given to him by Don Francisco García Peláez, the archbishop of Guatemala, who was likewise devoted to this kind of study. The Archbishop also entrusted him with the administration of the parish of Rabinal, where the French traveler learned the Quiché language, and, as he confesses, spent the most agreeable year of his stay in Central America. In this important center of indigenous population, Brasseur de Bourbourg translated into French the Manuscript of Chichicastenango, which he had so easily obtained together with the Spanish translation of Ximénez. Speaking of his stay in Rabinal, Brasseur de Bourbourg says:
"This village contains around 7,000 Indians who speak the Quiché language, and with them I prepared myself not only to speak and write it, but even to translate the most difficult documents, among them the manuscript which Father Ximénez found at Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, and which is so important for [the study of] American origins and in particular for the history of Guatemala."
Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg also had charge, although for a short time only, of the parish of San Juan Sacatepéquez, where he perfected himself in the Cakchiquel language, in order to be able to translate the Memorial Cakchiquel de Sololá, which he called the Memorial de Tecpán-Atitlán, a valuable Indian document which had belonged to the convent of the Franciscans and which "a young and zealous Guatemalan archaeologist, Dr. Juan Gavarrete, one of the notaries of the ecclesiastical court" gave to him. On a second voyage to Guatemala, Brasseur de Bourbourg traveled through other parts of the country and added new and important acquisitions to his collection of historical documents, the richest and most valuable which had been assembled in the country by a single individual up to that time. These documents the French Abbé used in writing on the ancient history of Guatemala and Mexico, and on the Indian languages.
The best known of Brasseur de Bourbourg's works is that published in Paris in 1861 under the title of Popol Vuh, Le Livre Sacré et les mythes de l'antiquité américaine. This volume, which immediately attracted great attention in both Europe and America, contains the Quiché text of the Manuscript of Chichicastenango and the translation into French of this document, accompanied by philological notes and an extensive commentary. In the foreword, the author says that in 1855 he saw in the library of the University of Guatemala two copies of the Historia de la Provincia de Predicadores de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala and that this work, which had remained in manuscript, "consisted of four volumes in folio and of it there were two copies, which were transferred from the archives of this monastery to the library of the University at the time that the religious houses were suppressed under Morazán, in 1830. Both copies were incomplete when we saw them in 1855, and only three volumes existed which did not even agree among themselves... the first volume which we had occasion to consult began with the text and the translation of the Quiché manuscript, which is the subject of this book. From there, we copied it for the first time, adding the original."
Scherzer had not been able to see the first volume of Ximénez' Historia in 1854, and for this reason he did not know the version of the Popol Vuh which appears at the beginning of that work. The text published by him was copied, as has already been explained, from the manuscript of the Historias del origen de los Indios, which is bound together in the same volume with the Arte de las tres lenguas. Scherzer examined this volume in the University library, and in the foreword to the Vienna edition gives a thorough description of the documents which it contains. The same manuscript appeared a. little later in the possession of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who says in the foreword to Le Livre Sacré that he obtained it in Rabinal, and in Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne he says that in former times it belonged to Ignacio Coloche, a noble Indian of Rabinal, from whom he got it. It is a little difficult to understand how, between 1854 and 1855, this manuscript could pass from the shelves of the University library of Guatemala City into the hands of the noble Indian of Rabinal, and subsequently to those of Brasseur de Bourbourg.
The wording of the paragraph quoted above from Brasseur de Bourbourg is very confusing; but it is certain that the volume which he says he had occasion to consult in the University library, which begins with the text and the translation of the Quiché manuscript and which he copied
Please email us if you are interested
in a PDF of any of the posted books.