The “Vocabulario en lengua 4iche otlatecas” is one of the most important colonial K’iche’ diction... more The “Vocabulario en lengua 4iche otlatecas” is one of the most important colonial K’iche’ dictionaries from Guatemala. It lists about 2200 K’iche’ head entries and includes detailed lexical, grammatical and cultural information on this Highland Mayan language. With the present edition the eighteenth-century manuscript in the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin is made available for the first time to researchers in various fields including Amerindian language research, missionary linguistics, and Mesoamerican studies. The introductory chapter provides a comprehensive description of the manuscript and analyses the relation of the text to other missionary sources on colonial K’iche’ lexicography. It furthermore defines editorial principles and conventions and gives examples for the linguistic and cultural contents of the source. Besides a faithful transcription of the manuscript text, the edition includes a reference dictionary with resorted entries based on the official orthography of K’iche’ that is used in Guatemala today.
The Theologia Indorum by Dominican friar Domingo de Vico was the first Christian theology written... more The Theologia Indorum by Dominican friar Domingo de Vico was the first Christian theology written in the Americas. Made available in English translation for the first time, Americas' First Theologies presents a selection of exemplary sections from the Theologia Indorum that illustrate Friar Vico's doctrine of god, cosmogony, moral anthropology, understanding of natural law and biblical history, and constructive engagement with pre-Hispanic Maya religion. Rather than merely condemn the Maya religion, Vico appropriated local terms and images from Maya mythology and rituals that he thought could convey Christianity. His attempt at translating, if not reconfiguring, Christianity for a Maya readership required his mastery of not only numerous Mayan languages but also the highly poetic ceremonial rhetoric of many indigenous Mesoamerican peoples.
This book also includes translations of two other pastoral texts (parts of a songbook and a catechism) and eight early documents by K’iche’ and Kaqchikel Maya authors. These texts, written in Highland Mayan languages both by fellow Dominicans and by Highland Maya elites demonstrate the wider influence of Vico’s ethnographic approach shared by a particular school of Dominicans. Altogether, The Americas’ First Theologies provides a rich documentary case example of the translation, reception, and reaction to Christian thought in the indigenous Americas.
El presente volumen comprende una edición de la Relación de la genealogía y del Origen de los mex... more El presente volumen comprende una edición de la Relación de la genealogía y del Origen de los mexicanos, dos fuentes de la década de 1530 que en primer lugar documentan la ascendencia de Isabel Motezuma y su derecho como hija legítima y heredera de su padre en el interés de su esposo, Juan Cano, pero se suelen usar para estudiar la temprana historia mexicana, indígena así como colonial. Para facilitar el uso etnohistórico de estas fuentes, se presenta una transcripción individual de cada texto en base a los manuscritos originales así como también una versión sinóptica y crítica. El análisis que precede estas ediciones se centra en aspectos de metodología y construcción textual: trata de la estructuración e interrelación de los textos; toca las interrogantes del marco temporal de su creación; discute su autoria, intención y motivación así como también la perspectiva historiográfica. En base a este estudio queda claro que se trata de dos textos individuales que no se pueden amalgamar en una entidad. En base a este resultado, los aportes de los autores tienen el objetivo de marcar nuevos derroteros para la investigación etnohistórica de las dos fuentes y sus posibles interpretaciones.
This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka based on the missionary grammar "... more This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka based on the missionary grammar "Arte de la lengua szinca" that was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773. Xinka is an isolate family of today mostly extinct, closely related languages in southeastern Guatemala. The "Arte de la lengua szinca" is the earliest source on Xinka grammar that is otherwise not well documented or described. The analysis of the late colonial grammar draws on comparative data, including (a) primary data that were documented by the author with the last Xinka-speakers in Guazacapán, Santa Rosa, Guatemala between 2000-03, and (b) further secondary linguistic data of Xinkan languages from the towns of Guazacapán, Chiquimulilla, Yupiltepeque, Jumaytepeque, Sinacantán and Jutiapa. The text addresses the methodological implications of describing colonial Xinka grammar based on such a heterogeneous corpus of diachronic and regionally diverse data. Besides the linguistic description, the dissertation contains information about the cultural context of the language as well as about the colonial document and the corpus of linguistic data. The appendix includes a concordance of the linguistic data from the colonial grammar and a dictionary of the lexical entries.
This volume offers an integrated and comparative approach to the Popol Vuh, analyzing its myths t... more This volume offers an integrated and comparative approach to the Popol Vuh, analyzing its myths to elucidate the ancient Maya past while using multiple lines of evidence to shed light on the text. Combining interpretations of the myths with analyses of archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic, ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and literary resources, this work demonstrates how Popol Vuh mythologies contribute to the analysis and interpretation of the ancient Maya past.
