An Annotated Translation of a Colonial Yucatec Manuscript:
On Religious and Cosmological Topics by a Native Author

(About the Creation of Adam)

Endnotes #229-242

229. Here the three persons of the Trinity engage in tzicbal, conversation, the primary genre of Yucatec narrative, according to Allan Burns (1983:19).

230. I am analyzing tac as a contraction of ti and ca, a possibility pointed out to me by UNC linguistics professor Bob Howren.

231. This line refers to "the popular medieval belief that God had originally created man to fill up the depopulated ranks of Paradise caused by the expulsion of the fallen angels" (Phelan 1970:72).

232. An unusual use of the word maben which means box, chest or coffer.

233. sap: braza en medida. Here the number twelve reappears. The repetition of tamil, the depths, in this passage contrasts with the repetition of yokol, above, on the following page.

234. Damaçeno u kaba chakan patci ca yax yum ti Adan tumenel D^s (Chilam Balam of Chumayel, p. 58).

235. chelic: to lean to one side (Bricker 1981:9), or a miswriting of chelic: acostarse.

236. Compare with the description of beings made of mud in the Popul Vuh, "Of earth, of mud, they made [man’s] flesh. But they saw it was not good. It melted away, it was soft, did not move, had no strength, it fell down, it was limp, it could not move its head, its face fell to one side, its sight was blurred, it could not look behind" (Goetz and Morley 1950:86).

237. The author may have conflated the Maya verb He' open, with the Aramaic word ephphatha meaning be opened. See Mark 7:34 where Christ heals a deaf man by anointing his ears with spittle and pronouncing this word. In Mark 8:22-26. Christ heals a blind man by anointing his eyes with saliva. The rite of ephphatha (saliva) constituted a preliminary ceremony in some sixteenth-century baptisms of the natives of Mexico (Ricard 1966:92).

238. I am assuming the author means hech, as in two lines below, rather than hech.

239. The purpose for which sentient beings were created, according to the Popol Vuh (Goetz and Morley 1950:168).

240. The heavenly bodies are understood to have shining faces or countenances, as in the description of the layers of the heavens; see ms. p.188.

241. Here the syllable lu seems to have dropped out, as it did in tu[lu]mil u hool on ms. p.195.

242. A passage which begins with a conversation between the persons of God, ends with a conversation between Adam and his maker.

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