"adding the original," was not the first volume of the Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala, for that does not contain the Quiché text. Brasseur de Bourbourg copied the original text and the first translation by Ximénez from the treatise entitled Empiezan las historias del origen de los Indios de esta provincia de Guatemala, inserted at the end of the Arte de las tres lenguas. The Quiché text and the Spanish version appear on alternate pages in Brasseur de Bourbourg's copy, made up of 124 folios, which is kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris and which is followed by a second copy of the Arte de las tres lenguas. This proves that the volumes of the Arte and of the Historias de los Indios were still in the library of the University in 1855. Probably the traveling investigator obtained them there with the same ease with which the other manuscripts of his celebrated collection of Americana came into his hands.
Brasseur de Bourbourg did not read the Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala, and he mentions only the few passages which Archbishop García Peláez gives in his work, Memorias para la historia del antiguo reino de Guatemala. The only part of the Historia that appears among the documents in the Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne (catalog of the Brasseur de Bourbourg collection) is the first thirty-six chapters of the first book copied by Don Juan Gavarrete "in Guatemala, October 23, 1847." This copy, containing fifty-four folios, includes the translation of the Quiché manuscript and the "history of the ancient Quiché Kingdom," which form Chapters 27 to 36 of Book I of the Ximénez Historia.
In regard to the other works of Father Ximénez, Brasseur de Bourbourg, as has already been noted, used the Tesoro of the three languages freely, not only to interpret the documents of the Quiché Indians, but also to compose his Grammaire Quichée, which was printed in Paris in 1862. He likewise used and commented extensively upon the Manuscript of Chichicastenango in his work entitled Histoire des Nations Civilisées du Mexique et de l'Amérique Centrale (1857) and in his Quatre Lettres sur le Mexique (1868).
The publication of the Popol Vuh (1861) and of the other works just mentioned aroused the interest of the scientific world and opened the way for additional works on the mythology and the pre-Columbian history of Guatemala, most important of which are those by Bancroft, Brinton, Charencey, Chavero, Müller, Raynaud, Seler, Spence, and Genêt.
After Brasseur de Bourbourg's death his collection of manuscripts and printed books was scattered. The largest part was acquired by Alphonse Pinart. Daniel G. Brinton bought the original manuscript of the Memorial de Tecpán-Atitlán, which he published in 1885 under the title, The Annals of the Chakchiquels, and other documents relating to the languages of Guatemala, which after his death passed to the library of the museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Bancroft bought another part of the collection which is now in the library of manuscripts which bears his name at the University of California in Berkeley. When Pinart's collection was put on sale in 1884, the largest part of it remained in France at the Bibliothèque Nationale. Another part was acquired by Count H. de Charencey, and upon the death of this distinguished Americanist his widow presented his collection to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
The German translator of the Popol Vuh, Noah Elieser Pohorilles, says that Otto Stoll had told him that at various times Pinart had offered him "the original manuscript of the Popol Vuh" for the sum of ten thousand francs. This manuscript, as was said above, was acquired by Edward E. Ayer, together with other documents of Brasseur de Bourbourg's collection, and is now in the Newberry Library in Chicago. Finally, William Gates obtained some documents which had belonged to Brasseur de Bourbourg and included them in his valuable historical and philological collection, composed of original documents and photographic copies of almost all the known existing manuscripts in the libraries previously mentioned.
Don Juan Gavarrete, "the man most sincerely inspired by love for the ancient history of the country," according to the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, undertook the arduous task of transcribing the old volumes of the Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala which were in the Convent of Santo Domingo and which, in 1830, were placed in the
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