The chapters are grouped into four sections. The first section interprets the Highland Maya worldview through examination of the text, analyzing interdependence between deities and human beings as well as the textual and cosmological coherence of the Popol Vuh as a source. The second section analyzes the Precolumbian Maya archaeological record as it relates to the myths of the Popol Vuh, providing new interpretations of the use of space, architecture, burials, artifacts, and human remains found in Classic Maya caves. The third explores ancient Maya iconographic motifs, including those found in Classic Maya ceramic art; the nature of predatory birds; and the Hero Twins’ deeds in the Popol Vuh. The final chapters address mythological continuities and change, reexamining past methodological approaches using the Popol Vuh as a resource for the interpretation of Classic Maya iconography and ancient Maya religion and mythology, connecting the myths of the Popol Vuh to iconography from Preclassic Izapa, and demonstrating how narratives from the Popol Vuh can illuminate mythologies from other parts of Mesoamerica.
The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Ritual is the first volume to bring together multiple perspectives and original interpretations of the Popol Vuh myths. It will be of interest not only to Mesoamericanists but also to art historians, archaeologists, ethnohistorians, iconographers, linguists, anthropologists, and scholars working in ritual studies, the history of religion, historic and Precolumbian literature and historic linguistics.
Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Karen Bassie-Sweet, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Michael D. Coe, Iyaxel Cojtí Ren, Héctor Escobedo, Thomas H. Guderjan, Julia Guernsey, Christophe Helmke, Nicholas A. Hopkins, Barbara MacLeod, Jesper Nielsen, Colin Snider, Karl A. Taube
Mit den Beiträgen in dieser Gedenkschrift erinnern Kollegen und Freunde an das Forschen und Schaf... more Mit den Beiträgen in dieser Gedenkschrift erinnern Kollegen und Freunde an das Forschen und Schaffen von Pierre Robert Colas (1976-2008). Colas hatte an der Universität Hamburg Mesoamerikanistik studiert, am Institut für Altamerikanistik und Ethnologie der Universität Bonn in Altamerikanistik promoviert und war zuletzt Assistant Professor an der Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, als er am 26. August 2008 gemeinsam mit seiner Schwester von fremder Hand jäh aus dem Leben gerissen wurde. Der vorliegende Band reflektiert das Interessenspektrum von Colas und enthält Beiträge von wissenschaftlichen Kooperationspartnern, Wegbegleitern und Mentoren sowie eine englischsprachige Zusammenfassung seiner bisher nur auf Deutsch zugänglichen Dissertationsergebnisse.
El “Vocabulario en lengua 4iche otlatecas” es uno de los más importantes diccionarios del k’iche’... more El “Vocabulario en lengua 4iche otlatecas” es uno de los más importantes diccionarios del k’iche’ de la época colonial de Guatemala. El diccionario contiene aproximadamente 2200 entradas principales e incluye información detallada en cuanto al léxico, la gramática y la cultura acerca de esa lengua maya. La presente edición hace accesible por primera vez el manuscrito del siglo XVIII que se encuentra hoy en el Instituto Ibero-Americano en Berlín, para que investigadores de las lenguas amerindias, de la lingüística misionera o de los estudios mesoamericanos entre otros puedan aprovechar de ello. El estudio introductorio incluye una descripción detallada del manuscrito y analiza la relación entre el texto y otras fuentes misioneras lexicográficas del k’iche’ colonial. Además explica los criterios y convenciones para la edición y da ejemplos de los contenidos lingüísticos y culturales de esa fuente. La edición comprende una transcripción fiel del manuscrito y un diccionario de referencia con las entradas reorganizadas en base de la ortografía oficial del k’iche’ actual
This paper summarises the results of a workshop that was held at the Department for the Anthropol... more This paper summarises the results of a workshop that was held at the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas of the University of Bonn between 4-6 September 2014. The workshop was a joint initiative of the research project Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya (TWKM = Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan) and the research group developing the software application Tool for Systematic Annotation of Colonial K'iche' (TSACK) and aimed at discussing and defining standardised conventions for the linguistic description and glossing of Mayan language forms under XML. Grammatical descriptions of Mayan languages exhibit a plethora of descriptive standards. Produced by different linguists of different backgrounds with different research objectives, they reflect the diverse theoretical orientations of the linguistic discipline, ranging from formal descriptions of the structural or generative type to prescriptive grammars for the use in language teaching. Fun...
Missionary dictionaries from Highland Guatemala are valuable resources on pre-contact culture and... more Missionary dictionaries from Highland Guatemala are valuable resources on pre-contact culture and religion and the formation of Christian discourse in the Mayan languages. One of the lexical compilations considered to be particularly rich in information on Highland Maya culture is a Kaqchikel-K’iche’-Spanish dictionary that has traditionally been attributed to the famous early 17th-century Dominican friar Domingo de Vico. This article reconstructs the textual genesis of this trilingual dictionary and re-examines its authorship. Analyzing hitherto unnoticed intertextualities with other unedited Kaqchikel dictionary sources, it is shown that the process of compilation was multistaged and the K’iche’ entries were only integrated in the late 17th century. Textual evidence indicates that the dictionary is more likely of Franciscan than of Dominican origin. The article provides insights into missionary lexicographic practices and shows that mendicant authors copied from each other and mod...
