About this Item
Pp: xx + 220. Gilt titles: sp. Frontis. Illust. w/ b/w maps, drawing, designs & tables. Red cloth bds. Interior leaves are clean and tight. Translated from the Yucatecan. A translation of a manuscript of the Yucatecan Maya on their ritual and history from the 7th to the 19th centuries. The translation touches upon the history, philosophy and institutions of the most highly sophisticated Indian civilization in the New World. The writing and continued existence of the text is a story in itself. Includes: footnotes; appendix; bibliography; index. Includes notes,appendix, bibliography & index. Seller Inventory # 004558
Bibliographic Details
Title: The Ancient Future of the Itza: The Book of ...
Publisher: University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas
Publication Date: 1982
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Good+
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition
About this title
The title of Edmonson's work refers to the Mayan custom of first predicting their history and then living it, and it may be that no other peoples have ever gone so far in this direction. The Book of Chilam Balam was a sacred text prepared by generations of Mayan priests to record the past and to predict the future. The official prophet of each twenty-year rule was the Chilam Balam, or Spokesman of the Jaguar―the Jaguar being the supreme authority charged with converting the prophet's words into fact.
This is a literal but poetic translation of one of fourteen known manuscripts in Yucatecan Maya on ritual and history. It pictures a world of all but incredible numerological order, slowly yielding to Christianity and Spanish political pressure but never surrendering. In fact, it demonstrates the surprising truth of a secret Mayan government during the Spanish rule, which continued to collect tribute in the names of the ruined Classic cities and preserved the essence of the Mayan calendar as a legacy for the tradition's modern inheritors.
The history of the Yucatecan Maya from the seventh to the nineteenth century is revealed. And this is history as the Maya saw it―of a people concerned with lords and priests, with the cosmology which justified their rule, and with the civil war which they perceived as the real dimension of the colonial period.
A work of both history and literature, the Tizimin presents a great deal of Mayan thought, some of which has been suspected but not previously documented. Edmonson's skillful reordering of the text not only makes perfect historical sense but also resolves the long-standing problem of correlating the two colonial Mayan calendars. The book includes both interpretative and literal translations, as well as the Maya parallel couplets and extensive annotations on each page. The beauty of the sacred text is illuminated by the literal translation, while both versions unveil the magnificent historical, philosophical, and social traditions of the most sophisticated native culture in the New World.
The prophetic history of the Tizimin creates a portrait of the continuity and vitality, of the ancient past and the foreordained future of the Maya.
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