The Popol Vuh Manuscript Tradition

Record summary

The Popol Vuh, or Popol Wuj, is a K’iche’ Maya narrative preserved in a colonial-era K’iche’-language manuscript transcribed by an Indigenous author commonly identified as Francisco Ximénez’s source or informant tradition. It includes creation accounts, divine and heroic episodes, dynastic history, and place-based memory. It matters for comparison with esoteric traditions because its transmission shows how sacred knowledge survived through manuscript and translation under Christianity. The original precolonial form, authorial layers, and ritual use before transcription cannot be securely reconstructed.