Rabinal Achi: A Fifteenth-Century Maya Dynastic Drama (review)

Originally published in French in 1994, this is the first time Alain Breton’s masterful translation of the Rabinal Achi has appeared in English. This edition should take its rightful place as the standard translation of this important text for many years to come. It offers a meticulously careful, elegant translation, which is faithful to the literal meaning and syntax of the K’iche’-Maya language original. A fuller understanding of the implied meaning of the text is also aided by Breton’s copious footnotes and supplementary materials that reference relevant cultural and historical information, as well as archaic definitions gleaned from Colonial-era dictionaries and grammars. Breton wisely avoids using modern colloquialisms and phraseology foreign to the fifteenth-century setting of the drama, a jarring and unwelcome tendency in many recent translations of ancient Maya texts. The author includes a facsimile copy of the Pérez Manuscript, which serves as his principal source, as well as a new transcription of the text utilizing modern K’iche’ orthography. The art of translation depends on constant choices. Seldom are there clear equivalencies of meaning when shifting from one language to another. As a result it is valuable for scholars to have the K’iche’-Maya version of the text placed side by side with the English translation for comparative purposes.

The Rabinal Achi as it exists today is the result of a complex history that is, as yet, imperfectly understood despite the efforts of numerous scholars, including Breton, to unravel it. Most scholars agree that it is an authentic dance-drama with origins in the fifteenth-century. It is thus one of the few precious remnants of a body of written and oral works from the corpus of Pre-Columbian highland Maya literature that includes most notably the Popol Vuh, and portions of the Annals of the Kaqchikels, Título K’oyoi, and the Title of Totonicapán.

The Rabinal Achi is a dance-drama, meant to be seen and heard rather than read. Breton worked closely with José-León Coloch for five years in the preparation of this translation. Coloch possessed a written copy of the text and, like his father-in-law before him, acted in the drama during public performances and knew large portions of the text by heart. This close collaboration between Breton and Coloch is, I believe, the greatest strength of the present work. A proper understanding of the text requires not only language skills, but a firm understanding of the drama’s cultural context. Breton is among the finest ethnographers working in the field of highland Maya studies today and his extensive work in Rabinal and close relationship with Coloch and others familiar with the Rabinal Achi make him uniquely prepared to not only understand the words of the text, but their underlying meaning.

The Rabinal Achi tells the tale of the capture, trial, and ultimate execution of a K’iche’ prince and warrior by Rabinal Achi, the son of Job Toj, ruler of the Rabinals. The drama is acted out as a series of speeches by the main characters, sometimes referencing current affairs at the respective courts of the K’iche’s and Rabinals, and sometimes recounting the histories of the two peoples. The archaic language and unfamiliar history of the text can make reading the Rabinal Achi difficult. Breton himself admits that when he first read it, he found it “abstruse and boring” (p. 49). But this is not the fault of the text. Frankly, it was not composed with non-Maya readers in mind. It is meant to be performed and experienced as a way of honoring the forebears of the Rabinals. We are only curious visitors peering over the shoulders of the Maya as they watch their neighbors perform their history and listen to the words of their ancestors. Just as Breton learned to love...