An Encounter of Two Worlds: The Book of Chilam Balam of Kaua (review)

The publication of a new edition of one of the books of Chilam Balam is always something of an event. Written alphabetically in Maya, the manuscripts are rich sources of information on Yucatec Maya history and culture, and only nine have survived from the colonial period. This edition is especially noteworthy, because although the Book of Chilam Balam of Kaua is the longest of the nine survivors (roughly 280 manuscript pages), it has never been published, transcribed, or translated in full, and—most notably—Victoria Bricker and Helga-Maria Miram have done such a thorough and expert job.

Named after a Maya prophet (chilam) named Balam, the nine extant books fall loosely into two categories: those that deal mostly with historical and prophetic matters and those that "are largely concerned with astronomy, astrology, and medicine" (p. 1 ). The Kauafalls into this latter category, but it also contains a historical and prophetic text and shares passages with seven of the other books, making it "the most encyclopedic of all the Books of Chilam Balam, a virtual treasure trove of information reflecting the intellectual concerns of the colonial Maya scribe" (p. 3 ).

Bricker and Miram argue that the Kaua "rivals in significance" the best-known of the manuscripts, the Chumayel (p. 3 ). The wealth of topics covered in the manuscript itself would seem to support this assertion (although to some extent it depends on what aspects of the Maya past one is most interested in), but Bricker and Miram's case is also supported by three characteristics of their edition. The first is the translation of the text. Some previous editions of Chilam Balam books have been marred by translations that are either too literal or too imaginative; Bricker and Miram have steered a middle course between these two sirens, adopting what they call (citing William Hanks) a "grammatical" rather than a "word" translation (p. 9 ). This is not as simple as Bricker and Miram make it sound, and no doubt specialists will take issue with individual glosses, but I would be surprised if any Mayanists find the overall product anything other than successful—if not resoundingly so.

The edition's second felicitous feature is the editors' analytical work (although they are modestly labeled mere translators and annotators). The introduction (at 88 oversized pages) is a virtual monograph on its own, the edition's 3 ,285 footnotes on occasion crowd out the text completely, and the appendixes of plant names are a major contribution to Maya ethnobotany. Stemming from this work is the third feature, indicated in the edition's title and detailed in the introduction—the thesis. This is laid out in three lengthy sections of the introduction, titled "The European Background," "The Maya Background," and "The Intellectual Encounter." Bricker and Miram identify, with painstaking thoroughness, the various European and native sources used by the colonial Maya scribe or notary who compiled the Kaua, arguing and detailing how the result illustrates "the process of syncretism" in calendrics, religion, astronomy, and medicine (p. 85 )—the quest "for some common denominator for relating fundamental concepts in the alien thought system to the more familiar intellectual tradition" (p. 3 ) of native Yucatán.

For an edition of a primary source to even have a thesis is striking; for it to have one that is thoughtful, consistent, and convincing is nothing short of inspiring. This volume is a major contribution to a nexus of related fields and subfields—Maya studies, native writing, Yucatec anthropology and ethnohistory, colonial Mesoamerica, early modern Spanish intellectual culture, medicinal history, and more. Within the genre of translated and annotated editions, the volume is exemplary.