El "otro" héroe en la historia de América Latina: Estudios sobre la producción social de memoria al margen del discurso oficial en América Latina; A. Gunsenheimer, E.N. Cruz & C. Pallan Gayól (eds.), 2020
Missionary Linguistic Studies from Mesoamerica to Patagonia, 2020
Colonial dictionaries in the Highland Maya language K’iche’ exhibit certain formal characteristic... more Colonial dictionaries in the Highland Maya language K’iche’ exhibit certain formal characteristics which hamper their systematic analysis. Lexical entries often correlate multiple Spanish and K’iche’ translations and K’iche’ lemmata are frequently given as complex forms in unstandardised orthographies. This chapter provides an overview of K’iche’ missionary lexicography and discusses the methodological implications of turning colonial vocabularies into usable reference dictionaries and searchable digital corpora.
Translating Wor(l)ds: Christianity Across Cultural Boundaries, 2019
Highland Guatemala is a unique place for studying the translation of
Christianity into the indige... more Highland Guatemala is a unique place for studying the translation of Christianity into the indigenous languages of the Americas. The linguistic conversion was not a homogeneous process, because friars of the Dominican and the Franciscan mendicant orders interacted in the field of the mission following different theological trajectories and creating a multivocality of Christian discourses. By analysing the various renderings of the name of God and the Trinity in the Highland Mayan language K’iche’, I show that the mendicants often understood the nature of the indigenous conceptualisations of divinities, but chose to respond with different translation strategies. It was in particular the Dominican missionaries who appropriated names of pre-contact divinities from Highland Maya religious discourse. The Dominican strategy proved successful inasmuch as K’iche’ authors can be shown to have taken up the missionaries’ interpretation of primeval monotheism in their own narratives and texts. Moreover, I will show that missionary text sources can provide valuable clues about pre-contact indigenous ontologies.
The “Vocabulario en lengua 4iche otlatecas” is one of the most important colonial K’iche’ diction... more The “Vocabulario en lengua 4iche otlatecas” is one of the most important colonial K’iche’ dictionaries from Guatemala. It lists about 2200 K’iche’ head entries and includes detailed lexical, grammatical and cultural information on this Highland Mayan language. With the present edition the eighteenth-century manuscript in the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin is made available for the first time to researchers in various fields including Amerindian language research, missionary linguistics, and Mesoamerican studies. The introductory chapter provides a comprehensive description of the manuscript and analyses the relation of the text to other missionary sources on colonial K’iche’ lexicography. It furthermore defines editorial principles and conventions and gives examples for the linguistic and cultural contents of the source. Besides a faithful transcription of the manuscript text, the edition includes a reference dictionary with resorted entries based on the official orthography of K’iche’ that is used in Guatemala today.
The Theologia Indorum by Dominican friar Domingo de Vico was the first Christian theology written... more The Theologia Indorum by Dominican friar Domingo de Vico was the first Christian theology written in the Americas. Made available in English translation for the first time, Americas' First Theologies presents a selection of exemplary sections from the Theologia Indorum that illustrate Friar Vico's doctrine of god, cosmogony, moral anthropology, understanding of natural law and biblical history, and constructive engagement with pre-Hispanic Maya religion. Rather than merely condemn the Maya religion, Vico appropriated local terms and images from Maya mythology and rituals that he thought could convey Christianity. His attempt at translating, if not reconfiguring, Christianity for a Maya readership required his mastery of not only numerous Mayan languages but also the highly poetic ceremonial rhetoric of many indigenous Mesoamerican peoples.
This book also includes translations of two other pastoral texts (parts of a songbook and a catechism) and eight early documents by K’iche’ and Kaqchikel Maya authors. These texts, written in Highland Mayan languages both by fellow Dominicans and by Highland Maya elites demonstrate the wider influence of Vico’s ethnographic approach shared by a particular school of Dominicans. Altogether, The Americas’ First Theologies provides a rich documentary case example of the translation, reception, and reaction to Christian thought in the indigenous Americas.
El presente volumen comprende una edición de la Relación de la genealogía y del Origen de los mex... more El presente volumen comprende una edición de la Relación de la genealogía y del Origen de los mexicanos, dos fuentes de la década de 1530 que en primer lugar documentan la ascendencia de Isabel Motezuma y su derecho como hija legítima y heredera de su padre en el interés de su esposo, Juan Cano, pero se suelen usar para estudiar la temprana historia mexicana, indígena así como colonial. Para facilitar el uso etnohistórico de estas fuentes, se presenta una transcripción individual de cada texto en base a los manuscritos originales así como también una versión sinóptica y crítica. El análisis que precede estas ediciones se centra en aspectos de metodología y construcción textual: trata de la estructuración e interrelación de los textos; toca las interrogantes del marco temporal de su creación; discute su autoria, intención y motivación así como también la perspectiva historiográfica. En base a este estudio queda claro que se trata de dos textos individuales que no se pueden amalgamar en una entidad. En base a este resultado, los aportes de los autores tienen el objetivo de marcar nuevos derroteros para la investigación etnohistórica de las dos fuentes y sus posibles interpretaciones.
