THE POPOL VUH

and they are rendered of little use by reason of the misleading notes which accompany them.

The name "Popol Vuh" signifies "Record of the Community," and its literal translation is "Book of the Mat," from the K'iche' A Mayan ethnic group from the midwestern highlands of present-day Guatemala. words pop or popol, a mat or rug of woven rushes or bark on which the entire family sat, and vuh or uuh, paper or book, from uoch to write. The "Popol Vuh" is an example of a world-wide genre—a type of annals of which the first portion is pure mythology, which gradually shades off into pure history, evolving from the hero-myths of saga to the recital of the deeds of authentic personages. It may, in fact, be classed with the Heimskringla A collection of sagas about Norwegian kings written in Old Norse around 1230. of Snorre, the Danish History of Saxo-Grammaticus A 12th-century work documenting the history of the Danes., the Chinese History in the Five Books, the Japanese Nihongi The "Chronicles of Japan," the second-oldest book of classical Japanese history, finished in 720 AD., and, so far as its fourth book is concerned, it somewhat resembles the Pictish Chronicle A short history of the kings of the Picts in Scotland, likely written in the 10th century..

The language in which the "Popol Vuh" was written, was, as has been said, the K'iche', a dialect of the great Maya-K'iche' tongue spoken at the time of the Conquest from the borders of Mexico on the north to those of the present State of Nicaragua on the south; but whereas the Mayan was spoken in Yucatan proper, and the State of Chiapas, the K'iche' was the tongue of the peoples of that part of Central America now occupied by the States of Guatemala, Honduras and San The text likely refers to San Salvador (El Salvador), but the sentence is cut off by the page break.