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FAMSI © 2003: Gretchen Whalen |
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An Annotated Translation of a Colonial Yucatec Manuscript: Final Report For the past seven years I have been working on a transcription and close interlinear translation of a previously unstudied Colonial Yucatec manuscript of more than three hundred pages. The manuscript, sewn together into a small book, was bequeathed by Sylvanus Morley to the library of the Laboratory of Anthropology in the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Clearly written in a single hand, the manuscript consists of 346 numbered pages, with some pages missing, including any title page listing an author or date of composition. However, buried on ms. page 234 appear the words Año 1576. This date has been added below the heading Preparaçion para cada dia in material which parallels writings collected and emended by Fr. Juan Coronel, published in 1620 under the title Discursos predicables, considered the earliest extant publication in Yucatec Maya. Early religious writings in Yucatec Maya are both scarce and little studied. In comparison, scholars have done extensive analysis of sixteenth century religious literature in Nahuatl, and the role of native authors in its production is widely recognized. I began my work on the manuscript at the suggestion of Josie Caruso, an epigrapher from Santa Fe familiar with the Morley collection. For several years, Josie and museum librarian Laura Holt had tried to generate interest in the book, which had been dismissed after cursory examination as a standard "prayer book" translated into Yucatec Maya by a Franciscan priest, a judgment based on frequent repetition of the Spanish loan word Dios, and the superficial resemblance of a series of questions and answers at the beginning of the manuscript to a catechism. However, these questions are not asked by a priest to a parishioner, but by an emperor to a child so wise that he confounds all the sages with his replies. They represent not a rote recitation of dogma fit for a neophyte, but a riddle session within a frame story. Some of the riddles test knowledge of Bible stories: "Who was born twice but died once? Jonah, who was born from his mother and from the belly of a great fish." Other questions and answers are more philosophical and less orthodox: "What is it that most grieves a man? That is the death of his child." "What is it that most pleases a man? That is the death of his enemy." Would a Franciscan exalt such a sentiment, given that love of one’s enemy is among the theological virtues taught by the Church? Early in my study of the manuscript, I entered a correspondence with David Bolles, whose knowledge of Colonial Yucatec literature is unsurpassed. He raised the question of who had written the text: "Are we looking at something which a friar who gained a good working knowledge of the Mayan language fabricated, or is this something which somebody like Gaspar Antonio wrote for the friars, and thus perhaps a translation of a Spanish document into Mayan by a Mayan speaker." 1 As I continued my work, I noticed that the author misspelled key Spanish words and distorted Church dogma, while displaying complete command not only of Yucatec vocabulary, but of Maya style and metaphor, leading me to accept the latter hypothesis. It was also through my correspondence with David Bolles that I identified the source text for the Yucatec translation of "The Questions Asked by the Emperor," the first section of the Morley manuscript. The books of Chilam Balam, anthologies considered sacred in communities where scribes have composed and recopied them since the sixteenth century, include both indigenous riddles known as zuyua than, and Maya translations of the riddles asked of the Maiden Teodora. Originally from the Arabian Nights cycle, the Maiden Teodora story became part of the wisdom literature popular in medieval Europe. David Bolles has made an extensive study of the Maiden Teodora tale as it appears in Yucatec Maya, and our discussion of his work led me to recognize the Morley manuscript riddle session as another example of the genre of wisdom literature. By researching this genre, I was able to trace the Maya translation to its source, a version published in Burgos in 1540 of Las preguntas que el emperador hizo al infante Epitus. 2 The book was subsequently banned by order of the Inquisition in 1559. 3 Following "The Questions Asked by the Emperor," the manuscript includes an exhortation to confess, a series of short sermons introduced by quotations in Latin. The author warns against belief in the cries of birds and belief in dreams, uchben belex, your ancient practices. He admonishes those who swear falsely, those who fail to fast, and those who insult their elders. Next comes the Xot Kin, the signs of the fifteen final days before judgment, in a version similar to one in the Chilam Balam of Tuzik. A lengthy discussion of the kinds of wisdom available to man centers on a passage identifying the Maya deity Hun Ahau with Lucifer as the originator of false wisdom. In another section, the author describes in detail the eleven layers of the heavens as they have been explained by astrologers at the court of Alfonso X. He tells of the Earthly Paradise, whose most wondrous feature is the yax cheel cab, the first tree of the world. Here in the Earthly Paradise, the three persons of God discuss among themselves the making of man, who is formed from sacred earth from twelve armlengths deep below the ground. Then