This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka based on the missionary grammar "... more This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka based on the missionary grammar "Arte de la lengua szinca" that was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773. Xinka is an isolate family of today mostly extinct, closely related languages in southeastern Guatemala. The "Arte de la lengua szinca" is the earliest source on Xinka grammar that is otherwise not well documented or described. The analysis of the late colonial grammar draws on comparative data, including (a) primary data that were documented by the author with the last Xinka-speakers in Guazacapán, Santa Rosa, Guatemala between 2000-03, and (b) further secondary linguistic data of Xinkan languages from the towns of Guazacapán, Chiquimulilla, Yupiltepeque, Jumaytepeque, Sinacantán and Jutiapa. The text addresses the methodological implications of describing colonial Xinka grammar based on such a heterogeneous corpus of diachronic and regionally diverse data. Besides the linguistic description, the dissertation contains information about the cultural context of the language as well as about the colonial document and the corpus of linguistic data. The appendix includes a concordance of the linguistic data from the colonial grammar and a dictionary of the lexical entries.
This volume offers an integrated and comparative approach to the Popol Vuh, analyzing its myths t... more This volume offers an integrated and comparative approach to the Popol Vuh, analyzing its myths to elucidate the ancient Maya past while using multiple lines of evidence to shed light on the text. Combining interpretations of the myths with analyses of archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic, ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and literary resources, this work demonstrates how Popol Vuh mythologies contribute to the analysis and interpretation of the ancient Maya past.
The chapters are grouped into four sections. The first section interprets the Highland Maya worldview through examination of the text, analyzing interdependence between deities and human beings as well as the textual and cosmological coherence of the Popol Vuh as a source. The second section analyzes the Precolumbian Maya archaeological record as it relates to the myths of the Popol Vuh, providing new interpretations of the use of space, architecture, burials, artifacts, and human remains found in Classic Maya caves. The third explores ancient Maya iconographic motifs, including those found in Classic Maya ceramic art; the nature of predatory birds; and the Hero Twins’ deeds in the Popol Vuh. The final chapters address mythological continuities and change, reexamining past methodological approaches using the Popol Vuh as a resource for the interpretation of Classic Maya iconography and ancient Maya religion and mythology, connecting the myths of the Popol Vuh to iconography from Preclassic Izapa, and demonstrating how narratives from the Popol Vuh can illuminate mythologies from other parts of Mesoamerica.
The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Ritual is the first volume to bring together multiple perspectives and original interpretations of the Popol Vuh myths. It will be of interest not only to Mesoamericanists but also to art historians, archaeologists, ethnohistorians, iconographers, linguists, anthropologists, and scholars working in ritual studies, the history of religion, historic and Precolumbian literature and historic linguistics.
Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Karen Bassie-Sweet, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Michael D. Coe, Iyaxel Cojtí Ren, Héctor Escobedo, Thomas H. Guderjan, Julia Guernsey, Christophe Helmke, Nicholas A. Hopkins, Barbara MacLeod, Jesper Nielsen, Colin Snider, Karl A. Taube
Mit den Beiträgen in dieser Gedenkschrift erinnern Kollegen und Freunde an das Forschen und Schaf... more Mit den Beiträgen in dieser Gedenkschrift erinnern Kollegen und Freunde an das Forschen und Schaffen von Pierre Robert Colas (1976-2008). Colas hatte an der Universität Hamburg Mesoamerikanistik studiert, am Institut für Altamerikanistik und Ethnologie der Universität Bonn in Altamerikanistik promoviert und war zuletzt Assistant Professor an der Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, als er am 26. August 2008 gemeinsam mit seiner Schwester von fremder Hand jäh aus dem Leben gerissen wurde. Der vorliegende Band reflektiert das Interessenspektrum von Colas und enthält Beiträge von wissenschaftlichen Kooperationspartnern, Wegbegleitern und Mentoren sowie eine englischsprachige Zusammenfassung seiner bisher nur auf Deutsch zugänglichen Dissertationsergebnisse.
