Customer Reviews

Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya: The Great Classic of Central American Spirituality, Translated from the Original Maya Text

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It would be a shame to let the slipshod and factually inaccurate review (below) pass without correction and comment as this is an exciting new scholarly edition of the most important extant Maya text.

Even a cursory reading of the first page of the introduction (and throughout) would have supplied the information that the translator Christenson's primary Maya linguistic expertise is in Quiché (or K'iche'). And of course it would be extraordinarily foolhardy for anyone to attempt a translation of the Popol Vuh without a knowledge of the language in which the text is written.

This is not the place to rehearse the arguments regarding the purpose, practise and philosophy of translation - this has been done at great length by such well known commentators on the subject as Eco and Steiner not to mention the myriad even more technical writers. But the writer of the previous review passes judgement on the `accuracy' of the translation compared to that of Tedlock's readable and famously demotic version. One has to wonder how this judgement has been arrived at, and logically, what third, control element was used against which to compare the accuracy of the translations. Surely this would have had to have been the 16th century Quiché text which would, of course, require a knowledge of that language and it's historical orthography. It seems more likely that the reviewer simply compared the two translations; not much of a methodology. It would be a travesty if such an inadequate critique was allowed to stand unchallenged.

Fortunately the second volume of Christenson's edition (which the previous reviewer fails to mention) provides the exact tools necessary for the informed reader to make their own judgement by including a new and complete transcription of the original Quiché text (from the manuscript in the Newberry Library, Chicago) with a parallel literal English translation, something not available before, and making this a landmark edition of the Popol Vuh and essential for serious students of Maya culture and history.

I agree with the last review. This is the best version of the Popol Vuh to date. Tedlock's is good but this translation, format, and over all presentation is excellent. The first review seems to have a case of the sour grapes!

Excellent book that has been pushed aside and considered demonic. The weird thing is that in this book the animals could talk and is looked upon as a myth, but yet many people believe that a naked woman walking in the forest was able to talk to a serpent. The dominant society dictates what is real and what is myth. Panche Be

The Popol Vuh is simply fascinating: An ancient and unique story about the creation of our universe, what's not to love?
I placed my order and was given information by Amazon which turned out to be exact. My purchase went perfectly well, in fact, better than I expected since I received my item far sooner than I expected.
I'm happy. The end.

This translation of the Popol Vuh is not very good compared to the one by Dennis Tedlock that has been updated once again. This one does, however, have some interesting new photographs from the author's research among the Tzutuhil Maya around Lake Atitlan. Note that the Tzutuhil do they speak the language of the Popol Vuh (Quiche). The errors in translation relate to the differences in these two Mayan languages.