The Popol Vuh

THE POPOL VUH

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THERE is no document of greater importance to the study of the pre-Columbian Referring to the period in the Americas before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. mythology of America than the “Popol Vuh.” It is the chief source of our knowledge of the mythology of the Kiché The K'iche' are a Mayan people living in the midwestern highlands of present-day Guatemala. people of Central America, and it is further of considerable comparative value when studied in conjunction with the mythology of the Nahuatlacâ The Nahuatl-speaking peoples of central Mexico, including the Aztecs., or Mexican peoples. This interesting text, the recovery of which forms one of the most romantic episodes in the history of American bibliography, was written by a Christianised native of Guatemala some time in the seventeenth century, and
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was copied in the Kiché language, in which it was originally written, by a monk of the Order of Preachers original: "Order of Predicadores," referring to the Dominicans, a Catholic religious order., one Francisco Ximenes, who also added a Spanish translation and scholia Explanatory notes or comments inserted into a manuscript..

The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, a profound student of American archaeology and languages (whose euhemeristic Euhemerism is the historical theory that mythological gods were actually real people whose lives were exaggerated into legends over time. interpretations of the Mexican