El “Vocabulario en lengua 4iche otlatecas” es uno de los más importantes diccionarios del k’iche’... more El “Vocabulario en lengua 4iche otlatecas” es uno de los más importantes diccionarios del k’iche’ de la época colonial de Guatemala. El diccionario contiene aproximadamente 2200 entradas principales e incluye información detallada en cuanto al léxico, la gramática y la cultura acerca de esa lengua maya. La presente edición hace accesible por primera vez el manuscrito del siglo XVIII que se encuentra hoy en el Instituto Ibero-Americano en Berlín, para que investigadores de las lenguas amerindias, de la lingüística misionera o de los estudios mesoamericanos entre otros puedan aprovechar de ello. El estudio introductorio incluye una descripción detallada del manuscrito y analiza la relación entre el texto y otras fuentes misioneras lexicográficas del k’iche’ colonial. Además explica los criterios y convenciones para la edición y da ejemplos de los contenidos lingüísticos y culturales de esa fuente. La edición comprende una transcripción fiel del manuscrito y un diccionario de referencia con las entradas reorganizadas en base de la ortografía oficial del k’iche’ actual
This paper summarises the results of a workshop that was held at the Department for the Anthropol... more This paper summarises the results of a workshop that was held at the Department for the Anthropology of the Americas of the University of Bonn between 4-6 September 2014. The workshop was a joint initiative of the research project Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya (TWKM = Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan) and the research group developing the software application Tool for Systematic Annotation of Colonial K'iche' (TSACK) and aimed at discussing and defining standardised conventions for the linguistic description and glossing of Mayan language forms under XML. Grammatical descriptions of Mayan languages exhibit a plethora of descriptive standards. Produced by different linguists of different backgrounds with different research objectives, they reflect the diverse theoretical orientations of the linguistic discipline, ranging from formal descriptions of the structural or generative type to prescriptive grammars for the use in language teaching. Fun...
Missionary dictionaries from Highland Guatemala are valuable resources on pre-contact culture and... more Missionary dictionaries from Highland Guatemala are valuable resources on pre-contact culture and religion and the formation of Christian discourse in the Mayan languages. One of the lexical compilations considered to be particularly rich in information on Highland Maya culture is a Kaqchikel-K’iche’-Spanish dictionary that has traditionally been attributed to the famous early 17th-century Dominican friar Domingo de Vico. This article reconstructs the textual genesis of this trilingual dictionary and re-examines its authorship. Analyzing hitherto unnoticed intertextualities with other unedited Kaqchikel dictionary sources, it is shown that the process of compilation was multistaged and the K’iche’ entries were only integrated in the late 17th century. Textual evidence indicates that the dictionary is more likely of Franciscan than of Dominican origin. The article provides insights into missionary lexicographic practices and shows that mendicant authors copied from each other and mod...
El "otro" héroe en la historia de América Latina: Estudios sobre la producción social de memoria al margen del discurso oficial en América Latina; A. Gunsenheimer, E.N. Cruz & C. Pallan Gayól (eds.), 2020
Missionary Linguistic Studies from Mesoamerica to Patagonia, 2020
Colonial dictionaries in the Highland Maya language K’iche’ exhibit certain formal characteristic... more Colonial dictionaries in the Highland Maya language K’iche’ exhibit certain formal characteristics which hamper their systematic analysis. Lexical entries often correlate multiple Spanish and K’iche’ translations and K’iche’ lemmata are frequently given as complex forms in unstandardised orthographies. This chapter provides an overview of K’iche’ missionary lexicography and discusses the methodological implications of turning colonial vocabularies into usable reference dictionaries and searchable digital corpora.
Translating Wor(l)ds: Christianity Across Cultural Boundaries, 2019
Highland Guatemala is a unique place for studying the translation of
Christianity into the indige... more Highland Guatemala is a unique place for studying the translation of Christianity into the indigenous languages of the Americas. The linguistic conversion was not a homogeneous process, because friars of the Dominican and the Franciscan mendicant orders interacted in the field of the mission following different theological trajectories and creating a multivocality of Christian discourses. By analysing the various renderings of the name of God and the Trinity in the Highland Mayan language K’iche’, I show that the mendicants often understood the nature of the indigenous conceptualisations of divinities, but chose to respond with different translation strategies. It was in particular the Dominican missionaries who appropriated names of pre-contact divinities from Highland Maya religious discourse. The Dominican strategy proved successful inasmuch as K’iche’ authors can be shown to have taken up the missionaries’ interpretation of primeval monotheism in their own narratives and texts. Moreover, I will show that missionary text sources can provide valuable clues about pre-contact indigenous ontologies.
The corpus of missionary and indigenous colonial texts in the highland Maya language K’iche’ is a... more The corpus of missionary and indigenous colonial texts in the highland Maya language K’iche’ is an exceptional resource for studying the colonial encounter of Christianity and pre-Columbian religion. To translate Christianity into K’iche’, the missionaries appropriated lexical concepts from highland Maya religion, while indigenous authors took up the doctrinal discourse to negotiate both cosmologies and maintain religious tradition. This article examines the terminology used by missionary authors to express conceptualisations of Christian eschatology and analyses how the new Christian discourse of Heaven and Hell was mapped onto pre-Columbian notions of afterlife and otherworld dimensions.
