya has _xan lahcatu cankal_, "seventy-two;" and again chap.

XV, v. 4, the ninety-nine sheep are increased to _bolon lahu uaxackal_, one hundred and fifty-nine!

[42-1] _Apuntes para una Gramatica Maya._ Por Don Juan Pio Perez, MSS.

pp. 126, 128.