This is the first complete version in English of the "Book of
the People" of the Quiche Maya, the most powerful nation of the
Guatemalan highlands in pre-Conquest times and a branch of the
ancient Maya, whose remarkable civilization in pre-Columbian
America is in many ways comparable to the ancient civilizations of
the Mediterranean. Generally regarded as America's oldest book, the
"Popol Vuh, "in fact, corresponds to our Christian Bible, and it
is, moreover, the most important of the five pieces of the great
library treasures of the Maya that survived the Spanish
Conquest.
The "Popol Vuh "was first transcribed in the Quiche language,
-but in Latin characters, in the middle of the sixteenth century,
by some unknown but highly literate Quiche Maya Indian-probably
from the oral traditions of his people. This now lost manuscript
was copied at the end of the seventeenth century by Father
Francisco Ximenez, then parish priest of the village of Santo Tomas
Chichicastenango in the highlands of Guatemala, today the most
celebrated and best-known Indian town in all of Central
America.
The mythology, traditions, cosmogony, and history of the Quiche
Maya, including the chronology of their kings down to 1550, are
related in simple yet literary style by the Indian chronicler. And
Adrian Recinos has made a valuable contribution to the
understanding and enjoyment of the document through his thorough
going introduction and his identification of places and people in
the footnotes.
General
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