Missionary dictionaries from Highland Guatemala are valuable resources on pre-contact culture and... more Missionary dictionaries from Highland Guatemala are valuable resources on pre-contact culture and religion and the formation of Christian discourse in the Mayan languages. One of the lexical compilations considered to be particularly rich in information on Highland Maya culture is a Kaqchikel-K'iche'-Spanish dictionary that has traditionally been attributed to the famous early 17 th-century Dominican friar Domingo de Vico. This article reconstructs the textual genesis of this trilingual dictionary and reexamines its authorship. Analyzing hitherto unnoticed intertextualities with other unedited Kaqchikel dictionary sources, it is shown that the process of compilation was multistaged and the K'iche' entries were only integrated in the late 17 th century. Textual evidence indicates that the dictionary is more likely of Franciscan than of Dominican origin. The article provides insights into missionary lexicographic practices and shows that mendicant authors copied from each other and modified lexical compilations according to their respective theories of translation.
Die korpusorientierte Erfassung kolonialzeitlicher Wörterbücher und kulturwissenschaftlichen Fors... more Die korpusorientierte Erfassung kolonialzeitlicher Wörterbücher und kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung amerindischer Sprachen geht mit besonderen Problemstellungen einher. Die Textquellen sind multilingual und unstandardisiert verschriftet, die Lexikoneinträge morphologisch komplex und Bedeutungskor- relationen oft uneinheitlich. Die Überführung solcher Texte in maschinenlesbare Korpora setzt die orthographische Vereinheitlichung, morphologische Analyse und lexikalische Bedeutungszuordnung der Wortformen voraus, die sich als Analyseschritte nicht systematisch trennen lassen. Am Beispiel von kolonialen Wörterbüchern (Lexikographien) der Mayasprache K’iche’ wurdean der Abteilung für Altamerikanistik der Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn der Prototyp eines Annotations- werkzeugs entwickelt, das den Prozess von Transkription, Glossierung und Lemmatisierung im Rahmen eines halbautomatisierten Auszeichnungsverfahrens unterstützt. Ausgehend von diesem Prototyp soll in der XML-basierten Forschungsumgebung TextGrid ein digitales Werkzeug zur einheitlichen Erfassung kolonialer Lexikographien entstehen, die für die Auszeichnung vergleichbarer Wörterbücher zu anderen Sprachen nutzbar wird.
Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Latin America, 2017
This chapter examines an anonymous Dominican’s notebook now part of the Kislak Collection of the ... more This chapter examines an anonymous Dominican’s notebook now part of the Kislak Collection of the U.S. Library of Congress, specifically the core sections written in K’iche’ Maya dated 1552. Based on intertextual analysis with later mendicant texts written in Highland Mayan languages (i.e., catechisms, coplas (songs), and the Theologia Indorum), this chapter argues that the core of this Kislak manuscript is the earliest version of a set of 50 songs composed by Dominican missionaries (possibly the earliest original Christian pastoral text written in the Americas let alone in an indigenous language) as documented in the Historia by Antonio de Remesal. As a result, this chapter reassess the conventional understanding that the Theologia Indorum work grew out of a set of sermons but rather initiated as a “go with me” summa.
In: Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Latin America. Edited by David Tavárez (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2017).
Die Mayasprache K'iche' im Hochland von Guatemala war eine der ersten Sprachen der Amerikas, die ... more Die Mayasprache K'iche' im Hochland von Guatemala war eine der ersten Sprachen der Amerikas, die systematisch zur Konversion der indigenen Bevölkerung instrumentalisiert wurde. Die k'iche'sprachigen Quellen aus der Hand von Missionaren sind umfangreich und umfassen neben Wörterbüchern und Grammatiken verschiedene Typen von Katechismen, theologische Abhandlungen, Predigten und devotionale Texte. Nur ein Teil dieser Dokumente wurde bisher gezielt erfasst und ausgewertet. Dieser Beitrag gibt einen systematischen Überblick über das Korpus doktrinaler K'iche'-Literatur. Unter Berücksichtigung aktueller Forschungsansätze zur Christianisierung und Kolonialisierung amerindischer Sprachen werden die von den Missionaren angewendeten Übersetzungsstrategien reflektiert und erörtert, inwieweit doktrinale Literatur auch zum Vehikel für die Kontinuität vorspanischer religiöser Konzepte wurde.
The Xinka in southeastern Guatemala remain at the geographical and cultural periphery of Mesoamer... more The Xinka in southeastern Guatemala remain at the geographical and cultural periphery of Mesoamerica. With their language unaffiliated and their cultural traits distinct from the neighboring Maya and Pipil, the Xinka have suffered continuous process of acculturation, ladinisation and language loss since the beginning of the colonial era. With the signing of the peace treaty in 1995, the Xinka were first recognised as an independent ethnic group and indigenous communities in southeastern Guatemala have re-defined themselves as Xinka, based on the language that was formerly spoken in their towns and barrios. The topic of this paper is the beginning and development of organised Xinka cultural activism. It will be argued that the process of redefining Xinka culture and identity has been initiated by a small group of activists largely as a reaction to external socio-political circumstances. Recovering lost cultural diacritics, a new Xinka identity is built that legitimises the participation of Xinka activists in the political process of the indigenous rights movement and the institutions that arose from it. This participation is often criticised from within the Maya Movement, and deemed as pretentious. The Xinka activists’ response to this criticism has been to cultivate a status of cultural difference and marginality.
