In the highlands of Guatemala is the ancient town of Quiché,
the home of the Quiché Mayans. The Popol Voh is superficially
their history, starting from before the dawn of life with the
‘divine matchmaker’, Xpiyacoc, and his wife, the ‘divine
midwife’, Xmucane who are the oldest of the gods. The saga
continues from myth tthrough history to conclude in the middle
1550’s, at the time of its writing. It is, however, much
more than just folklore and the Quiché Mayans believed
that within it lay the answers to all of life. It was consulted
at the meetings of their council and is thus known as the Councvil
Book. The ages of the stories are unknown but must date to the
beginnings of the Mayan empire.
The book was written, anonymously in alphabetical Mayan, rather
than in hieroglyphics, by high-ranking Mayans who, ironically,
had been taught the alphabet by missionaries so that they could
read the scriptures. At the very beginning of the 18th century
Fransisco Xinénez, a priest, say the manuscript and copied
it, dividing each page in two down the centre so that he could
add a Spanish translation opposite the Mayan text. After many
travels this manuscript eventually came to rest in Chicago in
the year 1911.
The significance of the book to the history of natural rubber
is the prominence given within it to the ancient rubber
ball game of the Mesoamericans. Xpiyacoc and Xmucane had twin
sons, One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu and, bearing in mind that
the characters are all gods, these jointly fathered with Blood
Moon, another set of twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque. These five
characters are the heroes and their adventures take place before
the gods have managed to create humans.
Both sets of twins play the ball game
and the book follows an interwoven pattern of stories centred
round the game and the battles they have with other gods. The
individual episodes do not follow in chronological order but are
broadly divided into their adventures above ground and in the
underworld. There are more complications in that whilst the characters
are generally treated as being on a terrestrial plane the tales
can also be interpreted at the celestial/astronomical/asrtological
levels, with various characters being (or becoming) stars, and
places having both terrestrial and celestial significance. The
episodes tell therefore of the creation of the Sun, the Moon and
the stars in human terms whilst the tales provide an astrological
‘clock’ or calendar on which the Quiché Mayans
based their life.
The stories are much too involved to tell here but the battle
of Hunahpu and Xbalanque with the gods ends in their death, which
is interpreted as their victory since they are re-born as the
Moon and Sun. The tests to which Blood Moon are put have celestial
significance as they define the phases of the Moon.
The Popol Vuh clearly shows that the ball
game was a central part of the Mayan culture and provides
firm documentary evidence of its religious significance. In referring
to rubber as the ‘blood of sacrifice’ it provides
evidence that at least some ball games were played as re-enactments
of the sagas told in the book and that the vanquished players
were sacrificed whilst the word the Quiché us today for
a graveyard is ‘jom’, the word used in the book for
the ball court.