And starting on their journey, they said: "We are going to the East, there whence came our fathers." So they said when the three sons set out. One was called Qocaib, and he was the son of Balam-Quitzé, of the Cavec. The one called Qoacutec was son of Balam-Acab, of the Nihaib; and the other called Qoahau, was son of Mahucutah, of the Ahau-Quiché.[342]
These, then, are the names of those who went there to the other side of the sea; the three went then, and were endowed with intelligence and experience, but they were not common men. They took leave of all their brothers and relatives and left joyfully. "We shall not die; we shall return," said the three when they left.
Certainly they crossed the sea when they came there to the East, when they went to receive the investiture of the kingdom. And this was the name of the Lord, King of the East, where they went. When they arrived before Lord Nacxit,[343] which was the name of the great lord, the only supreme judge of all the kingdoms, he gave them the insignia of the kingdom and all its distinctive symbols. Then came the insignia of Ahpop and Ahpop-Camhá, and then the insignia of the grandeur and the sovereignty of the Ahpop and the Ahpop-Camhá.[344] And Nacxit ended by giving them the insignia of royalty, which are: the canopy, the throne, the flutes of bone, the cham-cham, yellow beads, puma claws, jaguar claws, the heads and feet of the deer, dais, snail shells, tobacco, little gourds, parrot feathers, standards of royal aigrette feathers, tatam, and caxcon.[345] All the foregoing they carried, those who came after going to the other side of the sea to
[341] X qui hiah, literally, "they had fathers-in-law and brothers-in-law."
[342] This was the second journey to the East which Diego Reynoso, author of Chapter IV of the Título de los Señores de Totonicapán, describes. According to this Indian writer, there were four princes who took part in the expedition; the two brothers Qocaib and Qocavib, Qoacul and Acutec, and a fifth was added afterward who had the title of Nim Chocoh Cavec, who later received the title of Chocohil-Tem.
[343] Nacxit is the abbreviated name which the Quiché and the Cakchiquel gave, in their tales, to the King of the Orient, who was no other than Topiltzin Acxitl Quetzalcoatl, the famous Toltec king who, having been obliged to abandon his dominions in the north, emigrated at the end of the tenth century to the lands of Yucatán (the Orient of the ancient chronicles), and there repopulated Chichén Itzá and founded the city of Mayapán, civilized the peninsula, and, upon finishing his mission, returned to the place whence he had come. The fabulous Tlapallan, the place to which, it is said, the great monarch migrated, was the country which extended from Xicalanco toward the east, that is, the coastal region of the modern Mexican states of Tabasco, Campeche, and Yucatán.
The Chronicles, or Books of Chilan Balam, of Yucatán speak of the prophecy of the return of Kukulcán-Quetzalcoatl who, in those documents, is called Nacxit-Xuchit.
[344] Ahpop is the Maya word which has passed without variation to the languages of the interior of Guatemala; its literal meaning is "the mat." The mat, pop, was the symbol of royalty, and the chief or lord is represented as seated upon it on the most ancient monuments of the Maya Old Empire which had its origin in the Petén, Guatemala. The Ahpop was the Quiché king and chief of the House of Cavec; the Ahpop Camhá, also of the House of Cavec, was the second reigning prince; the Ahau Galel was the chief or king of the House of Nihaib, and the Ahtzic Vinac Ahau the chief of the House of Ahau Quiché. Another group of Quiché nobles also bore the same title as the two first, and in this place the text refers to them as Ah-popol, Ahpop-camhail, which are the plural forms.
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