Mesoamerican myths of origin typically involve the concept of migration. Colonial sources and mod... more Mesoamerican myths of origin typically involve the concept of migration. Colonial sources and modern oral traditions of Aztec, Maya and other Mesoamerican groups relate that the people made the journey into their current territory from a distant place of creation on a route that involved several stages of travel. This paper will explore the concepts of origin places in Colonial K’iche’an text sources from Highland Guatemala. The accounts of origin places in the K’iche’an sources have thus far been interpreted literally, which led to various suppositions about the historical basis and actual geographical setting of these locations. Combining comparative ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and precolonial evidence from various types of sources, it will be argued that in the references to places and directions of origin historicity is subordinate to ideology. It can be shown that the concept of migration and origin has become an independent topos which on the one hand functions within the framework of Maya cosmology and relates to creation as the central paradigm of Maya mythology, and on the other hand acts as a principal means of legitimizing power by deriving authority from remote supreme centers. The analysis will focus on the interpretation of the metaphor “on the other side of the sea” which can be demonstrated to refer to a place of creation, a concept which may have deep roots in the cultural memory of the Mesoamerican past and calls for a re-analysis of Mesoamerican migration myths.
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Books by Frauke Sachse
With the present edition the eighteenth-century manuscript in the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin is made available for the first time to researchers in various fields including Amerindian language research, missionary linguistics, and Mesoamerican studies.
The introductory chapter provides a comprehensive description of the manuscript and analyses the relation of the text to other missionary sources on colonial K’iche’ lexicography. It furthermore defines editorial principles and conventions and gives examples for the linguistic and cultural contents of the source. Besides a faithful transcription of the manuscript text, the edition includes a reference dictionary with resorted entries based on the official orthography of K’iche’ that is used in Guatemala today.
This book also includes translations of two other pastoral texts (parts of a songbook and a catechism) and eight early documents by K’iche’ and Kaqchikel Maya authors. These texts, written in Highland Mayan languages both by fellow Dominicans and by Highland Maya elites demonstrate the wider influence of Vico’s ethnographic approach shared by a particular school of Dominicans. Altogether, The Americas’ First Theologies provides a rich documentary case example of the translation, reception, and reaction to Christian thought in the indigenous Americas.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-americas-first-theologies-9780190678302?cc=us&lang=en&
Para facilitar el uso etnohistórico de estas fuentes, se presenta una transcripción individual de cada texto en base a los manuscritos originales así como también una versión sinóptica y crítica.
El análisis que precede estas ediciones se centra en aspectos de metodología y construcción textual: trata de la estructuración e interrelación de los textos; toca las interrogantes del marco temporal de su creación; discute su autoria, intención y motivación así como también la perspectiva historiográfica.
En base a este estudio queda claro que se trata de dos textos individuales que no se pueden amalgamar en una entidad. En base a este resultado, los aportes de los autores tienen el objetivo de marcar nuevos derroteros para la investigación etnohistórica de las dos fuentes y sus posibles interpretaciones.
Co-edited Books by Frauke Sachse
The chapters are grouped into four sections. The first section interprets the Highland Maya worldview through examination of the text, analyzing interdependence between deities and human beings as well as the textual and cosmological coherence of the Popol Vuh as a source. The second section analyzes the Precolumbian Maya archaeological record as it relates to the myths of the Popol Vuh, providing new interpretations of the use of space, architecture, burials, artifacts, and human remains found in Classic Maya caves. The third explores ancient Maya iconographic motifs, including those found in Classic Maya ceramic art; the nature of predatory birds; and the Hero Twins’ deeds in the Popol Vuh. The final chapters address mythological continuities and change, reexamining past methodological approaches using the Popol Vuh as a resource for the interpretation of Classic Maya iconography and ancient Maya religion and mythology, connecting the myths of the Popol Vuh to iconography from Preclassic Izapa, and demonstrating how narratives from the Popol Vuh can illuminate mythologies from other parts of Mesoamerica.
The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Ritual is the first volume to bring together multiple perspectives and original interpretations of the Popol Vuh myths. It will be of interest not only to Mesoamericanists but also to art historians, archaeologists, ethnohistorians, iconographers, linguists, anthropologists, and scholars working in ritual studies, the history of religion, historic and Precolumbian literature and historic linguistics.
Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Karen Bassie-Sweet, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Michael D. Coe, Iyaxel Cojtí Ren, Héctor Escobedo, Thomas H. Guderjan, Julia Guernsey, Christophe Helmke, Nicholas A. Hopkins, Barbara MacLeod, Jesper Nielsen, Colin Snider, Karl A. Taube
Papers by Frauke Sachse
Christianity into the indigenous languages of the Americas. The linguistic
conversion was not a homogeneous process, because friars of the Dominican and the Franciscan mendicant orders interacted in the field of the mission following different theological trajectories and creating a multivocality of Christian discourses.
