Transcriber’s Note
A number of typographical errors have been maintained in this version ofthis book. They are marked and the corrected text is shown in the popup.A description of the errors is found in the list at the end of the text.
The Books of Chilan Balam,
The Prophetic and Historic Records
of the Mayas of Yucatan.
By Daniel G. Brinton, M. D.
VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE NUMISMATIC AND ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY OF
PHILADELPHIA; MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL
SOCIETY; THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY;
DÉLÉGUÉ OF THE INSTITUTION
ETHNOGRAPHIQUE,
ETC., ETC.
EDWARD STERN & CO.,
PHILADELPHIA.
PREFATORY NOTE.
The substance of the present pamphlet was presented as an address to theNumismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, at its meeting inJanuary, 1882, and was printed in the Penn Monthly, March, 1882. Asthe subject is one quite new in the field of American archæology andlinguistics, it is believed that a republication in the present formwill be welcomed by students of these branches.
THE BOOKS OF CHILAN BALAM.5-*
Civilization in ancient America rose to its highest level among theMayas of Yucatan. Not to speak of the architectural monuments whichstill remain to attest this, we have the evidence of the earliestmissionaries to the fact that they alone, of all the natives of the NewWorld, possessed a literature written in “letters and characters,”preserved in volumes neatly bound, the paper manufactured from the barkof a tree and sized with a durable white varnish.5-†
A few of these books still remain, preserved to us by accident in thegreat European libraries; but most of them were destroyed by the monks.Their contents were found to relate chiefly to the pagan ritual, totraditions of the heathen times, to astrological superstitions, and thelike. Hence, they were considered deleterious, and were burned whereverdiscovered.
This annihilation of their sacred books affected the natives mostkeenly, as we are pointedly informed by Bishop Landa, himself one of themost ruthless of Vandals in this respect.5-‡ But already [6]some of themore intelligent had learned the Spanish alphabet, and the missionarieshad added a sufficient number of signs to it to express with tolerableaccuracy the phonetics of the Maya tongue. Relying on their memories,and, no doubt, aided by some manuscripts secretly preserved, manynatives set to wo