The title of Edmonson's work refers to the Mayan custom of first
predicting their history and then living it, and it may be that no
other peoples have ever gone so far in this direction. The Book of
Chilam Balam was a sacred text prepared by generations of Mayan
priests to record the past and to predict the future. The official
prophet of each twenty-year rule was the Chilam Balam, or Spokesman
of the Jaguar--the Jaguar being the supreme authority charged with
converting the prophet's words into fact.
This is a literal but poetic translation of one of fourteen
known manuscripts in Yucatecan Maya on ritual and history. It
pictures a world of all but incredible numerological order, slowly
yielding to Christianity and Spanish political pressure but never
surrendering. In fact, it demonstrates the surprising truth of a
secret Mayan government during the Spanish rule, which continued to
collect tribute in the names of the ruined Classic cities and
preserved the essence of the Mayan calendar as a legacy for the
tradition's modern inheritors.
The history of the Yucatecan Maya from the seventh to the
nineteenth century is revealed. And this is history as the Maya saw
it--of a people concerned with lords and priests, with the
cosmology which justified their rule, and with the civil war which
they perceived as the real dimension of the colonial period.
A work of both history and literature, the Tizimin presents a
great deal of Mayan thought, some of which has been suspected but
not previously documented. Edmonson's skillful reordering of the
text not only makes perfect historical sense but also resolves the
long-standing problem of correlating the two colonial Mayan
calendars. The book includes both interpretative and literal
translations, as well as the Maya parallel couplets and extensive
annotations on each page. The beauty of the sacred text is
illuminated by the literal translation, while both versions unveil
the magnificent historical, philosophical, and social traditions of
the most sophisticated native culture in the New World.
The prophetic history of the Tizimin creates a portrait of the
continuity and vitality, of the ancient past and the foreordained
future of the Maya.
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