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Chilam Balam


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The Mayan /*Chilam Balam*/ books are the eponymous 'town books' of small
Yucatec towns. Usually these consist of disparate texts in which Mayan and
Spanish traditions have coalesced. The Yucatec Mayas ascribed these to a
/chilam/ 'oracular priest' called Balam 'Jaguar'. Some of the texts
contain prophetic texts which Spanish translators have interpreted as
referring to the arrival of the Spaniards in Yucatan. Many of the existing
books contain references to the Chilam Balam. Both indigenous and foreign
scholars occasionally refer to all the disparate texts found within a
particular manuscript as 'books of Chilam Balam'.

There are nine Books of Chilam Balam. Those of Chumayel, Tizimin, and
Tusik (the last one being the only one remaining in Maya hands) are
historical and prophetic works, covering both pre-Spanish and colonial
events. The Books of Chilam Balam of Kaua, Chan Kan, Nah, Tekax, Mani and
Ixil are largely concerned with astronomy, astrology, and herbal
medicine.^[1]

The books were transcribed in the Yucatec Maya language
(in a modified Spanish alphabet), during
the 18th and 19th centuries, although many of the texts date to the time
of the Spanish invasion.

The medical texts are quite practical, the historical and astrological
texts belong to esoteric lore. At various places in these texts,
important bits of information about early mythology crop up.

The historical texts, called 'chronicles', are cast in the framework of
the Maya calendar  (although with confused
insertions on the European calendar) and contain useful data on the
ancient calendar, its caretakers, its uses and its cycles, including the
*k'in*, *tun* and *k'atun*.

The often allusive, metaphorical nature and the archaic Yucatec idiom of
the Chilam Balam texts offers a formidable challenge to translators. The
quality of existing translations varies greatly, and is sometimes
heavily influenced by external assumptions about the texts' nature.


[edit ] Notes

1. *^ * Bricker & Miram, 2002, p. 1a


[edit ]
References

Barrera Vásquez, Alfredo  and
Silvia Rendón (translators), /El Libro de los Libros de Chilam
Balam. Traducción de sus textos paralelos./ Mexico: Fondo de Cultura
Económica, 1948. (Many later editions.)
Bricker, Victoria Reifler and Helga-Maria Miram (translators)
(2002). /An Encounter of Two Worlds: The Book of Chilam Balam of
Kaua/. Middle American Research Institute, publication 68. New
Orleans: Tulane University . ISBN
0-939238-98-5 . 
Clendinnen, Inga  (1987). /Ambivalent
Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570/. Cambridge Latin
American studies, no. 61. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press . ISBN
0-521-33397-0 . OCLC
4356013
. 
Edmonson, Munro S. (translator) (1982). /The Ancient Future of the
Itza : the Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin/. Austin: University of
Texas Press . 
Edmonson, Munro S. (translator) (1986). /Heaven Born Merida and Its
Destiny : the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel/. Austin: University
of Texas Press . 
Luxton, Richard N. (translator), /The (Chilam Balam) Book of
Chumayel; The Counsel Book of the Yucatec Maya./ California: Aegean
Park Press, 1995.
Restall, Matthew , /Maya Conquistador./
Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
Roys, Ralph L. (translator), /The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel/.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967.
Sawyer-Laucanno, Christopher (translator), /The Destruction of the
Jaguar: Poems from the Books of Chilam Balam/. San Francisco: City
Lights, 1987