By analysing the various renderings of the name of God and the Trinity
in the Highland Mayan language K’iche’, I show that the mendicants often
understood the nature of the indigenous conceptualisations of divinities,
but chose to respond with different translation strategies. It was in particular the Dominican missionaries who appropriated names of pre-contact divinities from Highland Maya religious discourse. The Dominican strategy proved successful inasmuch as K’iche’ authors can be shown to have taken up the missionaries’ interpretation of primeval monotheism in their own narratives and texts. Moreover, I will show that missionary text sources can provide valuable clues about pre-contact indigenous ontologies.
With the present edition the eighteenth-century manuscript in the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin is made available for the first time to researchers in various fields including Amerindian language research, missionary linguistics, and Mesoamerican studies.
The introductory chapter provides a comprehensive description of the manuscript and analyses the relation of the text to other missionary sources on colonial K’iche’ lexicography. It furthermore defines editorial principles and conventions and gives examples for the linguistic and cultural contents of the source. Besides a faithful transcription of the manuscript text, the edition includes a reference dictionary with resorted entries based on the official orthography of K’iche’ that is used in Guatemala today.
This book also includes translations of two other pastoral texts (parts of a songbook and a catechism) and eight early documents by K’iche’ and Kaqchikel Maya authors. These texts, written in Highland Mayan languages both by fellow Dominicans and by Highland Maya elites demonstrate the wider influence of Vico’s ethnographic approach shared by a particular school of Dominicans. Altogether, The Americas’ First Theologies provides a rich documentary case example of the translation, reception, and reaction to Christian thought in the indigenous Americas.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-americas-first-theologies-9780190678302?cc=us&lang=en&
Para facilitar el uso etnohistórico de estas fuentes, se presenta una transcripción individual de cada texto en base a los manuscritos originales así como también una versión sinóptica y crítica.
El análisis que precede estas ediciones se centra en aspectos de metodología y construcción textual: trata de la estructuración e interrelación de los textos; toca las interrogantes del marco temporal de su creación; discute su autoria, intención y motivación así como también la perspectiva historiográfica.
En base a este estudio queda claro que se trata de dos textos individuales que no se pueden amalgamar en una entidad. En base a este resultado, los aportes de los autores tienen el objetivo de marcar nuevos derroteros para la investigación etnohistórica de las dos fuentes y sus posibles interpretaciones.
The chapters are grouped into four sections. The first section interprets the Highland Maya worldview through examination of the text, analyzing interdependence between deities and human beings as well as the textual and cosmological coherence of the Popol Vuh as a source. The second section analyzes the Precolumbian Maya archaeological record as it relates to the myths of the Popol Vuh, providing new interpretations of the use of space, architecture, burials, artifacts, and human remains found in Classic Maya caves. The third explores ancient Maya iconographic motifs, including those found in Classic Maya ceramic art; the nature of predatory birds; and the Hero Twins’ deeds in the Popol Vuh. The final chapters address mythological continuities and change, reexamining past methodological approaches using the Popol Vuh as a resource for the interpretation of Classic Maya iconography and ancient Maya religion and mythology, connecting the myths of the Popol Vuh to iconography from Preclassic Izapa, and demonstrating how narratives from the Popol Vuh can illuminate mythologies from other parts of Mesoamerica.
The Myths of the Popol Vuh in Cosmology, Art, and Ritual is the first volume to bring together multiple perspectives and original interpretations of the Popol Vuh myths. It will be of interest not only to Mesoamericanists but also to art historians, archaeologists, ethnohistorians, iconographers, linguists, anthropologists, and scholars working in ritual studies, the history of religion, historic and Precolumbian literature and historic linguistics.
Contributors: Jaime J. Awe, Karen Bassie-Sweet, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Michael D. Coe, Iyaxel Cojtí Ren, Héctor Escobedo, Thomas H. Guderjan, Julia Guernsey, Christophe Helmke, Nicholas A. Hopkins, Barbara MacLeod, Jesper Nielsen, Colin Snider, Karl A. Taube
Christianity into the indigenous languages of the Americas. The linguistic
conversion was not a homogeneous process, because friars of the Dominican and the Franciscan mendicant orders interacted in the field of the mission following different theological trajectories and creating a multivocality of Christian discourses.
By analysing the various renderings of the name of God and the Trinity
in the Highland Mayan language K’iche’, I show that the mendicants often
understood the nature of the indigenous conceptualisations of divinities,
but chose to respond with different translation strategies. It was in particular the Dominican missionaries who appropriated names of pre-contact divinities from Highland Maya religious discourse. The Dominican strategy proved successful inasmuch as K’iche’ authors can be shown to have taken up the missionaries’ interpretation of primeval monotheism in their own narratives and texts. Moreover, I will show that missionary text sources can provide valuable clues about pre-contact indigenous ontologies.
In: Words and Worlds Turned Around: Indigenous Christianities in Latin America. Edited by David Tavárez (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2017).
http://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/3225-words-and-worlds-turned-around