Popol Vuh
Also known as: Council Book, Book of the Community, Book of the Mat, K'iche' Maya National Book, Popol Wuj
A K'iche' Maya sacred narrative that recounts the creation of the world, the exploits of the Hero Twins against the lords of Xibalba, the making of humans from maize, and the genealogies and migrations of K'iche' lineages.
Description
The Popol Vuh is the principal surviving sacred narrative of the K'iche' Maya, blending mythic cosmogony with ancestral history. It opens with a formless sea and the speech of divine makers who fashion successive beings—mud and wood—before creating true people from maize. Interwoven is the saga of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who avenge their father Hun Hunahpu by outwitting and destroying the lords of Xibalba through trials, sacrifice, and resurrection. Subsequent sections recount the dawn at Tulan, the reception of fire from Tohil, the ordering of the world, and the establishment of K'iche' dynasties. The text survives via a mid-sixteenth-century K'iche' manuscript, known through Fray Francisco Ximénez’s early eighteenth-century transcription and translation.
Historiography
Composed in K'iche' using Latin script circa 1554–1558, the original manuscript has not survived; our text derives from Fray Francisco Ximénez’s 1701–1703 K'iche'/Spanish copy and translation. In the nineteenth century, Carl Scherzer and Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg published versions based on Ximénez. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century editions by Adrián Recinos, Dennis Tedlock, and Allen J. Christenson have provided critical translations with linguistic and ethnographic commentary.
Date Notes
Original mid-16th-century K'iche' manuscript (now lost) reportedly consulted and copied by Fray Francisco Ximénez in the early 18th century; text preserves much older oral traditions.
Archetypes
Symbols
Major Characters
- Hunahpu
- Xbalanque
- Hun Hunahpu
- Vucub Hunahpu
- Seven Macaw
- Xmucane
- Xpiyacoc
- One Death
- Seven Death
- Huracan
Myths
- Creation of the World and the Maize People
- Seven Macaw and His Defeat
- The Hero Twins’ Ballgame in Xibalba
- Death and Resurrection of Hun Hunahpu
- Enthronement of the Hero Twins
Facts
- The title means Council Book/Book of the Community in K'iche'.
- The narrative preserves pre-Columbian cosmogony within a post-Conquest alphabetic K'iche' text.
- Fray Francisco Ximénez’s copy is the earliest extant textual witness.
- Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque are central cultural heroes across Maya iconography.
- Creation of true humans from maize reflects agricultural cosmology.
- Seven Macaw and his sons represent hubristic, usurping powers overthrown by the Twins.
- The ballgame motifs parallel Classic Maya art depicting underworld contests.
- Tohil functions as a patron deity granting fire and sanctioning K'iche' rulership.
- Later sections record migrations, rites, and K'iche' dynastic genealogies.
- Modern translations vary in orthography (Popol Vuh/Popol Wuj) and lineation.