Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh is a K’iche’ Maya narrative recounting cosmic beginnings, the adventures of the Hero Twins, and the creation of humanity from maize.

K’iche’ people: A Maya people of the Guatemalan Highlands with a living language and cultural tradition. The narrative preserves the history and sacred traditions of this people.
Maya creation myth: A traditional account of how the world, its beings, or its social order came into existence in Maya cultures. The Popol Vuh is a distinctive K’iche’ account within this broader tradition.
Francisco Ximénez: A Dominican friar who recorded and translated the Popol Vuh in the early eighteenth century. His manuscript is the principal surviving witness to the K’iche’ text.
Adrián Recinos: A Guatemalan scholar and diplomat known for producing a widely used Spanish translation of the Popol Vuh. His translation helped establish the narrative’s place in modern scholarship and public culture.
Maya religion: The diverse religious traditions of Maya peoples, past and present. The narrative’s gods and creation account belong to a wider Maya religious world.
Maize: A domesticated cereal crop native to the Americas and a staple food across Mesoamerica. The gods succeed in making people from maize, joining human origin to a staple crop.
K’iche’ alphabetic manuscript: A colonial-era K’iche’ text written in the Latin alphabet and now known through a copy by Francisco Ximénez. It preserves the narrative in K’iche’ alongside Ximénez’s Spanish translation.
Dennis Tedlock: An American anthropologist and translator whose English version of the Popol Vuh draws on K’iche’ performance and interpretation. His translation foregrounds the text’s spoken and performative dimensions.
Maya maize god: A deity associated with maize, death, rebirth, and rulership in ancient Maya religion. Maize carries divine and human significance throughout the narrative’s account of creation.
Mesoamerican cosmology: The ideas and practices through which Mesoamerican cultures understood the structure and order of the cosmos. The narrative’s layered worlds and cycles of creation express a Mesoamerican vision of cosmic order.

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