God annoints the mouth and ears of first man with His saliva, and says the word Hephetah, and Adam can speak and hear. All men are descended from this one man, Adam, including: "Dzulob (literally, foreigners, but in this context, the Spaniards), the French, the Moors, the Jews, the Blacks, the people of Ah Mex Cuc, and the Maya people, even those people who have been scattered from these regions here." Because he has no one with whom to converse, Adam requests a companion from God. God squeezes out Adam’s rib to make Eve, who falls into sin, cajoled by a serpent with a woman’s head in a dialogue which suggests a dramatic presentation. The final portion of the book contains an lengthy exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, and two sets of ejemplos, short didactic tales. As I completed each section of my translation, David Bolles critiqued it, drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of Colonial Yucatec vocabulary. 4 It was he who recognized the final third of the Morley manuscript as material which also appears in Coronel’s Discursos predicables. His guidance has proved invaluable, not only in shaping the translation itself, but in identifying similar passages in other documents in Colonial Yucatec, including the books of Chilam Balam and the Colonial dictionaries. 5 In addition to producing a clear translation, I became determined to identify European source texts whenever possible, as well as noting parallels in Maya literature. Finally, I sought to understand the circumstances under which the manuscript had been produced. I came to accept as plausible the theory that the varied writings in the manuscript were composed by a Maya maestro de escuela, a school master educated by the Franciscans to aid in the work of conversion. The author frequently addresses his audience as cech mehen, "you, young man," uses the analogy of unruly students in a classroom to illustrate a point, and seems to refer to visual aids, all suggesting a school setting. During the early evangelization of Yucatán, priests were scarce, and hopes high for the intellectual and moral capacities of the new converts. We know much less about higher education for the native elite in Yucatán than in Central Mexico, for example, at the Imperial Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, where Nahua youths learned to debate in Latin, among other skills. Inventories, as well as surviving volumes from the famous library at Tlatelolco, provide evidence of ambitious educational goals. 6 Concerning schools in Yucatán, we know that in 1552 Fr. Lorenzo de Bienvenida ordered books from Spain specifically for "a grammar school (estudio de gramática) wherein the natives of that land are instructed." 7 No list of the books survives, but through this manuscript we catch glimpses of the literature studied, translated, and taught by the Maya maestros, who played a key role in the conversion process. While the Franciscans ordained no Maya priests, under instructions from Francisco de Toral, first bishop of Yucatán, "the ah cambeçahes, or maestros, were granted the authority to catechize, baptize the sick, administer extreme unction, and hear confessions from (and presumably absolve) the sick and dying." 8 During the initial years of work on the manuscript, I found no reason to doubt the date: Año 1576. The manuscript includes the translation of a book banned in 1559, as well as material published in 1620 in what seems to be an earlier version. 9 Even more telling, the writings reflect the early, millenarian spirit of the Franciscans, the belief that "God is filling up the throne chairs in heaven with Indians so as soon to end the world," espoused by Franciscan mystics like Gerónimo de Mendieta.10 However, while studying intrusive material written in the margins, Josie Caruso began to suspect that the date had been added after the fact, although blotting on the page made this difficult to discern. In the summer of 1999, Josie Caruso, Barbara MacLeod, librarian Laura Holt and I met at the museum library in Santa Fe to take a closer look and decide on next steps. Barbara MacLeod suggested using watermarks to date the paper on which the manuscript was written. After some searching, I was fortunate to find an expert on Mesoamerican manuscripts, David Szewczyk of the Philadelphia Rare Book and Manuscripts Company. Judging from drawings of the watermarks prepared by Josie Caruso and from orthographic conventions, he concluded that the present copy dates from between 1760 and 1780. According to Dr. Szewczyk, "Paper is definitely from the 1760-1780 era, and the handwriting, really "printing" (letras de molde) is certainly from the second half of the 18th century."11 During the year 2002-2003, I received funding from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI) which enabled me to complete the transcription and translation of the manuscript. I have written an introduction to each section, summarizing its contents and indicating important stylistic features. In addition, I have given a synopsis of those ejemplos which appear in Coronel’s Discursos predicables but are omitted from the manuscript, to facilitate comparison of the two texts. I see my work as a preliminary study which may stimulate the interest of other scholars to address questions which remain. Provenance In an effort to ascertain the provenance of the manuscript, museum librarian Laura Holt made a trip to Philadelphia to study Sylvanus Morley’s diaries at the American Philosophical Society Library. She discovered no mention of Morley’s acquisition of