1 - Histomesoamericana

INTRODUCTION XV
endogenous—view of the work. I believe I have done that. While my
confidence has been shaken or my interpretation changed by some items
of subsequent reading, others have encouraged me to stick to my guns.
In learning Yucatecan Maya, I depended first on the production of a
general dictionary incorporating all entries in Brasseur 1872, Pío Pérez
1866-67, Swadesh, Alvarez, and Bastarrachea 1970, Blair and Vermont-
Salas 1965, and Solís Alcalá 1949, plus additional vocabulary from Roys
1931 and 1967, Redfield 1941, Tozzer 1941, and a substantial part of the
Motul dictionary. I then prepared a root dictionary of my own (Edmonson
n.d.b). I have also consulted Martínez Hernández 1929, Pacheco Cruz
1969, and Pío Pérez 1898.1 lay no claim to speaking the language, but the
language of the Tizimin is no longer spoken in any case.
Besides the problems presented by the copyist's errors, the manuscript
gives no reliable indication of vowel length and no real phrase or sentence
punctuation or word division. Furthermore, the language is archaic. Even
the latest passages are about 150 years old, and the earliest ones may go
back 500 years or even more. In the First Chronicle, for example, we read:
uac Ahau chuc cu lumil Chakan Putun (lines 49-52). If my translation is
correct, this would be expressed in modern Maya something like: tz'oc u
cubsic u lumil Chakan Putun e le uac Ahau i 'six Ahau finished the
seating of the lands of Champoton'. The form le 'the', which is ubiquitous
in modern Maya, does not occur at all in the Tizimin. The rare
verb chuc strikes me as archaic in comparison with tz'oc 'finish'. Modern
Maya would almost certainly use some form of cub, cul, or cut for 'sit,
seat' rather than cu, which is also an archaism, and it would make freer
use of pronouns [v) and demonstratives [e, i). While the verb-objectsubject
ordering of noun phrases is not compulsory in modern Maya, it is
much the commonest.
Verbs with aspect markers [c, h, t), which I believe to be the only true
verbs in Maya, together with fully expressed pronominal subjects and
objects, are the exception rather than the rule in the Tizimin. There is
instead a marked addiction to participial and substantival constructions
depending for their verbal force upon the Mayan lack of the verb 'to be'.
Thus (lines 170-175): ox lahun tun man i tz'ulob u yax ilc ob u lumil
Yucatan 'thirteen (Ahau) then (was) the passing (of) the foreigners; (it was)
their first sighting of the lands of Yucatan'.
The style of the older texts particularly is terse but elegant. They are
meant to be read and pondered rather than skimmed over or recited. I
have tried to translate as literally as possible, representing every linguistic
element of the Mayan text in English to the degree I could. Although
indications of subject and object are often delayed for several phrases or
clauses, leaving a literal translation quite stilted in English, I have nonetheless
followed the Mayan order of things in order to preserve the couplet
structure of the original. Every couplet in turn is represented in my
interpretative translation, also in order, although I have felt free to alter
the syntax to render more clearly what I think the text means. I have not
changed the order of the ideas, but I have changed passive and participial
to active constructions, broken the sentences at different points, and introduced
my own paragraphing. Not all details are preserved in the interpretation,
but they will be found in the literal translation, the Mayan text,
and the index.