The various works which contain notices of the "Popol Vuh" and the
kindred questions of Mayan and Kiché mythology are so difficult of
access to the majority of readers that it has been thought best to
divide them into two classes: (1) those which can be more or less
readily purchased, and which are, naturally, of more recent origin;
and (2) those which are not easy to come by, and which, generally
speaking, are the work of Spanish priests and colonists of the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
I
The work on the subject which is most easily obtained, and indeed the
only work which gives the original Kiché text, is that of the Abbé
Brasseur de Bourbourg, "Vuh Popol: Le livre sacré de Quichés et les
mythes de l'antiquité Américaine." The Kiché text was translated by
the assistance of natives into French, and the translation is more
or less inaccurate. The notes and introduction must be read by the
student with the greatest caution. It was published at Paris in 1861.
Ximenes' translation into Spanish of the "Popol Vuh" and that of
Gavarrete are about of equal value, rather inaccurate, and accompanied
by scanty notes. The title of the first is "Las Historias del Origin
de los Indios de Guatemala, par el R. P. F. Francisco Ximenes (Vienna,
1856), and of the second, "El Popol Vuh," (San Salvador 1905). This
exhausts the list of works written exclusively concerning the "Popol
Vuh." The other works of Brasseur and those of Brinton contain more or
less numerous allusions to it, but references to it in standard works
of mythology are exceedingly rare. The only other works which have a
bearing upon the subject are those upon Mayan and Kiché mythology,
or which, among other matter, historical or political, refer to it
in any way. The most important of these are: