Parallel Worlds: Genre, Discourse, and Poetics in Contemporary, Colonial, and Classic Maya Literature

9. Some Historical Continuities in Lowland Maya Magical Speech Genres: Keying Shamanic Performance

253 Some Historical Continuities in Lowland Maya Magical Speech Genres Keying Shamanic Performance Timothy W. Knowlton 9 The Yucatecan Maya genre of u thanil literally means “the word of” but is perhaps better translated as “incantation” (Gubler 1996; Roys 1965). U thanil are often performed for the purposes of curing, although incantations related to other domains of life, such as fire drilling and hunting, also appear in the documentary record. Most of the known Colonial examples of this genre appear in the manuscript known as the Ritual of the Bacabs (Arzápalo Marín 1987; Roys 1965).1 The extant manuscript copy of the Ritual of the Bacabs dates to the late eighteenth century; however, some framing devices of the u thanil genre appear in Late Classic Maya hieroglyphic texts, predating these Colonial examples by a millennium. As such, the Ritual of the Bacabs is an important point of departure for identifying some historical continuities and discontinuities of lowland Maya magical speech genres. Although known Classic Maya hieroglyphic texts were neither the antecedents of, nor themselves composed as, incantations, I argue that some Classic period texts 9 254 Timothy W. Knowlton incorporate framing devices from the otherwise unwritten antecedents of u thanil to connect the activities of political elites to the medium of shamanic performance. A Brief Sample Incantation The investigation of the diachronic continuity and discontinuity of Maya magical speech genres faces serious difficulties that derive from processes of de-centering and entextualization, by which performed spoken discourse is distilled to a stable and extractable version. This problem is common to all Classical Yucatecan manuscripts, yet in no genre is this more salient than the language of shamanic performance. As William Hanks (1996: 162; original emphasis) notes in regard to contemporary Maya exorcisms, “a central dimension of Maya shamanism is the production and transformation of lived space.” The incantations of the Ritual of the Bacabs are textual artifacts lifted out of their interactional setting, whose meanings we can only infer or attempt to reconstruct on other grounds. The Ritual of the Bacabs manuscript is characterized by the common absence of markers for paralinguistic features of performance and also lacks markers for tone and vowel length (figure 9.1). These issues are compounded by the inconsistency or absence of punctuation and the rendering of what is undoubtedly poetic verse into prose lines throughout the manuscript.2 For those unfamiliar with these Colonial period Maya incantations, I begin this discussion by presenting a very brief, but otherwise representative, u thanil from manuscript pages 128–130 of the Ritual of the Bacabs: Transcription [Modified to Verse Format] 1 Can tu nak uinic lae 2 Yax hun ahau 3 Uatal tun bacin yn cah yn pedzebech 4 Cech col3 ale 5 Can kin tun bacin lic a zut 6 Can kin tun bacin lic a pec 7 lic a sut 8 Tumen a na 9 tumen a yum 10 Cech u col al 11 u col akabe 12 Sam tũ yn can maxcunech 13 Chacal uayan choche 14 Sih cech bacin ti yol yke 15 Cech Chacal Ahaucan 16 Ca tun bacan emech yicnal sacal anom 17 sacal uinic Figure 9.1. Manuscript page 130 of the Ritual of the Bacabs illustrating the Colonial rendition of poetic incantation into prose text. Courtesy, Princeton University Library, Princeton, NJ. 256 Timothy W. Knowlton 18 Max yn uayasba 19 Can tin maxcunnaheche 20 Hunac ah thalcunahen 21 Hunnac ah chelcunahen 22 Hunac ah copcunahhen 23 Hunac 24 Can ahau kin a sihic u cool c ab 25 u cool akab 26 Am English Translation 1 Snake in the stomach of a person 2 First Hun Ahau 3 I stand, then, that I may trap you 4 You who are the lust of the woman’s child 5 It is four days then that you turn 6 It is four days then that you writhe 7 You turn 8 Because of your mother 9 because of your father 10 You who are the lust of the woman’s child 11 the lust of darkness 12 Already then I vigorously bruise you 13 Red Uayan Choch 14 Born, you who are in the heart of the wind 15 You who are Red Ahaucan 16 Thus, then, when you descend before the white anom 17 the white person 18 Who is my prognostication? 19 I vigorously bruised you 20 Forever! I am he who made it to...