the book. There may be reference to the history of the manuscript somewhere among Morley’s papers, but I have found no clues in sources available to me. The book bears no official stamps to indicate previous ownership, which suggests that it remained in private hands. At this time, provenance of the manuscript is unknown. Date The date 1576 represents a turning point for religious literature in vernacular languages, including Yucatec Maya. In May of that year, the General Council of the Inquisition in Seville sent a letter to the Holy Office of the Inquisition of New Spain ordering "the supression of the handbook Ecclesiastes en la lengua de los indios and any other sacred scripture in said tongue or any other vernacular."12 In the section I have titled "On Holy Scripture," the author of the manuscript extols the benefits of the Bible, "for whoever wishes to read it, having really given his heart to it, not even one thing has been covered up" (ms. p.148). In response to their prohibition, in 1578 Diego de Landa assured the authorities that absolutely no passages of sacred scripture had been translated into Yucatec Maya: "En esta tierra no se a, hasta aora, traduzido en la lengua de los naturales cossa alguna de la Sagrada scriptura."13 Landa admitted the existence of handwritten sermons, "algunas sermones de mano" which he had collected, and in which he had found things which displeased him, "algunas cossas que me an descontentado." According to René Acuña, this collection of handwritten sermons constituted a source for the material published by Coronel in 1620 as Discursos predicables.14 Coronel never claims to have written the Discursos himself, but only to have collected and emended the works of "religiosos doctos" and "los padres antiguos." Curiously, he cites no authors by name, although the renown of Franciscans so gifted at writing Maya should have been a matter of record only a few decades later. Rather, he gives as one of the reasons for his publication, that such teachings should not be disseminated "in handwritten notebooks where many lies are found."15 A handwritten notebook by a native author, collected by Landa, may well have been marked with the date 1576, a date after which such writings became problematic, a date which may have been copied from the original into the manuscript from the Morley collection. The Author If the manuscript represents a copy of one originally written in the sixteenth century, as I believe, Gaspar Antonio Chi’ Xiu might well have been its author. Considered the most educated Maya of the sixteenth century, "the first native who learned the Spanish and Latin languages," Gaspar Antonio submitted probanzas and received pensions for writing sermons for the Franciscans.16 He served as school master and choir master in Tizimin around 1571. As late as 1586, a copy of a post illa, a hand book for preachers, was confiscated from Gaspar Antonio by order of the Inquisition,17 suggesting that he was still writing sermons at this time. Although he had worked as Diego de Landa’s interpreter, Gaspar Antonio fell out of Landa’s favor by aiding Bishop Francisco de Toral, Landa’s rival. Certainly Landa would have had no desire to acknowledge Gaspar Antonio Chi’ Xiu as an author, no matter how useful his writings might be to friars struggling with the Maya language. During this period, the climate within the Church began to turn against higher education for natives, due to grave doubts about the sincerity of their conversion, perhaps leading Coronel to attribute writings taken from a handwritten copy book to "los padres antiguos" rather than to an educated, eloquent Maya author. Sylvanus Morley’s interest in the Xiu lineage led him to assemble an 813 page account of the family’s history, which remains unpublished. While researching his book, Morley searched local archives in Yucatán for documents and interviewed any living descendents of the family that he could locate. Perhaps he found the manuscript in his searches, or it was presented to him by a member of the Xiu family. I find the theory attractive, but have no evidence to support it. Nor can I hope to prove that Gaspar Antonio Chi’ Xiu was the original author of the manuscript. Because it is a later copy, matching handwriting is impossible. Transcription and Translation I have used a semi-paleographic approach to transcription, staying as close as possible to the original, given computer limitations. The backwards C used to represent the sound ts’ (in modern Yucatec orthography), I have represented as Dz. I have omitted the guide syllable at the bottom of each page which indicates the first word on the following page. I preserved original punctuation, which resembles punctuation in portions of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, which we know from a copy considered roughly contemporaneous with the Morley manuscript. I have set myself three goals in translation: to reflect the poetic features of the Maya text, to stay as close as possible to the original word order, and to present a readable version in English. The first goal determines my choices in the arrangement of lines. I have capitalized pronouns referring to the Christian deity for two reasons. First, any indication of which character speaks or acts can provide a helpful reference point in a Maya text. Second, I believe the capitalization highlights the differences between the Maya author’s understanding of the Christian deity and more familiar, orthodox treatments of the same material. Endnotes
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