The Popol Vuh
Saved in a Friar's Hand
- First attested
- the 1550sThe earliest witness is Francisco Ximénez's manuscript of 1701–1704, two columns to the page, K'iche' on the left and his Spanish on the right, bound with his Arte de las tres lenguas and now Ayer MS 1515 at the Newberry Library, Chicago. The alphabetic K'iche' text it copies is dated to 1554–1558 by internal evidence: the rulers its closing genealogy names are written of as living. No sixteenth-century manuscript is known to survive, and no Maya hieroglyphic book from the Guatemalan highlands survives at all; Christenson allows that the original may yet exist at Chichicastenango, unlocated. The Newberry gives a wider window, 1700–1715, for Ximénez's copying.
- Claimed
- around 900 CEasserted by The Popol Vuh's own K'iche' authors, who say they are working from an older book — an ilb'al, or instrument of sight — brought from Tulan across the sea and no longer visible in their day; Christenson places that migration tradition in the Early Postclassic, c. AD 900–1200.
The claim runs about 700 years ahead of the evidence.
The oldest surviving Popol Vuh is a Dominican friar's copy made between 1701 and 1704; what became of the K'iche' manuscript of 1554–1558 is unknown, and Christenson allows that it may still be at Chichicastenango, with village elders or in the town archive.
It survives only through the mission sent to replace it: one friar's copy, the original long gone.
K'iche' lords set it down between 1554 and 1558, in the Latin alphabet Dominican missionaries had taught them, dated by the rulers its closing pages name as living; Christenson places the writing at Santa Cruz del Quiché. In Yucatán the Franciscan Diego de Landa wrote that the friars burned every Maya book they found; hundreds of miles away, of the hieroglyphic books the Guatemalan highlands held, none is known to survive. Its authors say they worked from an older ilb'al, an instrument of sight no longer to be seen. Between 1701 and 1704 Francisco Ximénez, Dominican priest of Chichicastenango, copied the manuscript with a facing Spanish translation; what became of the original nobody knows. His copy, Ayer MS 1515 at the Newberry Library, is the only witness. It is no hieroglyphic codex but an alphabetic book of the colonial century.
Light
The book came back. In 2026 the Newberry sent facsimiles to four Guatemalan public libraries, one of them at Santa Cruz del Quiché, the town where Christenson places the writing, four hundred and seventy years on.
Shadow
The text reaches us only through the mission sent to replace what it says: Ximénez's title page offers the translation for the greater convenience of the Ministers of the Holy Gospel. Edward Ayer bought it in 1887; the Newberry has held it since 1912.