The Popol Vuh
The Sacred Book of The Mayas
The Book of The Community
English Version by
Delia Goetz and Sylvanus G. Morley
( 1950 by the University of Oklahoma Press)
Translation by Adri Recinos
FOREWORD
BY SYLVANUS G. MORLEY
The Popol Vuh, or Sacred Book of the ancient QuichMaya, as it has been happily
subtitled, is, beyond any shadow of doubt, the most distinguished example of native
American literature that has survived the passing centuries.
The original redaction of this most precious fragment of ancient American learning
is now lost; however, it seems first to have been reduced to writing (in characters
of the Latin script), in the middle of the sixteenth century, from oral traditions
then current among the Quich by some unknown but highly educated, not to say
literary, member of that race.
This now lost original was again copied in the Quichlanguage, again in characters
of the Latin script, at the end of the seventeenth century, by Father Francisco
Ximez, then parish priest of the village of Santo Tom Chichicastenango in
the highlands of Guatemala, directly from the original sixteenth-century manuscript,
which he had borrowed for the purpose from one of his Indian parishioners.
The Popol Vuh is, indeed, the Sacred Book of the QuichIndians, a branch of
the ancient Maya race, and contains an account of the cosmogony, mythology, traditions,
and history of this native American people, who were the most powerful nation
of the Guatemala highlands in pre-Conquest times. It is written in an exalted
and elegant style, and is an epic of the most distinguished literary quality.
Indeed, the chance preservation of this manuscript only serves to emphasize
the magnitude of the loss which the world has suffered in the almost total destruction
of aboriginal American literature.
SYLVANUS G. MORLEY
Museum of New Mexico
Santa Fe
